Williams games are some of the fastest, most heart pounding, and highest rated money earners out during the 1980's. Along with Namco's "Pac-Man", Defender shares the title of 'Highest Grossing Video Game of All Time' and to date has earned more than one billion dollars. It comes as no surprise that my next purchase was going to be a Williams game. I've always liked Defender but my goodness did it eat my quarters fast at the arcade. Maybe that's why it grossed so much money back then, I don't know. Anyways a local collector had a project Defender that he was letting go of because of too many projects and not enough garage space. This Defender certainly had its share of abuse over the years, but it was fully functional and the collector installed a nice monitor with no burn-in. Can't beat that.

The moment I fired it up and that bass thumping sound started to eminate out of this cab, I knew I had to have it. Defender has ultra cool sound effects for its time, and an unforgettable bass sound only comparable to a Space Invaders machine. We negotiated a price and I was on my way home with my next project.

This cab was missing its back door, had its control panel "nailed" down due to a theft problem, had a random RAM error, kept losing its settings, had a missing coin slot, had missing marquee brackets, had scratches all over its bezel, had cigarrette burns on the control panel, had a broken speaker grill, monitor wasn't converged properly, no key locks and burnt out bulbs. You would think from the description of it that I ended up on the short side of the bargain. However, all this stuff was cosmetic, which was easy to fix or replace. The game worked, and the price was right for a project. RAM chips were replaced to fix RAM errors on boot-up, and a reproduction bezel and CPO were installed. At the present I have fixed up most of the Defender cab and it looks great and works wonderful. I can now play the game to my hearts content without fear of breaking my wallet at the arcade.