Defender's two-way lever and five-button configuration made it a complicated game back in 1980.

Eugene Jarvis

Defender was the first of many games that legendary game designer Eugene Jarvis had his hands in. After that, he went on to form an independent game design company with fellow Williams alum Larry DeMar. The company, called Vid Kidz, went on to develop Defender's sequel, Stargate, and the amazing dual-joystick shooter Robotron: 2084. Both were published and distributed by Williams, which, after several mergers and name changes, currently goes by the name Midway. Defender has since been released on several home platforms, both as ports and as emulations of the arcade classic, but none of them seem to have truly captured the action that the arcade machine's button layout provided.

More recently, Jarvis was behind Midway's driving game, Cruis'n USA. He's since founded a new company called Raw Thrills, which is currently working on an arcade game called Target: Terror.

Defender's rough enemies kept the game challenging even after you had mastered the controls.

Originally released in arcades back in 1980, the space shooter known as Defender was no joke. This notoriously difficult game was a tough sell when it first debuted at a trade show. Its joystick and five buttons were quite intimidating when compared to the other, simpler fare of the time, and the game's intense learning curve collided head-on with its fast-paced gameplay and aggressive enemies. But despite arcade operators initially turning a cold shoulder on the company now known as Midway, Defender would eventually go on to spawn numerous home versions, a sequel called Stargate, and a song of its own on Buckner & Garcia's now-classic ode to video games, Pac-Man Fever. On top of all that, Defender is one of the highest-grossing video games of the era, with more than a billion dollars in profits, thus putting it on the same level as Pac-Man.

That's a lot of quarters.

As with most true classics, Defender's gameplay is deceptively simple. You're put in control of a spaceship and are charged with defending Earth from an alien invasion. The aliens come in waves, and relatively docile Landers jet around the landscape, looking for humanoids to abduct. Landers attempt to escape with the humanoids, giving you time for a last-minute rescue, but should they reach the top of the screen, they burst into action in their new, painfully aggressive mutant form. However, landers and mutants aren't the only thing cooking. You also have to contend with bombers, which drop tiny mines in your path as they fly. Pods look like easy kills, but popping one with your laser causes it to explode into a cloud of small, fast-moving swarmers. Rounding out the bunch is the baiter, which warps in when the game thinks you're taking too long to clear a level. The evil baiter is faster than you are and gives chase quite well, thus making it tough to shake. Add to this the way the game's difficulty ramps up as you proceed, and you'll find that keeping your 10 humanoids safe from danger is a challenging task, indeed.

With its many innovations, it's easy to see why Defender holds up so well today. It was among the first games to take place on multiple screens, allowing events to take place that weren't in the player's immediate view. This kept you looking at your radar scanner while you also attempted to blast everything in the vicinity just to stay alive. That's early-80s arcade action at its best, right there.

Defender is more game than I could handle back in 1980. At age 5, I just hadn't developed the wicked motor skills required to handle Defender's controls. But that certainly didn't stop me from trying. I played it as often as I possibly could, and--slowly but surely--my skills started to improve. I quickly went from being a kid who fumbled for the reverse button and lost all his lives on the first wave to a kid who made it to the fifth wave. And then the sixth. And so on. By the time the sequel, Stargate, was released, I felt like a seasoned pro...even if I did have to stand on a milk crate just to see what the heck I was doing.