Aliens abducting humans and it is just you and your spaceship.
Gameplay for this game is a little different since the game was modeled after it arcade version. The joy stick was used to maneuver your spaceship forward, backwards, up and down. The red button was the fire button for your laser. Also the fire button could be used to perform other tasks to be explained later.
Like the arcade game your mission was to blast the aliens as they appeared. If one of them grabbed a humanoid it was your job to to rescue the humanoid. You also had smart bombs at your disposal. Smart bombs could clear and entire screen of aliens in your current view and leave everything else. To use smart bombs you just maneuvered your ship towards the bottom of the screen until it disappeared. Then press the fire button to set off a smart bomb. Also at your disposal was the ability to use hyperspace and get out of an area that there are just too many aliens to handle from your current position. To do this you just maneuvered your ship to the top of the screen until your ship disappeared. Then press the fire button to activate your hyperspace drive.
Graphics even the Atari graphics for this game was not bad. The arcade game was a bit blocky so the port of to the Atari was not that hard of an adjustment.
Sound all the arcades sounds were with this game.
Value if you frequented an arcade when this game was originally released. Owning it was must so you could improve your skills. Plus not too mention owning the game helped to decrease the amount of quarters you would feed the arcade machines. The game was also a 2 player game however this was done in turn.
Tilt: Defender old school style to this day still amuses me. The simplicity of this sidescroller is just amazing. Each level would start off easy and progress towards hard. Owning this game on my Atari was great but it also had it's downside too. Story time!
After I had got this game. One Saturday morning I got up nice and early just before my cartoons started and tossed this game in my Atari and fired it up. Well less then 5 minutes in to the game I got yelled at by my parents telling me to turn the game off and go back to bed it was too early. The downside to this game was you really need the sound to fully enjoy the game. But playing the game at 5 in the morning on a Saturday your parents can sleep in on. Will get you into some trouble.