Defenders Of The Earth
1990
defenders_of_the_earth.dsk.zip (not yet approved)
“THE HEROES OF THE PAST ARE HERE TO SAVE THE FUTURE”
Direct from the hit T.V. series, the Defenders are here in an all action ARCADE blast that will have your fire button melting!
Featuring FLASH GORDON and his friends MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, LOTHAR and THE PHANTOM against the evil MING THE MERCILESS and his attempt to rule the world. Kidnapping the Defender’s children, he issues a dire warning - interfere and your children die!
Control FLASH as he searches for the children in the mysterious FORTRESS OF EVIL. The action is fast and furious. The danger unending. You will often need to call on your team members for help. Negotiate the Intruder Detection System, avoid Ming’s killers, meet the gigantic robot OCTON and Ming’s pet serpent MONGOR. Survive them and enter the final confrontation with the evil MING himself!
Featuring the music from the original T.V. series.
THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON YOU!!
Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.
Crash review, courtesy of worldofspectrum.org
Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Defenders Of The Earth is a platformer based upon the succesful cartoon adventures of about 4 superhero’s not good enough to get their own series’.
The plot is completely dispensable, being something about something going missing or somebody being kidnapped, I couldn’t really care less as it adds nothing to the game. Unfortunatley. (It was the brats - Tim)
It’s a real pity, that aside from great sound FX, a lovely tune, superb graphics and a pretty good difficulty curve, this game is so standard. It has nothing that grabs you and makes you want to play it more and more. It has been slickly programmed enough, everything moves at a good rate of speed, and the collision detected isn’t dodgy at all. It’s just I supposed that there is no variation in gameplay.
All that is involved is jumping along platforms, collecting the occasional bonus, and pressing the ‘help’ key when a situation looks impassable (ie. a wide gap, a force-field or a strong door). It’s all very linear too, there is no sense of exploration, you gradually work your way to the guardian for that level (there are only 3, but they are tough). A little variation in the way the guardians fight would have been nice, but no. They all just spew dangerous spheres at you whilst you pump endless bullets into them.
This game had the chance to be something special. But I guess they couldn’t stray from the original versions too much, because of licencing agreements.
Again, a pity.
| Area | Score | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Graphics | 88% | Impressive throughout. Good use of colour. |
| Addictivity | 72% | Nothing special, pretty average I’m afraid. |
| Instand Appeal | 77% | The simple gameplay means that it’s easy to get into. |
| Sound | 85% | Great tunes by Sean Conran. |
| Overall | 74% | File under ‘okay’. |
The music is ported from the ZX Spectrum 128k version but the music is mono and comes from the left channel only due to the short time Sean Conran and Rob Holman had to cobble together the player.
According to Graham Goring upon completing Defenders Of The Earth, Enigma Variations phoned up MGT to give them the good news. The answerphone picked up and played a message telling them that MGT had just gone into liquidation.
Enter your name as ‘….ORB’ in the high score table, and you’ll get infinite lives in the next game.
