Defender 3

Manufacturer: Williams Year: 1984 Class: Prototype Genre: Shooter Type: Videogame Monitor: Orientation: Horizontal Type: Raster: Standard Resolution CRT: Color Conversion Class: Williams Number of Simultaneous Players: 1 Maximum number of Players: 2 Gameplay: Alternating Control Panel Layout: Single Player Controls: Joystick: 2-way (up, down) Buttons: 11 Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel)

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Description This is the unreleased third game in the Defender trilogy, following Stargate. As with its two predecessors, Defender 3 is a fast-action, horizontally scrolling shooter, where you defend the denizens of a planet from all manner of attacking aliens. Cabinet Information The only-known cabinet is a standard, if somewhat beat-up, Defender cabinet. It has a handmade cardboard marquee taped to it, but no other new artwork specific to the game. The control panel is a spray-painted piece of plywood, with a 2-way joystick and 13 buttons mounted to it. The button names are written on pieces of masking tape, presumably with a fine-point Sharpie. This game was almost certainly a one-off prototype. It's doubtful Williams would have released a game in this condition to the arcades. But then again, after the industry crashed in '83, anything is possible. Maybe they were trying to save money or something. Game Introduction Your mission, as with the previous two games in the series, is to protect humanoids from being abducted by aliens, who will turn them into mutants. That is, the aliens will turn the humanoids into mutants. Not the other way around. Although if the humanoids turned the aliens into mutants, that would be pretty interesting, too. Although if the humanoids could do that, they wouldn't need defending now, would they? But I bet the aliens wouldn't be very happy. So it's just as well that the game is the way that it is. At your disposal, is your trusty spaceship. Similar to the ship in Stargate, you have the usual weapons at your disposal: a laser, smart bombs, Inviso (which renders your ship invisible) and hyperspace. Added to your arsenal this time around are: a flame thrower, heat-seeking missiles, time-warp, and oddly enough, a self-destruct button, which is located unfortunately close to the hyperspace button, among others. There's also a button marked "nothing" which, predictably, does nothing. Perhaps it was included to further confuse the hapless player. Or maybe they were going to add a weapon called "nothing". But I don't know what that would have done. Probably nothing. So maybe it actually works. With Stargate, the number of enemies more than doubled from what Defender had. With Defender 3, it's difficult to tell. There are so many enemies in this game, the portion of the attract mode which introduces them runs for nearly 10 minutes. Their particular attack modes and characteristics don't really matter much though, since you probably won't last long enough to see most of them. Suffice it to say, they're all trying their best to put a really big hurt on you. Also adding to the increased difficulty is the fact that the planet surface is now solid. No more flying through mountaintops! And setting down any rescued humanoids without slamming into the ground is an iffy proposition at best. I think they borrowed this from Scramble, which is kind of ironic, since Scramble has always been considered as sort of a poor-man's Defender. Well, who's laughing now, smart-boy? Game Play Tips: Your best bet is to master Defender and Stargate first, and then play something other than this game. I'd suggest something like Dig Dug. I understand that's pretty popular. The advanced tactic of killing all but one humanoid and carrying the last one around with you doesn't work, since they're all going to die before you can do anything about it anyway. If you put in two credits and play a two-player game by yourself, it will look like you're playing twice as long, and bystanders will be more impressed. Don't play any other arcade games located in the vicinity of Defender 3, since it will actually kill your men on those games, too. Miscellaneous Learning to play this game is sort of like playing a two-player game of Mortal Kombat all by yourself. Or maybe Space Wars. Have you ever tried doing that? It's pretty hard. Or maybe typing on a DVORAK keyboard when you're used to QWERTY. Man... just don't get me started on that whole DVORAK thing. Technical This game probably used the same processors and stuff that the other Williams games of the time used. It looks real similar. The sounds are pretty much the same, too. Of course, all arcade games look alike to me on the inside. Just a bunch of parts that I have no idea what they do. Actually, when I first looked inside of an arcade machine, I was pretty disappointed. I thought it would be all cool, but it's mostly just an empty wooden box in there. There's a bunch of wasted space in those things. I wonder if anyone's ever tried to stick a mini-fridge in one? I bet it'd fit. Trivia Little is known about Defender 3, since it was only recently discovered in a garage in Huntington Beach, CA. What is known, is that much in the same way that Stargate was designed to challenge players who had mastered Defender, Defender 3 was designed to outright humiliate Stargate players, and pretty much anyone else willing to stick a quarter into the machine. I'm guessing the programmers were starting to get a little testy about people beating their games all of the time. Apparently the game had been sitting in this garage, undiscovered for the last nineteen years. The homeowner, a former Williams employee, had no idea it was actually a Defender 3 since "it was facing the wall the whole time." According to Midway, the genealogy of the games is as follows: Defender, Stargate, Robotron:2084, Blaster, Defender 3, Pac & Pal, and Gal's Panic. There's an Atari 2600 version of this game, too. It's in the same landfill where all of the E.T. cartridges are buried. The on-screen flicker was so bad, it apparently killed several people during testing. Legacy Defender Stargate Defender 3 Strike Force

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The Killer List Of Videogames TM (KLOV®) and The International Arcade Museum TM web sites are copyright © 1995-2003 and sponsored by WebMagic, Inc. and WebMagic Ventures, LLC. All rights reserved. If you haven't figured out this is an April Fool's Parody by now, you should probably stop pestering the MAME developers about why this game hasn't been emulated yet. This parody is copyright © 2003 Nathan Strum, who also happens to run MacMAME.net. Thanks to Dave Dries of Cinemarcade for hosting this silliness. Also thanks to Chris Newton who took this old Defender cabinet off my hands, and is restoring it beautifully. Someone had converted into a 10-yard fight. What was up with that?

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