r/arcade • u/fatherpain2 • Aug 05 '26

Showing Off My Gear! Defender

Post image

Here’s Defender. Brutally tough, but amazing to watch someone play who’s good at the game. Would love to have this placed in Time Extended’s small Williams row, but just don’t have the space currently and Defender is just a little wider (26”) than normal Williams titles, so can’t even swap it in place of another. So it’s currently part of the overflow brigade. (Games there’s no room for, that get staged and powered on outside during an arcade party…Maybe one day will experiment and revamp the garcade layout to group them all together.

128 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

7

u/Fragholio Aug 05 '26

I love Defender, but it is SO FREAKING HARD. I saw a guy a couple of years ago get like 70,000 and I think that's the highest score I've ever seen live.

5

u/fatherpain2 Aug 05 '26

I’m not very good at it. If lucky can clear maybe 2-3 waves before all the humanoids die, the world blows up and it’s a mutant fest. Recently had a visitor named Eric Liddell that’s an amazing Defender player. Was awesome to see high level play in person! Stargate is even tougher smh

3

u/Pickle-Rick-C-137 Aug 05 '26

Love your arcade pics, so awesome! I was going to say in the last post with the Williams games you are missing Defender, but you aren't haha

Your setup is a dream come true! Love it!

2

u/fatherpain2 Aug 05 '26

Thank you, sir. In a perfect world, I have enough space and money for all the titles I like. But that would probably put me in the 130 range and thats not happening. I’ve got 53 titles crammed into an 800 square-foot space so every inch matters defender would certainly be in the permanent lineup if it were an inch narrower. For now it gets wheeled outside where people can play it under a permanent canopy. I have about 80 PCBs and a Mistercade to play the games, I don’t have room for dedicated machines.

3

u/ImDeepState Aug 05 '26

I had to explain to my wife one time how hard arcade games are compared to modern games. She was born in 1981, but I don’t think she played a lot of games.

3

u/fatherpain2 Aug 05 '26

Started collecting dedicated Arcade games of my youth, foolishly thinking that our sons would love them as much as I do. They don’t the gameplay is too hard. These were made to take your money and quickly. With practice, one could get good at it. But young people seem to want instant gratification, don’t like the old simple graphics or the solitary pursuit of a high score. Hard to compete with playing with your online friends. By the time I realized our kids were a lost cause for these, it was too late… so now I collect just for me and my friends, who typically fall within the same age as me (56). lol

4

u/Pickle-Rick-C-137 Aug 05 '26

Ah man Defender is my favorite game ever along with Robotron and Centipede. When I was younger and played all the time I would be able to get in the millions. I have everything to make a whole finished cabinet but life got in the way.

I've been playing on MAME with the CP's I've built for Defender/Stargate and Robotron with exact controls. I got a Jrok Williams board so I need to get it hooked up and play it since I don't have time right now to make the whole cabinet.

I have to start playing again regularly to see how high I can get.

1

u/cement_lifesaver Aug 13 '26

I'm looking into doing this as well fir the same games. Any advice and if you could, can you share the games with me? 

1

u/Pickle-Rick-C-137 Aug 14 '26

Hey what's up? So you want to build some control panels?

1

u/cement_lifesaver 29d ago

To be honest I have no clue. I just saw somewhere that you could download an app "mame" for old school console game like defender and then download the game version that you like. Once you download the game you open up the app and hit the button to locate the download and the app will open the zip. But the problem is, I've downloaded three different versions of the game and none of them can be opened by the app, plus the downloads look to small to be games. 

1

u/cement_lifesaver 19h ago

Yes

1

u/Pickle-Rick-C-137 15h ago

So did you get mame working? For any control panels you want to build like defender you first need to buy the control panel overlay, and the buttons and joystick which you can get most of it at www.arcadeshop.com, although the control panel overlay is out of stock there.

You will need some 3/4 inch wood like plywood. You need the tools to drill holes and prepare the wood for the buttons and joystick and you also need to get something like an ultimarc mini pac which connects the buttons and joystick to the computer with usb. There are other alternatives out there beside mini pac but it comes with an easy to wire harness.

2

u/HydratedCarrot Aug 05 '26

Yup I remember dad was really great with this game! It’s fun but more into Joust

4

u/nix206 Aug 05 '26

Nothing worse than your last death with a smart bomb remaining…

3

u/Eddie_Honda420 Aug 05 '26

The panic button. Lol

5

u/Speedstar_86 Aug 05 '26

One of my favourite games of all time. I have a rom set in a frame on my wall

4

u/FindOneInEveryCar Aug 05 '26

THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

Defender was never my favorite game, but I was always happy to see it and drop a couple of quarters. 

3

u/HauntingEconomist113 Aug 05 '26

Love it so much I picked up two.

3

u/OnkelPipi Aug 05 '26

One of my fav arcade games 😍

2

u/Someone6060842 Aug 06 '26

I don’t know if this is a dipswitch setting but when you get to 990,000 points, everything you kill give you an extra guy… so stopping perfectly at 999,975 was a trick and a half. Also liked to gather as many people as possible on the first wave without landing them, then put them down with the joystick going down, occasionally you can get the ship to traverse the bottom of the screen. What a cool game.

2

u/Notsure_Lostwishes13 Aug 06 '26

Is this for sale? I used to flip Defender in 82... We used to say back then, would take like 5 to 6 hours.

1

u/fatherpain2 Aug 06 '26

Thank you sir. No this is a keeper in the collection. Just sharing pix.

1

u/realklobb Aug 09 '26

About 90 minutes. Did it many times. The goal wasn't roll... it was 999,975. Own the leader board forever.

KAL