Defender

Defender is a horizontal shooter centered on protecting humanoids stranded across an alien-threatened planet. As captain of the Defender, you must use the scanner to locate danger, destroy attacking ships, and rescue abducted humanoids before they are carried away or mutated into enemies.

The escalating waves introduce fighters, bombers, mines, pods, swarmers, and the dangerous Baiter. Destroying a pod releases a swarm of smaller ships, while a limited Smart Bomb and unpredictable Hyperspace maneuver provide emergency options. If every humanoid is abducted, the planet is destroyed.

Originally released in 1979, the game appeared across numerous home-computer and console platforms, including Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Apple II, ColecoVision, Commodore VIC-20, Intellivision, MS-DOS, and others.