How to play Wall-Defender online
- Move the defender along the wall and bridge: arrow keys
- Fire at the aliens: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
Gameplay
Your defender can only walk on the outermost wall and on the bridge that links the walls together. From there you shoot the aliens as they dive towards the fortress. Every alien that gets through damages the wall. The outer wall survives ten ordinary hits: its colour gets deeper with each one, and on the seventh it starts to flash as a warning. Every so often a larger “super alien” appears, and if it reaches the wall, that whole layer is gone at once.
Before a wall collapses, you must cross the bridge to the next wall inward and defend from there. Be standing on the outer wall or the bridge when they disappear, and the game is over. It also ends when the aliens have broken through every layer. There are no spare lives.
Clear a stage without a single alien hitting the fortress and you get a bonus wall, up to a maximum of four. The aliens change shape from stage to stage, and small alien icons at the bottom of the screen count the stages you have passed. After a game, your last score (green) and best score (red) are shown in turn.
Tips
- Treat the flashing as your signal. Once the wall flashes, you have three hits left. Start thinking about the bridge instead of waiting for the last moment.
- Shoot super aliens first. One of them can take out a whole layer of wall, so switch targets as soon as a big one appears.
History
Wall-Defender came out in 1983 in the UK, West Germany and North America. The same game also appeared under other names from other companies: as Break-Down from Dynamics in Germany, as Capture from Goliath / Hot Shot in Hong Kong, and as Wall Break from the Belgian label Home Vision in 1984. The Bomb cartridge is very rare today.
Reviews at the time were mostly kind. The UK magazine TV Gamer disliked the graphics but liked the fresh idea and found it “an absorbing game which requires plenty of dexterity”. Computer and Video Games called it the most original of Bomb’s games. Later, The Atari Times gave it 95%.
