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Defender: Difference between revisions
added tropenamer section
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While it lacks the pop culture legacy of ''[[Pac-Man]]'', ''[[Donkey Kong]]'' and ''[[Space Invaders]]'', ''[[Defender]]'', the first game created by [[Eugene Jarvis]]<ref>And the first ever video game released by pinball company Williams.</ref>, is one of the most popular and most relevant video games of the arcade era.
The game's premise is simple: defend a planet, and its 10 humanoid inhabitants, from abduction by hostile alien spaceships. The difficulty is in the implementation: ''Defender'' presents the player with a dizzying array of controls. The player's ship is controlled with an up-down stick, a thrust button, a fire button, a reverse button to change direction, a smart bomb button that kills all enemies on screen, and an ''[[Asteroids]]''-style hyperspace button. And you have to keep your eye on an [[Enemy-Detecting Radar|scanner]] that tracks out-of-range enemies.
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Why is ''Defender'' historically relevant? Its success proved that even casual gamers could handle complexity. Without ''Defender'', it would have been risky for a company to release an arcade game that challenged the player to manage a joystick and six buttons... which didn't happen again until the first ''[[Street Fighter]]'' game, seven years later.
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Smart Bomb]] (for the sense in which we use it)
{{tropelist}}
* [[AI Breaker]]: The Mutant Reverse Line.
* [[Alien Invasion]]
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