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Dom Robinson reviews
Midway 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: No
- 60Hz: No
- DTS sound: No
- Extras: Game History, The Making of Defender, Trailers
The last Midway game I reviewed,Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance,I said didn’t need much explanation. Defender only does if you’re nota child of the 80s.
You were placed on a two-dimensional screen in a small, lengthy spaceshipgoing backwards and forwards across a barren landscape while bizarre aliensof various green shades would grab humanoids from the land and carry them away.You had to stop them before they reached the top of the screen and went mental,and then catch the falling humanoid to save them and return them to the ground.Of course, if you wanted to be a complete bastard you could try killing themall while scooting along the ground, but only in a bid to see how long youcould survive once all the aliens went automatically mental. It was a gamethat can still be bloody hard today.
Once thing I could never figure out – why did I always die after the third orfourth hyperspace jump?
First of all, it’s easy to see that the graphics are vastly improved overthe original arcade game now it’s in 3D. The creator of the original states inthe DVD extras that there’s as much memory used in a PC desktop icon as therewas for the whole of the original Defender game!
The enemies glow menacingly from a distance and explode nicely close-up, whilegraphics general are crisp and sharp. The landscape is generally barren apartfrom added buildings, but then this is the way it was meant to be. You caneasily swish about from side to side and arc round again to kill a baddieyou missed.
Sound FX are reasonable for what you’d expect from a PS2 game with the bonusof including the game’s original effects when you fire your weapons.
However, when all’s said and done, this is largely just a flying around game,like the original was, but in 3D and we’ve been here dozens of times beforeincluding G-Police which, on its original release on the PSX, wasa fantastic experience to behold, but it’s getting a little long in the toothnow. I’d recommend a rental first and only buy if you think there’s longevityin it.
What I couldn’t find on this disc was the original Defender – somethingI was hoping for. I even searched on a good game cheats site,Gamefaqs.combut to no avail.
For those who want to track down the original, you’ll have to download MAME(Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) fromMAME.dkand then search for the ROMs to play on it, but while you can only technicallydownload these if you legally own the originals (yeah, right!), tell me,where else can you play them? There’s hardly any decent arcades left withgames still working from the 80s.
For those who look beyond the game, this disc also has DVD-style extras.
First up are two brief featurettes lasting just a few minutes each. The first,Game History, traces Defender back from its early roots andincludes comments from Eugene Jarvis, the original’s programmer.The Making of Defender shows how things progressed for the 2003 update.
Trailers are also included for three Midway games, Defender, Dr Mutoand Haven. It’s interesting that the Defender trailer is ELSPArated 15+ while the game is only 11+. If this was a BBFC video/DVD rating, thewhole package would be a ’15’. I don’t see why it’s rated that strongly though.However, since the others are too – and the Dr Muto one tells you preciouslittle about the game and isn’t in any way offensive – someone must’ve slippedthe rating in in error.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.