Rich & Chris Plays Episode 3: Defender

"Defender is one of the classics really, in some ways its the grandaddy of most modern shoot-em-ups in general and I'm thankful for it. The game play is unique for its time, as well as being addictive with you swooping it to catch falling people at the last moment."

"Another classic game, Defender was one of the very earliest scrolling shoot-em-ups, and one of the first scrolling games in general available in the home. Game play has quite a few elements for the time, other than the shooting action you've got momentum for the ship, and you've also got to keep track of the aliens as they try to pick people up, making sure to shoot them and rescue their falling captives. The arcade game was certainly better, having superior controls and somewhat more hectic game play, and later 2600 games like Chopper Command would end up showing it up somewhat, but at the time this was a fair representation of the game when there was nothing else like it in the home"