Tony's Arcade

Williams Defender. A game I loathed as a kid. This game ate my 1981 quarters just about as fast as Dragon’s Lair. Defender was not meant for a 9 year old’s reflexes, let alone 9 year old understanding! Nonetheless, this game was one of the biggest money makers in 1981 and beat Pac-Man to the title “Videogame of the Year” at the 1981 AMOA convention (Supercade, 2001). Playing Defender 25 years later I can see how it plain out rocks. You’d think Asteroids and Star Castle have enough controls with their 4 buttons but oh no… Defender has 4 buttons and an up/down joystick that you have to split between two hands. Not to mention a radar screen and a seemingly million things going on at once. In retrospect, I can see how Pac-Man appealed to all ages while Defender required adulthood as a prerequisite.

How I aquired this game is a story in itself as it was one of the best arcade deals I’ve ever made. I had a Q*bert that took me a year to restore. I ended up selling it on eBay to make some room and fund my other arcade projects. The guy I sold it to, Don, turned out to be one of the most honest guys I’ve delt with. Before Don bought the Q*bert, he asked if I could install a new monitor he would purchase after the auction. I said, “Of course.” Don has good memories of playing Q*bert as a kid. I am more than willing to help someone relive their childhood memories through video arcades! After he won the auction, I helped him pick out a horizontal monitor from Arcadeshop Amusments. I know, I know… Q*bert is a vertical game, right? Well, Arcadeshop recommended their horizontal monitor as they don’t have a vertical. They also recommended I retrofit the tube and video board into the Q*bert monitor’s chassis. That way I wouldn’t have problems mounting the monitor. It took me a couple of hours to get the new monitor in just right and calibrated. It came out great. Unfortunately, the new monitor’s video board had a hard time syncing the video with bootleg Q*bert board. I fortunately was able to fix the video sync problem and make the game look almost brand new.

Don had read my Rat-Shack DMM post and wouldn’t you know it… he works for a company that deals with DMMs. As thanks, he gave me these two DMMs that are like Cadillacs! Don also tipped me off to a Defender that was for sale near him that he saw on Craigslist. He offered to bring it up to me if I bought it. I contacted the seller of the Defender, made a good deal, and Don brought the Defender up to my house when he came to pick up the Q*bert. And that, my fellow readers, is what happens when you deal with good, honest people!

Back to the Defender. The overall condition of the cabinet is very good; a B+. It has the normal wear and tear of 25 years and the only really blemished component is the control panel. The game is complete and has all its electrical components. Look at the side art, man! The awesome Williams stenciling is all there. A total throwback to the spraypainted stencil artwork of the pinball and electromechanical games of the 1970s. The seller of the Defender was up front in saying that it worked intermittently. When I first plugged it in, the video was out of sync. No problem… I adjusted the video sync, only to find columns of lines across the screen. No matter what I did to try to remedy the lines, they stayed there. In my next post, I’ll discuss what I did to fix this problem.


Arcade Stats:
Manufacturer: Williams
Year Released: 1980
Cabinet: Upright
Monitor: 19-inch Horizontal Color Raster
Coin Counter: Missing
Tony's First Quarter: Norwich Ten Pin, Norwich, Connecticut
Tony's Arcade: No (August 2006 - March 2007)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Defender (1980). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.