Defender is one of the most important arcade games of all time, but in 2026, you’ll have a hard time playing it legally. Released in February 1981 by pinball company Williams Electronics, it was a big risk for the company. But programmers Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar were confident that Defender could sell well, and the gamble paid off massively.
It became one of the first arcade games to sell roughly 60,000 units, an unheard-of figure for a video game around that time. With its five-button control scheme and brutal difficulty, Defender supercharged the ‘one more go’ feeling that Space Invaders began a decade earlier.
