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Released by Williams in 1980, Defender has to rank as one of the greatest arcade games of all time. But aside from its huge sales and many innovations Eugene Jarvis’ work of genius is also notable for another thing – the incredibly poor Atari 2600 port. Thankfully when Atari came to convert the game to rival ColecoVision console they made a much better job of it. I would be surprised if there are still people who haven’t played Defender, but for the benefit of any that haven’t, I will give a little run down of what it’s all about. Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter where you control a ship flying over a planet surface trying to wipe out the alien hordes. You can fly both left or right with a handy scanner at the top showing you where the enemies are. Your craft is equipped with a laser weapon and a limited amount of smart bombs that destroy everything on screen when activated. But the game isn’t just about wiping out the invaders, you also have to protect the humans roaming the planet below. As they wander about unawares aliens will swoop down and pick them up, if they manage to escape off the top of the screen with them then create a super alien hybrid intent on wiping you out. If all the planet’s residents are captured then it’s game over, but any left when you complete a wave earn you bonus points. The graphics are decent enough, but there is a bit of annoying flicker present and some jerky movement at times. The sound is pretty good with loads of arcade authentic effects. Defender isn’t a perfect conversion but it’s close enough to satisfy fans of the game, myself included.

For me Dig Dug still holds just as much nostalgia for me as games like Pacman, Space Invaders and Asteroids. It also still holds up just as well today too in the gameplay department and is tremendous fun and I still regard it as one of the best games of its era. I think it’s always been well established that Dig Dug contains one of the weirdest plots and concepts of any game in history. But I also think that its pure quirkiness is part of what made the original Namco arcade game such a massive hit. I mean you are a little man who runs around under ground with a giant air pump blowing up dragons and big bloopy things, dodging falling boulders and collecting the magic fruit that grows down there, makes perfect sense doesn't it? Well this strange mix of Boulderdash, Pacman and erm some game where you blow air never actually got an official release for the ColecoVision despite it appearing to be finished. Apparently Atari finished this version just as the North American video game crash happened and this left the game being unreleased, thankfully a prototype version was later discovered and released by a collector. The ColecoVision version is mostly decent but does have a few strange quirks. The first of these is that it uses overlaid sprites so they appear to flicker constantly in order to display both sets of colours, and this can be quite distracting. I do also feel that the audio could have been better considering the CV’s great sound chip. If you can get hold of a repro cart then Dig Dug is worth picking up, even if it doesn’t quite match the majesty of many of the other ColecoVision arcade ports.

This 1982 arcade game by coin-op kings Taito is one that you don’t hear being talked about very much, which is quite surprising given its historical significance. You see Front Line was the first scrolling soldier based shoot ‘em up, a genre that was popularised by Capcom’s Commando and SNK’s Ikari Warriors. Playing as a lone soldier your objective is to reach the enemy fort and throw a hand grenade through the window destroying it. But you must first fight off the hoards of enemy troops before you can do this. As well as grenades your player also has a pistol and ammo on both of these is unlimited. Once you get further into the game you can also jump in a tank to destroy the enemy and there are two different types of tank too. A heavy tank that has good armour but slow speed and light tank that has quick movement but is easy for the enemy to destroy. You must be careful not to be in the tank when it gets blown up or you will lose a life. Once you destroy the enemy fort the game starts all over again but with more soldiers to contend with! Despite my earlier comments about this game, after playing it I can now see why people don’t talk about it very much, it’s just not very good! You can see what they were trying to do but Ikari Warriors and Commando did the job properly. The graphics are ugly with goofy sprites and poor scrolling. The sound is reasonable enough, if a bit annoying, and the gameplay is just bland and, at time, frustrating. Front Line is a game that is better left in the past and one of only a few lacklustre arcade ports for the ColecoVision.

First released into the arcades in 1979 by Namco, Galaxian is the game that expanded on the formula first pioneered by Space Invaders. Like the Taito game it features hordes of attacking aliens that exchange shots with the player’s own ship. In contrast to Space Invaders though Galaxian added an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship, known as the Galaxip. This made it the first video game to feature enemies with individual personalities and attack patterns, it was also one of the first arcade games to feature full colour graphics. The game spawned a number of sequels including the even more popular game Galaga and the franchise is still going strong today! The ColecoVision port by Atari is incredibly faithful to the original arcade game. Graphically it looks really good with plenty of colour and a nice scrolling star field, it does have to change the screen ratio though from the coin-op but this doesn’t present any problems here unlike some other versions. It also has excellent sound too with all the bleeps, bloops and bangs present from the arcade game. Galaxian got some quite mixed home ports (Atari 2600 is excellent while Atari 5200 is awful) but this ColecoVision port is right up there among the best. Definitely a must have game for fans of classic space blasters.