Defender

holy goddamn how are you supposed to play this

Adding five whole button functions as early as 1981 isn't the brightest move, and what hurts this control layout the most is how the thrust and turning buttons are all seperate, when they could've instead been added as joystick functions. Add to this the shooting button as well as the less-used bomb and hyperspace moves and you have no idea how you're supposed to survive the alien invasion at such an inconvenience.

That's exactly why the Atari 5200 port feels like something of a godsend, and is one of the best games on a system that sadly tanked for understandable reasons. But if I were to pick one of the best contemporary editions to play Defender, I would suggest 5200 the most.

I can only go half way with a rating here. The game was always much better than me, so even though it is good, I could never get satisfaction out of it. It did feature some of the best sounds of a video game up until that point.

Okayish old school shoot em up. It controls pretty nicely, but its weird to me that the enemies appear on both sides of the ship. Nice visuals for the time. Really hard game, i would quickly go poor if i played this one at the time.

One of the few early '80s arcade classics I never fell in love with, despite my fandom of Williams' arcade games in general. This was mostly because Defender is damn hard. The first level isn't too bad, but the second one already throws all sorts of angry, buzzy little pixels at your ship. I prefer difficult games at home, but when you're at the mall and your mom gives you a fiver to kill two hours at the arcade, wasting even a fraction of that precious loot on a game that might chew you up and spit you out in 60 seconds has worked to create a deep seated grudge on my part over the years.

But since the kid with limited funds in an arcade setting, I've made something of a peace with the game and even came around to appreciate it. It sure is a lot easier to get to know a game when you're not grinding your teeth over every quarter lost. And the fact is Defender contains a lot of hallmarks of my favorite arcade game ever in Robotron: 2084, namely that distinctive red and black color scheme, the intense gameplay, and the ear splitting noises that emanate from the cabinet's direction. The same two people made both games, after all. If only Defender had a more gentle difficulty ramp, I might have appreciated it long ago as well.