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Utilizing Williams' advanced 16-colour video graphics hardware, Eugene Jarvis begins work on the project virtually by himself. After toying with colour variations Jarvis settles on the concept of a space game exhibiting plausible rules of physics, and comes up with the title Defender. He fleshes out the game by creating a planet surface, with mountainous terrain who's horizontal scrolling is staggered with a star field background to further enhance the feeling of velocity.
After creating a host of alien villains for players to shoot at, Jarvis now has something that could be a full videogame, but which still lacks that elusive play ingredient that would set his game apart from the others. With only two weeks till his deadline, the answer to the hole in Defender's game play strikes Jarvis while drifting off to sleep one night. The player will use his ship to defend his fellow humanoids from kidnapping by the aliens, and if he fails the two will merge into a mutant alien with increased powers. Play is further refined so that if players manage to shoot the kidnapping alien before it reaches the top of the screen with the human, he must then catch his charges in mid-air before they crash into the mountains below.
One of the most compelling aspects of the game is that events transpire elsewhere outside of the Defender's view - alien abductions usually occur off-screen, requiring the player to check a small radar scanner screen above the main playfield and race to the scene to rescue his comrade.
With gameplay now fully coalesced only a week before the prototype is to be demonstrated, practically the entire programming staff at Williams throws in with Jarvis to complete the project, including Williams pinball master Larry DeMar. Defender explodes into the arcades, rocketing up to the top of the sales charts, muscling for first place with Pac-Man and then Donkey Kong the following year. It is as far from the 'cutesy' phenomena forming in the arcades as you can get, a loud and brash macho shootfest.
Even in an arcade ringing with videogame bloops and bleeps, you can hear when someone drops a coin into the eardrum rattling Defender game. Audio cues include startup, ship materializing, lander pickup, and free man. Williams eventually sells around 60,000 Defender units. There are, of course, plenty of Defender imitators and knockoffs, and more than 5 million cartridge versions are sold of Atari's own immensely popular VCS Defender port.
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