Defender

History & Game Synopsis
Your mission, as captain of the Defender, is to protect the humanoids stranded on the planet from their alien abductors. The scanner will help you determine a strategy to shoot down the alien ships before they reach the humanoids. If you destroy the aliens after they have captured their prey, you must return the humanoids to the safety of the planet or they will fall to their death. If an alien carries its victim out of your range, the humanoid will mutate, join the alien force, and take to assault with deadly vengeance!

The challenge becomes ever more intense as the action progresses. Fighter ships Bombers and mines will test your skills. A direct hit will destroy the mother ship Pods but smash it into a swarming mass of mini-ships Swarmers which then must be wiped out! If you do not act quickly, the cosmic Baiter will attack! Use your two escape options only if all else fails! Your “Smart Bomb” power is limited and “Hyperspace” puts you into an unknown space warp. But beware! If all the humanoids are abducted, the entire planet will explode in a blinding flash!

Designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis, Larry DeMar, Sam Dicker, and Paul Dussault.

Miscellaneous
This is one of many games that has been bootlegged or copied. Some of these versions have added improvements to the game but others are direct copies. Examples of these games are Mayday, Defence Command, Defense Command and Mirage.

Defender was licensed to Taito for Japanese manufacture and distribution.

Gameplay strategy

• Avoid using hyperspace unless you are about to die. Fighting off attacks, regardless of the number of enemies will make you a better Defender player.
• Baiters can usually be overcome by hitting the reverse button twice quickly. They will fly past you and be in range for your fire power. Do NOT try to outrun them as Baiters are faster than your ship.
• Swarmers are easy to defeat. You can hit reverse as soon as they fly past you and fly behind them. They cannot shoot backwards so you can blast away at will.
• At higher levels you will need to play God and even sacrifice some humanoids by killing them yourself to preserve the rest of the planet’s population. The planet is too large for you protect and you are sparing the humanoids from a fate worst than death mutation. Do not worry, these humanoids reproduce quickly and overpopulation has always been a constant problem. The planet will be fully populated at the start of every fifth attack wave configurable.
• There are reverse lines for swarmers and mutants (sometimes called the “International Date Line”). If this line is between you and the type of enemy in question, they will travel the opposite direction around the planet to get you. (I.e. they won’t cross this line to get to you.) If a mutant, say, is following you and you cross the mutant reverse line (to the left of the Big Mountain) it will suddenly reverse direction and go around the other way. The same is true for the swarmer reverse line (located approximately where your ship starts each wave). This doesn’t affect swarmers that you are following behind. If you’re on one side of the line and a pod is on the other and you shoot it open the swarmers will fly away from you and you can get in behind them immediately. The best use of these lines is where there are lots of swarmers and/or mutants that you don’t want to hassle with. You stay near the line in question and go back and forth over it to keep the enemy in question on the other side of the planet. Especially useful in space and waves that get really hairy.
• You can freeze a Defender machine by picking up all ten humans (on any wave, but Wave 1 is your greatest chance at success), stopping all forward motion of your ship, quieting the screen down (i.e. having no enemies moving around on it) and setting all the humans straight down quickly. This seems to work better were the terrain is very close to the bottom of the screen. Every thing will freeze, but you can still move your ship up and down. Thrusting will break the spell, so to speak. If you do pick a spot with shallow terrain, some humans will go thru the bottom of the screen and appear suspended in mid- air near the top. This trick is good during marathon games when you’ve reached Wave 256 and need a breather.
• Some top players begin each round by shooting their own men, except for one, which they pick up. This keeps mutants from developing, but it also means that the world explodes if you crash. It probably goes without saying that this can be considered an advanced trick…

Cheats
None known.

Easter eggs 
To see the designers credits, do the following while in game play:
Joystick down, reverse, 1 player start, thrust, reverse, 2 player start, fire, joystick down, 1 player start, thrust, and fire.

Bugs
A bug in the scoring occurs at 990,000 points which allows players to rack up enough ships to take a much needed break, since everything you shoot after this point earns you an extra ship.

The trick is to win 100+ ships between 990,000 and 1,000,000, thus fooling the game based on where score rolls over rather than where ships roll over. (more info)

Defender/Joust joystick rebuild kit (Mantis Amusements)

JROK FPGA-based Multi-williams board
4116 to 4164 RAM upgrade (link 1 | link 2 | link 3 | no-harness chip mod)

Link | Link | Link