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The original source for the 1981 masterpiece “Defender” is now on GitHub

43 points by guiambros 5y ago

jcims 5y ago
This was my dads favorite video game by far. Any time we went to the arcade I’d find him with a stack of quarters at Defender. He played at such a fast pace I couldn’t even see what was happening, it seemed superhuman lol.
dang 5y ago
Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27814341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27814341 - July 2021 (77 comments)
kabdib 5y ago
In the early 80s I worked at Atari in a small group doing "arcade conversion" cartridges for Atari's line of home computers. I've written about this elsewhere (not going to pimp my blog), but all this really meant was that Atari's marketing folks negotiated a license deal . . . and that was it. No technical help at all. No listings, no talking to the development team, nothing -- we just played the game a lot, got good at it, and did our own interpretation (usually it had to fit on a 16K cartridge). While I probably would have killed for listings like this for the titles I worked on (Defender wasn't one of them, btw), it's quite possible that not having the technical help meant that we wound up doing a better job on our versions because we had to get a good feel for the original one.
wicket 5y ago
> The source code can be assembled into an executable that you can then run in Windows or Linux. Where can I find the 6809 ports of Windows and Linux, or am I missing something?
- jedberg 5y ago
  I don't think there is a 6809 port of Windows/Linux, but you can compile it into an executable that is the ROM and emulator put together. You can also find the original executable the files were extracted from here: https://github.com/mwenge/defender/blob/3363040ada69f54e304b1d68a5b9919cef4ce2aa/orig/WilliamsArcadeClassics/DEFENDER.EXE https://github.com/mwenge/defender/blob/3363040ada69f54e304b...
- buzzert 5y ago
  Using MAME > Once you've built defender you can now use the rom files in the `redlabel' directory to play defender on MAME. If you're on Ubuntu you can also install MAME with apt: > sudo apt install mame
  - wicket 5y ago
    Assembling something to run under an emulator is not really the same thing. The post then says: > You can also assemble it into the 11 rom files that would have been loaded onto the arcade cabinet’s ROM board. If I wanted to run this on an emulator, surely the assembled code would be identical, but the use of the word "also" suggests they are doing something else here.

43 points by guiambros 5y ago

This was my dads favorite video game by far. Any time we went to the arcade I’d find him with a stack of quarters at Defender. He played at such a fast pace I couldn’t even see what was happening, it seemed superhuman lol.

dang 5y ago

Defender (1981) by Eugene Jarvis and Sam Dicker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27814341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27814341 - July 2021 (77 comments)

kabdib 5y ago

In the early 80s I worked at Atari in a small group doing "arcade conversion" cartridges for Atari's line of home computers. I've written about this elsewhere (not going to pimp my blog), but all this really meant was that Atari's marketing folks negotiated a license deal . . . and that was it. No technical help at all. No listings, no talking to the development team, nothing -- we just played the game a lot, got good at it, and did our own interpretation (usually it had to fit on a 16K cartridge). While I probably would have killed for listings like this for the titles I worked on (Defender wasn't one of them, btw), it's quite possible that not having the technical help meant that we wound up doing a better job on our versions because we had to get a good feel for the original one.

wicket 5y ago

> The source code can be assembled into an executable that you can then run in Windows or Linux. Where can I find the 6809 ports of Windows and Linux, or am I missing something?

jedberg 5y ago
I don't think there is a 6809 port of Windows/Linux, but you can compile it into an executable that is the ROM and emulator put together. You can also find the original executable the files were extracted from here: https://github.com/mwenge/defender/blob/3363040ada69f54e304b1d68a5b9919cef4ce2aa/orig/WilliamsArcadeClassics/DEFENDER.EXE https://github.com/mwenge/defender/blob/3363040ada69f54e304b...
buzzert 5y ago
Using MAME > Once you've built defender you can now use the rom files in the `redlabel' directory to play defender on MAME. If you're on Ubuntu you can also install MAME with apt: > sudo apt install mame
- wicket 5y ago
  Assembling something to run under an emulator is not really the same thing. The post then says: > You can also assemble it into the 11 rom files that would have been loaded onto the arcade cabinet’s ROM board. If I wanted to run this on an emulator, surely the assembled code would be identical, but the use of the word "also" suggests they are doing something else here.