Defender

Model number 517 - Released December 1982

(Part 2 of article. Part 1 is here)

As I mentioned in part 1, I had taken delivery of a new set of Roms.  Leons test rom had indicated one PIA
was shot, but the rest of the CPU board was - hopefully - OK, so I replaced the PIA, installed the Roms, 
and connected everything up.  I turned the game on and....4814 in the player 1 display!   This is the 
system 7 version of the Adjust Failure / Factory Settings Restored message, indicating a faulty RAM or 
more usually dead batteries.  Or in this case no batteries at all!  Advancing through the adjustments past 
50 brought the machine into Game Over mode!  Success!  I posted a credit, but this not was accompanied by 
any sound, and pressing the sound board test button resulted in no sounds either.  So I borrowed (still to 
be replaced...) the sound board from the Barracorra, and pressed the start button.  Well, there was sound 
and features lamps and flippers, but not many other solenoids were working.

To test mode then:  Cycling through the coils, nothing from 1 to 11 was working.   Looking at the operators 
handbook, 1 to 10 had 2 different coils per transistor, and 11 was the ‘B+ Select Relay’.  Those familiar 
with system 11 or Data East know that on those games the first few transistors power either a coil or a 
flashlamp, with a further transistor switching the power circuit as necessary - this allows (say) 8 coils 
and 8 flashlamps from only 9 drivers.  I didn't realise that a similar arrangement was used on Defender 
(probably because there is only one flashlamp) but as it has 15 drop targets, all of which can be popped up 
individually, it should have been obvious that the standard board couldn't cope.

I found the Select relay under the top right of the playfield - or rather I found where it should have been, 
there were just 5 loose wires.  I found a relay board from another Williams game in my spares box, and it was 
fairly easy to work out which wires went where - although of course I got the 2 power circuits round the wrong 
way, so initially it tried to kick a ball into the shooter lane from the multiball release kicker...

Various other faults were identified and fixed - the 5 single drop targets didn't reset (another relay, plus 
the separate earth lead for these coils wasn't connected) the kickback didn't kick (someone had superglued the 
plunger to it's stop) one bumper didn't work (missing actuator) some of the drop target decals were getting 
loose and jamming the mechanisms (proper use of superglue this time!) most of the GI was out (burned plugs) 
various switches didn't work (dirt and poor adjustment) and various lamps were blown.

Fairly soon though, the game was brought to the state it's pretty much still in now - in need of re-rubbering, 
a proper clean and some fine tuning - but it could be played and so the big questions 'is it any good' and 'was 
it all worth it' could be answered!

But first a piece of background - the pinball was derived from the videogame, so for those of you who aren't 
familiar with the video here is a rough guide to the rules.

You pilot a spaceship flying over a landscape.  Along the bottom of the screen are 10 humanoids, and the object 
of the game is to defend (see!) them from aliens.   The main type of alien the Lander, at the start of each 
level 5 of these come into existence, then after a timed period 5 more, then a further 5.  When all 15 have been 
wiped out (plus any other types of alien present on that wave), the wave is completed and it starts over again, 
only faster!

Initially the Landers aren't very dangerous, only firing at you if you get too close.  If left for too long though, 
they drift towards the bottom of the screen and pick up a humanoid, which they then attempt to take to the top of 
the screen - if allowed to do this they become Mutants, which home in on you and will kill you unless you very 
quickly kill them first!  

While the game is a lot more complicated than that (there are several other types of alien such as Pods, Swarmers 
and Bombers that all behave in different ways) the above gives you the gist of what you have to do.  The famously 
complicated control panel has an up-down joystick, and buttons for thrust, reverse, hyperspace and smart bomb and 
if you got the hang of it, it was possible for very good players to play pretty much constantly - there was no end 
to the game as such.

So rather than just use the Defender name on the pinball, Williams attempted to follow the rules to truly make a 
pinball version of the videogame.  

You start off with 10 humanoid lights, which make up your bonus score (with humanoid multiplier and bonus multiplier) 
and the 2 banks of 5 drop targets are the Lander targets, individually popping up to a total of 15 for each wave.  
At the start of the ball 5 appear, then 5 more, then 5 more again (as long as you have got at least 5 down by then, 
for example if only 4 targets are down it can only pop up 4, then as soon as another is knocked down it will pop up 
the 5th.

If any given target if left for too long it picks up a humanoid and starts to flash.  You can rescue the humanoid by 
hitting the target, but if you don't it will turn into a Mutant.  The target drops and the Mutant stand-up behind it 
lights - but it doesn't stay put, it randomly moves around the Mutant targets (one behind each Lander target) making 
it more difficult to hit - and any lit Mutant targets need to be hit before the wave can be completed.   Then, like 
the video, it all happens again only faster.

A quick scan of the rest of the playfield.  The plunger delivers the ball to the top right, where there are 4 Bomber 
roll-overs - lighting all these (with lane change) advances the bonus multiplier and lights the 'Reverse' kickback on 
the left outlane.  The kickback is player controlled by a second flipper button on the left of the cabinet and it's 
quite difficult to judge properly, which can be very annoying if you lose the ball!  Below the rollovers are 2 pop 
bumpers, to their right is the entrance to the multiball lock lane.  This lane is sometimes guarded by a Blocker drop 
target, but usually is free for a shot from the top left flipper (above the left drop target bank) so multiball is 
fairly easy to achieve - it's started by either locking all 3 balls, or locking 1 or 2 balls and hitting the top left 
stand-up target.  This target is at the end of a short lane at the top left of the playfield, behind 2 in-line Pod drop 
targets.  The Pod targets light the Swarmer stand-ups on the right of the playfield above the right drop target bank 
and below the multi ball lane, hitting these the requisite number of times (randomly set between 1 and 4) for both Pod 
targets opens the ball return gate on the right outlane.

What else - well there are 3 Blocker drop targets, which start to pop up if you take too long to complete a wave.  As 
mentioned one guards the multi ball lane, but the other two are free standing in the centre of the playfield, the idea 
is to make it more difficult to get at the Lander targets and so complete the wave.  Also you have 3 smart bombs at the 
start of the game, and an extra one (to a maximum of 3 so you may as well use one on the first wave) for each odd 
numbered wave completed.  These are activated by a second flipper button on the right of the cabinet, and will destroy 
all standing Lander targets.  There are various other parts to the rules, completing waves increases the humanoid 
multiplier, after 5 waves you get an extra ball and after each 10th wave any killed humanoids are returned to you.  
Each humanoid is worth 1K times humanoid multiplier (up to 5x) times bonus multiplier (up to 10x) so up to 500K per 
ball - worth guarding!  When bonus multiplier gets to 10x it resets for the next ball though, so it’s tricky to get 
that more than once per game.

But is it any good?   My experience is that if a casual player has a game on my Defender and a game on my Firepower 
it's the Firepower they always want to play again.  I think Defender is an excellent game, but at the same time I 
think I can see why it failed in the arcades - it lacks immediate appeal.

Let me explain.  When I had my first game it's possible I was expecting too much - pressing the start button resulted 
in the fantastic game start sound (and if you don't know what that sounds like, go to Mame or PinMame immediately!) 
and the ball being deposited to the plunger, and I was really looking forward to the game.  A few minutes later the 3rd 
ball had drained, and my thoughts on the game can be summed up as:  Hmmmm.

It has an open playfield, and that combined with no loop shots (or even a triangle of 3 pop bumpers) can lead to a lack 
of speed, with the ball just rolling aimlessly about.  And why can I actually hear the ball rolling aimlessly about?  
No background sound (the video didn't have any) which comes as a surprise if you haven't played an EM or '70's 
electronic game in a while.   The Lander targets appear only slowly at first, and picking up humanoids and turning into 
Mutants happens slowly too giving no sense of urgency (and anyway, unlike the video the Mutants won't actually kill you) 
and finally, why is there no sound or points award at all for unlit Mutant or Swarmer targets?

After all the hassle and years of waiting, however, there must be more too it than that.  So I played it some more and 
it began to grow on me - the sound effects (lack of background sound notwithstanding) are excellent, the accuracy and 
planning needed to complete each wave rewarding, and multiball at least added some pace and urgency.  But still not a 
world-beater.

Then I had my first really decent game, got to about the 7th wave, and it all started to make sense!  Everything gets 
much, much faster, barely have 5 Landers popped up than the next 5 come along, turning to Mutants almost before you've 
had a chance to get them and the Blockers are almost constantly popping up to frustrate your attempts to clear the wave.  
Avoiding Mutants suddenly does become urgent, as each humanoid lost is costing you a potential 50,000 points per ball.  
Judicious use of the smart bombs suddenly becomes much more important, the ball likes the right outlane far too much so 
you desperately try to get the ball return gate open, multiball is manic but by this stage a really good way to keep the 
Landers in check - and you only get about a one second gap between clearing one wave and the next one starting...

Now it IS a world-beater, and it WAS definitely all worth it - thank God for that!

But, my view is that there is just not enough to make the casual player (who probably hasn't read the rules anyway) try 
again, meaning little money was taken in the arcades, and few games produced.   I think that adding a 3rd pop bumper 
(which admittedly would have needed some reworking of the design at the top of the playfield) would have made a big 
difference in appeal as speed would have been added to the game from the start - but that's just my view, and maybe it 
was just the launch date that killed it before it even had a chance.

Anyway, whatever the reason the low production run really is a shame, as when you have it at home and can persevere you 
discover that it can be a different, exciting, difficult and extremely rewarding game.

---Update:

You know the saying that things always happen in threes?  For a while I owned a third Defender, so that was 
(almost) 1% of all Defenders ever made!  It was in *really* poor condition, so I sold it on quite quickly - and I have 
also now sold the second of the two original games to someone who has the time to put in the work necessary to get it 
back to A1 condition, so I'm down to just the one.  I won't be selling that one though!