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HSC Season 6 Week 1: Defender


Ze_ro

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Important Note: This weeks contest is over and no further scores will be accepted.

 

Aliens from a distant solar system are swarming over the planet Humanis. They're kidnapping Humanoids and mutating them into a permanent part of the alien force. Their mission is to transform all of the Humanoids before destroying the entire planet.

 

First, they infest the planet with Landers which close in on the cities, abducting the Humanoids. Then the attack intensifies. Baiters, Swarmers, and Bombers terrorize the skies. And then, when you least expect it, a deadly Pod collides with your Spaceship, and blasts you to pieces.

 

As Captain of the Spaceship Defender, your mission is to destroy the alien force and save the Humanoids. Your speed and skill have earned you this heroic mission. When Humanoids are abducted, you'll have to destroy the Lander and catch the falling Humanoid before safely returning him to the city below.

 

s_Defender_2.png

 

Game Information
  • Game Name: Defender
  • Released By: Atari, 1981
  • Left Difficulty: B / Novice - Faster Movement
  • Right Difficulty: N / A
  • Game Mode: Game 4 - Start at Wave 3
  • Chosen By: Ze_ro

Post your scores right here in this thread, and I will add them to the list. Remember to play the game with the recommended game mode and difficulty settings as shown above so that your scores will be consistent with everyone elses. The deadline for posting scores is Wednesday September 10th at 1:00 AM (CST).

 

Current High Scores
  1. 999,990 (Deteacher) [+11]
    999,990 (DarthCalvin) [+11]
    999,990 (homerwannabee) [+11]
    999,990 (SpiceWare) [+11]
    999,990 (toymailman) [+11]
    999,990 (darthkur) [+11]
  2. 390,400 (Mister VCS) [+10]
  3. 388,150 (Impaler_26) [+9]
  4. 293,700 (jjd) [+8]
  5. 288,600 (chuckwalla) [+7]
  6. 173,380 (maf) [+6]
  7. 107,550 (aftermac) [+5]
  8. 98,550 (Kurt_Woloch) [+4]
  9. 46,500 (LarcenTyler) [+3]
  10. 26,800 (LoneWolfSeth) [+2]

Best Tips
  • Kurt_Woloch [+2]

Challenges
  • None yet

TwinGalaxies Top 3
  1. 5,443,150 (Frankie Cardulla)
  2. 4,717,580 (Ed Semrad)
  3. 4,183,500 (Charles OwnJr.)
(Game 1, Difficulty A)
Current Standings





  1. None!





 

Scoring Points in Defender
  • Pod - 1000 points
  • Swarmer - 500 points
  • Bomber - 250 points
  • Baiter - 200 points
  • Lander - 150 points
  • Mutant - 150 points
  • Humanoid Rescue Mission - 150 for Lander Plus:
    • Falls from Lander and lives - 250 points
    • Caught but not brought back - 500 points
    • Caught and brought back - 1000 points
    • Bonus: Each Humanoid alive at end of wave - 100 points

  • Every 10,000 points, you can earn an additional Defender life and smart bomb. There is no limit to the number of lives and bombs you can earn, but only three lives and three bombs can appear on the television screen at one time.

 

Hints and Tips
  • LISTEN TO THE SOUNDS - DEFENDER sounds are important to you and a life-and-death matter to the Humanoids. A high-pitched "chatter" like an excited chipmunk is a Humanoids's cry for help. When you hear it, immediately go to the rescue. If you let a Humanoid free-fall to earth and hear "crash" or "crunch" instead of a short happy tune, you know that you Humanoid crash-landed and you did not score 250 bonus points. You don't even have to look at the score counter.
  • USE THE SCANNER - Practice using the Scanner to find out where Aliens are coming from, which Humanoid is being kidnapped, and which Humanoids remain to be defended. the Scanner is an important strategic element in any game. When you learn to rely on it, it will help you improve your score. See USING THE SCANNER and RESCUING HUMANOIDS in GAME PLAY for help in reading the Scanner.
  • SPEED IS IMPORTANT - Keep Defender moving forward at the highest speed you can manage without losing control. Remember that a moving target is harder to hit.
  • SUDDEN REVERSALS - Reversing direction suddenly is a good ploy. It confuses Aliens and stops them in their tracks. In the instant it takes an Alien to recover, you can get Defender into a strategic position, reverse again, and blast the Alien with your laser missiles.
  • SMART BOMBS - If you don't want to let loose a lot of Swarmers at the start of a wave, use smart bombs instead of laser missiles to destroy Pods. But use the bombs sparingly. You may need one to save a Humanoid in the nick of time, or to blast enough aliens to cross a 10,000 point boundary and win another life and smart bomb.
  • CATCH AND CARRY - If you are in a fast wave, catch and carry a Humanoid. Remember that a Lander can't pick up another Humanoid while Defender is holding one. A good strategy in the later waves is to wait until you've destroyed all but one Alien before you set the Humanoid down.
The Manual
As always, you really should read the manual. In case you don't have the manual, AtariAge has a typed copy available online. Here are the hints the manual provides:
Deteacher
After wave 99, it goes to wave 0 and the game goes back to the beginning speed. Good way to rack up a few extra lives/bombs.

I play by having my ship on the right side, flying to the left. It just seems easier to me. When the earth blows up, mutants don't sneak up behind you when you're flying to the left.

My strategy is to save the swarmers until last, then blow them up with a smart bomb. They're harmless if you don't shoot them, so save them for last.

Finally, if you're not concerned about the earth blowing up, you can take a break by hiding below the skyline. The game will start cycling colors after awhile, but moving the joystick will stop that.
Kurt_Woloch
One tip I haven't seen yet is that when you've got only one humanoid left, you shoud stop travelling all across the planet surface and rather stay directly above the humanoid, shooting everything reaching you from the left and right. That way, no lander will be able to capture that last humanoid. And once they have one, at least in the later waves, it gets very hard to recover it, since the landers ascend with their victim at the same speed as you do, so if you're below them, you won't be able to catch up!

Beating the mutant waves... well... for me it works like this: At the start of the wave, you'll typically be attacked by a mutant from the right, which you should shoot right away. After that, each time they start homing in on you, just reverse your ship... that will stop them and enable you to get one or multiple ones into your line of fire before they attack again. Alternatively, you can also fly below or above the screen and either activate hyperspace (which will put you at your start position with another humanoid attacking from the right) or reverse direction while you're above the surface, and then come up again. Howver, there's no guarantee for success!
homerwannabee
Only defend one man from attack and always keep guard on that one man. Do not move your ship while guarding this man. Let the enemy come to you. Also it is best to have the ship facing west or towards the left of the screen.
toymailman
I actually welcome the mutant waves. They are essentially free points if you know how to do it. My strategy is to first fly to the right and shoot a few. Then turn the ship around. However, don't fly left just face left. Move the ship up and down to blast the mutants. They never come at you very face if you're not flying, and they seem to fly right into your line of fire.

 

--Zero

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If you want to join in, and it's your first time, all you have to do is post a score. That's it! You don't have to contact me or anything like that. Post a score, I'll add it to the list, and you'll be on the roster for the rest of the season. Play as many or as few of the games as you want! Enjoy!

 

--Zero

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Just rolled the score. It rolled on wave 166 for me. The first pic was right before rolling...the second shows the score and the wave number.

 

After wave 99, it goes to wave 0 and the game goes back to the beginning speed. Good way to rack up a few extra lives/bombs.

 

My tips: I play by having my ship on the right side, flying to the left. It just seems easier to me. When the earth blows up, mutants don't sneak up behind you when you're flying to the left.

 

My strategy is to save the swarmers until last, then blow them up with a smart bomb. They're harmless if you don't shoot them, so save them for last.

 

Finally, if you're not concerned about the earth blowing up, you can take a break by hiding below the skyline. The game will start cycling colors after awhile, but moving the joystick will stop that.

post-9712-1220487143_thumb.jpg

post-9712-1220487150_thumb.jpg

Edited by Deteacher
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OK, haven't played this yet, but it occured to me that Deteacher did NOT roll the score. Rolling it would mean that it starts at the beginning score again, but in fact, it does not... instead, it shows trailing zeroes after the score has been "rolled", so you can see by the zeroes that there's a 7th digit which doesn't get displayed.

Therefore, I'd propose that we don't set 999990 as the maximum here, instead we should set it to 1099990 (100.000 points more) because that's the maximum that can be distinguished from the not-rolled score. In this case, 1099990 would be displayed as 099990, while 99990 would be just 99990 without the trailing zero. From 1100000 on, the 6 digits should be the same again, so THAT should actually be considered "rolling" the score, although you don't start at 0 this way.

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OK, I've played it now, and here's my best so far... 74350. I must say that the 2600 version was the first one I ever played (back then I was going to school, and we used to swap Atari cartridges in class for some days... and one classmate had this game and swapped it against my Sea Monster cartridge). After that I played various other versions and clones of it and forgot what was different about the 2600 version... and of course, there are a lots of differences. Other than the obvious ones in the graphics, the enemies also behave differently. For instance, there always seems to be only a few large groups of enemies which always move right and left synchronously, such as most of the landers, and all of the mutants in the mutant waves. Therefore, it's impossible to get more than 4-5 enemies on the screen and blast them together with a smart bomb, unlike in the arcade version where it's possible to group many more of them and destroy them at once.

 

post-8393-1220552778_thumb.png

 

The physics also seems to be quite illogical, compared to the arcade version where it seems more or less believable. And it's nearly hilarious that you can stop enemies on your track by simply reversing your ship. But that's also one of the main keys of coming far in this game (though not to recommend for the arcade version!)

 

One tip I haven't seen yet is that when you've got only one humanoid left, you shoud stop travelling all across the planet surface and rather stay directly above the humanoid, shooting everything reaching you from the left and right. That way, no lander will be able to capture that last humanoid. And once they have one, at least in the later waves, it gets very hard to recover it, since the landers ascend with their victim at the same speed as you do, so if you're below them, you won't be able to catch up!

 

Beating the mutant waves... well... for me it works like this: At the start of the wave, you'll typically be attacked by a mutant from the right, which you should shoot right away. After that, each time they start homing in on you, just reverse your ship... that will stop them and enable you to get one or multiple ones into your line of fire before they attack again. Alternatively, you can also fly below or above the screen and either activate hyperspace (which will put you at your start position with another humanoid attacking from the right) or reverse direction while you're above the surface, and then come up again. Howver, there's no guarantee for success!

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One tip I haven't seen yet is that when you've got only one humanoid left, you shoud stop travelling all across the planet surface and rather stay directly above the humanoid, shooting everything reaching you from the left and right. That way, no lander will be able to capture that last humanoid. And once they have one, at least in the later waves, it gets very hard to recover it, since the landers ascend with their victim at the same speed as you do, so if you're below them, you won't be able to catch up!

 

Beating the mutant waves... well... for me it works like this: At the start of the wave, you'll typically be attacked by a mutant from the right, which you should shoot right away. After that, each time they start homing in on you, just reverse your ship... that will stop them and enable you to get one or multiple ones into your line of fire before they attack again.

 

If I hadn't refreshed before posting, I would have just said the same thing :cool:

 

566,800

post-9504-1220555628_thumb.jpg

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OK, haven't played this yet, but it occured to me that Deteacher did NOT roll the score. Rolling it would mean that it starts at the beginning score again, but in fact, it does not... instead, it shows trailing zeroes after the score has been "rolled", so you can see by the zeroes that there's a 7th digit which doesn't get displayed.

Therefore, I'd propose that we don't set 999990 as the maximum here, instead we should set it to 1099990 (100.000 points more) because that's the maximum that can be distinguished from the not-rolled score. In this case, 1099990 would be displayed as 099990, while 99990 would be just 99990 without the trailing zero. From 1100000 on, the 6 digits should be the same again, so THAT should actually be considered "rolling" the score, although you don't start at 0 this way.

 

Ze_ro? Could you make a ruling on this? If it's deemed that I did not roll it, I guess I'll have to fire it up again. After hitting 1,000,000, I shut it off with lord knows how many lives in the bank. If it's deemed that my score isn't maxed out, it's no biggie...I'll just play again. It'll give me something to do for a couple hours while Hurricane Hannah blows through DE on Saturday. :)

Edited by Deteacher
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86,400

 

post-17553-1220573782_thumb.png

 

OK, haven't played this yet, but it occured to me that Deteacher did NOT roll the score. Rolling it would mean that it starts at the beginning score again, but in fact, it does not... instead, it shows trailing zeroes after the score has been "rolled", so you can see by the zeroes that there's a 7th digit which doesn't get displayed.

Therefore, I'd propose that we don't set 999990 as the maximum here, instead we should set it to 1099990 (100.000 points more) because that's the maximum that can be distinguished from the not-rolled score. In this case, 1099990 would be displayed as 099990, while 99990 would be just 99990 without the trailing zero. From 1100000 on, the 6 digits should be the same again, so THAT should actually be considered "rolling" the score, although you don't start at 0 this way.

 

Ze_ro? Could you make a ruling on this? If it's deemed that I did not roll it, I guess I'll have to fire it up again. After hitting 1,000,000, I shut it off with lord knows how many lives in the bank. If it's deemed that my score isn't maxed out, it's no biggie...I'll just play again. It'll give me something to do for a couple hours while Hurricane Hannah blows through DE on Saturday. :)

 

There is precedent for the score rolling at 1,000,000: Season 4, Week 13:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...amp;hl=defender

 

That's not to say that each time the game is played that the "rules" have to be the same, but if your good enough to get 1,000,000, what's the point of playing another 99,990?

 

Just my thoughts, which probably aren't worth the Internet they're printed on...

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I'm still trying to wrap my around around why we are inventing a 7th digit. Isn't it just a function of the score routine not clearing unused zeros on roll-over. Even if there was a 7th real digit, it's still irrevelant since it's never seen and it's obvious that a roll-over happened by the existance of leading 0's on any score less then 6 digits.

 

Of course, once you hit 6 digits again, one can just as easily argue you never rolled the score to begin with. And what about when you roll it multipul times? I know I've done that in the past once.

 

I guess having an official observer or unedited/unstopped video recording from start-to-finish of a game would be unrealistic for these HSC's? :P :lolblue:

 

390,400
566,800

Wow: 1,390,400 & 1,566,800.... :ponder: ;) :P

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ROLLED

 

post-9504-1220590467_thumb.jpg

 

I have to agree with using the same scoring as in the 4th season. As you can see in the pic, I haven't stopped playing yet, it's still waiting for me to come back and finish. But if I roll the score again, it will look exactly the same. I could just say I rolled it 4,786 times if I wanted to, but I don't think that will prove anything.

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ROLLED

 

post-9504-1220590467_thumb.jpg

 

I have to agree with using the same scoring as in the 4th season. As you can see in the pic, I haven't stopped playing yet, it's still waiting for me to come back and finish. But if I roll the score again, it will look exactly the same. I could just say I rolled it 4,786 times if I wanted to, but I don't think that will prove anything.

I Rolled the score as well. Actually got to 1,100,000 points. There was no difference in the score. I did roll the score. The picture I have though is of me with 999,100 points. Since I had 3 men on the screen at the time it is pretty obvious I rolled it.

 

Edit: I did not know there were no trailing 000's after the score when it began. I did get 1,100,000 but I think the difference is so small that passing a million should count.

post-3979-1220591665_thumb.jpg

Edited by homerwannabee
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OK, just realized I did not start off on level 4 before. This time I did. Also I went to 1,100,000 Here is my picture.

 

 

OK, here is a very good tip. I actually did not use this tip at all for this game though. Only defend one man from attack and always keep guard on that one man. Do not move your ship while guarding this man. Let the enemy come to you. Also it is best to have the ship facing west or towards the left of the screen.

post-3979-1220676109_thumb.jpg

Edited by homerwannabee
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