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Defender
to Chopper Command
By
Trenton Ray
Rock
singer Layne Staley, from the band Alice in
Chains said it best. Quoting him from a song
entitled Over Now, "Yeah, it's over now,
but I can see somehow". This is a great
description of others' and my first impressions
of Atari's Defender. How could Atari ruin something
like Defender, you ask? Remember Pac-Man? Atari
made some pretty lousy coin-op conversions.
The graphics are understandably not arcade-perfect,
but the 2600 was capable of a lot more than
the primitive Defender graphics. One thing that
brought the game down even more was the ungodly
amount of flicker. You can't tell from the screen-shot
(We can simulate Blink-o-Vision with an animated GIF - Ed), but there
was so much flicker in Defender that when you
shot, your ship momentarily disappeared. Playing
Defender was like blinking really fast and trying
to avoid a seizure all in one. Compare the graphics
yourself.
![[Screen-shot: Original Defender]](images/defender.gif)
![[Screen-shot: VCS2600 Defender]](images/vcsdefen.gif)
The
graphics were just one difference. The Atari
2600 had a one-button joystick, while Defender
was famous for its (at the time) dumbfounding
array of controls. Consider the differences
between a one-button, eight-directional joystick
to a vertical control stick, a thrust and reverse
button, a fire button, a hyperspace button,
and a smart bomb button. There had to have been
some amount of change in the conversion, but
the changes used are amazingly detrimental to
the game. Take this for example: To fire a smart
bomb, you have to fly all the way to the bottom
of the screen, and press the fire button. When
you are in the midst of heated battle, you don't
always have time to fly down to the bottom of
the screen and press the fire button. Yet again,
this is a totally obnoxious feature.
Many
upon many people bought Defender, only to let
it collect dust. Activision must have known
how much potential there was for a good Defender
game, but was squandered by Atari's horrible
conversion. Bob Whitehead, creator of many Atari
classics (including Boxing, Stampede, and Skiing),
decided to try to re-do Defender. The only problem
was that, well, Atari owned the home rights
to Defender. So Bob made a game named Chopper
Command. Instead of aliens, you shoot enemy
helicopters, and instead of protecing humans,
you protect a convoy of cargo trucks. There
is even a touch of drift, something Atari's
Defender didn't have at all. The only thing
missing out of this is the bombs and hyperspace,
but how many helicopters do you know that have
hyperspace? The UN sure would kill for one of
those! With quick, flicker-free gameplay, beautiful
graphics, and controls that actually are useable,
no Atari fan should be without a copy of Chopper
Command. One of the most loved Atari games,
spawned from one of the most despised.
trenton@myatari.co.uk
![[Screen-shot: Chopper Command]](images/chopcomm.gif)
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