But what about Defender?

One of the questions that we get asked quite regularly is where's Defender?

You can find our complete games list available on our website - Full Games list

Many people think that our standard 60 game machine would naturally have such a memorable classic game like Defender included. Or that upgrading to our larger game package with 516 will allow them to play the game.

It's a very valid question, the game was released in 1981, the same year as Frogger, Qix, Gorf, Galaga, Donkey Kong and many other classics of the era. So why is it not included? Is it an error?

Quite simply it's down to the era of the games, most games of the time were available in either an upright style, or a cocktail sit down arcade machine. The difference with Defender (shown in the picture above) is that the screen is rotated and played in a portrait orientation. If you look at the Pacman cocktail arcade machine below, this is played in a portrait screen, just like most of the other games of the time. 

Putting Defender on a machine with a portrait orientation like most of our standard cocktail arcade tables means that they playing area will be shrunk down, leaving "tram lines" at the top and bottom of the screen. They playing experience would be terrible. This is also true for other games of a similar era such as Asteroids, Track & Field and Joust to name a few that we get asked for.

You might be thinking that there must be a solution, and yes there is! We developed our Horizon retro cocktail arcade machine for this exact reason. As it packs in over 3000 retro arcade classics to choose from. Not only is Defender included on this machine, so is a huge range of other classics such as Pacman, Space Invaders, Street Fighter, Super Mario and MANY more besides.

The Horizon arcade also gives access to more modern classics, along with the ability to play with 2 players at the same time (where it was intended on the original game).