THE INSIDE STORY ON DEFENDER II

A video game that doesn't kick your ass the first time you play it isn't doing its job.

How's that for a programming philosophy? "People are basically kind of masochistic," says Eugene Jarvis. "They want to have their butt totally kicked so they can get revenge." Instigating a cycle of vengeance keeps quarters flowing in the arcade and Defender had opened a floodgate of quarters. Logically, the game begged for a sequel.

Like a brilliant student film, Defender was a rushed and exploratory first effort that sparkled with ingenuity and excitement. A sequel to Defender meant the opportunity to hit the big time, using more resources and the lessons they'd learned on Defender to deliver a superior game. The market salivated for it and Williams poised itself to deliver another blockbuster.

But first, they would have to strike an agreement with the game's creators. In February 1981, Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar had formed their own development group called Vid Kidz (clip #1).

Other companies were hot to get a hold of the two designers who had worked the Defender miracle; however, Jarvis and DeMar were not interested in working with anyone else and almost immediately entered into an exclusive agreement to independently develop games for Williams. Their first project was a sequel to Defender.

The basic challenge of programming a sequel to Defender was to keep the basic principles of the game, while making it difficult enough to challenge experienced Defender players (clip #2). The original version of Defender, the one that never made it to the arcades, only went to wave five. The final version kept repeating waves after it turned over at one million points. Everyone was sure that each wave beyond five was complete overkill. They would never make that mistake again.

The stargate, a vortex where a ship carrying four men could warp ahead four levels provided the new challenge (clip #3). The game included a host of new enemies and a new color palette. To accommodate new features, expanded program memory was created "by making the screen RAM write only, and the program ROM read only, thereby creating an overlap that doubled the memory to 128K" according to Jarvis.

The game shipped in late 1981 and sold approximately 26,000 units (about twice the number of units necessary to be considered a hit today) but still less than half of what Defender sold. Jarvis was disappointed. He felt Defender II was superior in every respect to Defender. Perhaps it was just too good. The game may have beat people into submission more often than it enraged them to come back for more.

Defender II was originally called Stargate. The name was changed right after the game had stopped being manufactured, because Williams wanted to make sure they could own the trademark on the title. No games with "Defender II" marquees were ever shipped to arcades, but from then on that's what the sequel to Defender has been known as. A home version of the game was released for the Atari 2600 and was to have had the original title. Williams programmers ended up having to create the Defender II title screen for it themselves when the project got caught up in a change of regimes at Atari.

Few people knew that the programmers had hidden an Easter egg in the game, one that can still be found in the Digital Eclipse home version. Like in Robotron, a secret control combination causes the programmer's names to appear. For Defender II, that formula consists of three sequences of buttons, that all must be completed within a quarter of a second of each other, without the player dying onscreen. The moves are as follows: 1) joystick down, reverse, 1 player start, and thrust; 2) reverse, 2 player start, and fire, and 3) joystick down, one player start, thrust, and fire.

Defender II was the game Digital Eclipse used to test its emulation technology (which simulates the Motorola 6809 chip). They perfected a method that allowed the actual arcade code to be run on a desktop computer. Out of the blue, they approached Williams and set up a meeting. Larry Demar was there and he couldn't believe it (clip #4).

There's one big problem with trying make reprogrammed imitations of classic videos games; some of the best features were bugs. Other companies have found this out the hard way with reprogrammed "classics" that fall well short of the originals. Many great sound effects from classic games were complete program bugs that were too cool to be eliminated. Defender, like Joust, has a bug that turned into an integral part of the game's strategy. A breakdown in the flight algorithm for the Mutants causes them to run away from you instead of towards you when they reach a certain line in the scrolling landscape. Great players use this as a key advantage in the game. A reprogrammed version of the game would have "fixed" that bug.

Classic video game enthusiasts want nothing short of the real deal -- the games they know and love correct right down to the last pixel. Digital Eclipse and Williams have delivered. Most of the original programmers have been surprised that anyone cares. To them the classic 'cade revival has come out of nowhere (clip #5). But to game players who grew up in arcades, who spent their allowance, paper route money, and every quarter they could beg, borrow and steal, these new home versions are an opportunity to get their asses kicked all over again.




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