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Extras: Game History, The Making of Defender, Trailers
The last Midway game I reviewed,
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance,
I said didn't need much explanation. Defender only does if you're not
a child of the 80s.
You were placed on a two-dimensional screen in a small, lengthy spaceship
going backwards and forwards across a barren landscape while bizarre aliens
of various green shades would grab humanoids from the land and carry them away.
You had to stop them before they reached the top of the screen and went mental,
and then catch the falling humanoid to save them and return them to the ground.
Of course, if you wanted to be a complete bastard you could try killing them
all while scooting along the ground, but only in a bid to see how long you
could survive once all the aliens went automatically mental. It was a game
that can still be bloody hard today.
Once thing I could never figure out - why did I always die after the third or
fourth hyperspace jump?
First of all, it's easy to see that the graphics are vastly improved over
the original arcade game now it's in 3D. The creator of the original states in
the DVD extras that there's as much memory used in a PC desktop icon as there
was for the whole of the original Defender game!
The enemies glow menacingly from a distance and explode nicely close-up, while
graphics general are crisp and sharp. The landscape is generally barren apart
from added buildings, but then this is the way it was meant to be. You can
easily swish about from side to side and arc round again to kill a baddie
you missed.
Sound FX are reasonable for what you'd expect from a PS2 game with the bonus
of including the game's original effects when you fire your weapons.
However, when all's said and done, this is largely just a flying around game,
like the original was, but in 3D and we've been here dozens of times before
including G-Police which, on its original release on the PSX, was
a fantastic experience to behold, but it's getting a little long in the tooth
now. I'd recommend a rental first and only buy if you think there's longevity
in it.
What I couldn't find on this disc was the original Defender - something
I was hoping for. I even searched on a good game cheats site,
Gamefaqs.com
but to no avail.
For those who want to track down the original, you'll have to download MAME
(Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) from
MAME.dk
and then search for the ROMs to play on it, but while you can only technically
download these if you legally own the originals (yeah, right!), tell me,
where else can you play them? There's hardly any decent arcades left with
games still working from the 80s.
For those who look beyond the game, this disc also has DVD-style extras.
First up are two brief featurettes lasting just a few minutes each. The first,
Game History, traces Defender back from its early roots and
includes comments from Eugene Jarvis, the original's programmer.
The Making of Defender shows how things progressed for the 2003 update.
Trailers are also included for three Midway games, Defender, Dr Muto
and Haven. It's interesting that the Defender trailer is ELSPA
rated 15+ while the game is only 11+. If this was a BBFC video/DVD rating, the
whole package would be a '15'. I don't see why it's rated that strongly though.
However, since the others are too - and the Dr Muto one tells you precious
little about the game and isn't in any way offensive - someone must've slipped
the rating in in error.
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ENJOYMENT
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First of all, it's easy to see that the graphics are vastly improved over
the original arcade game now it's in 3D. The creator of the original states in
the DVD extras that there's as much memory used in a PC desktop icon as there
was for the whole of the original Defender game!
However, when all's said and done, this is largely just a flying around game,
like the original was, but in 3D and we've been here dozens of times before
including G-Police which, on its original release on the PSX, was
a fantastic experience to behold, but it's getting a little long in the tooth
now. I'd recommend a rental first and only buy if you think there's longevity
in it.
For those who look beyond the game, this disc also has DVD-style extras.
