If we drop the Wave Z limitation, than the problem will be that someone will be able to play the game forever. The picture need to be taken quick, sorry about that but it is not the first time either.

I'll put a no hanging in wave to point press respawning enemies rule. That game is stupid, it should have a timer per wave.

Unfortunately this is one of those NES games that is impossible to have perfect rules for. Too bad it doesn't show your current wave on the main game screen.


 

I think with this game you're not going to be able to create any manner of perfect ruleset, and same goes with most retro shmups I think. They're all boostable in some way, with little in the way of ability to track whether it's been done.

Someone COULD save every human in every level up to wave Z and get a huge score as Bea has done. Alternatively, someone could point press infinitely when they reach Wave Z and you'll never be the wiser.

It comes down to integrity. Is it really worth cheating for a couple pixels by your posts on the forum?

That is perfectly fine by me.
I will rollback to my previous score tonight.
 

If you get too big of a score by wave Z then it would be suspicious. But a player could pad their score a bit with some point pressing.

I hate point pressing anyway. I wouldn't do it in this game even if the rules allowed it. It's tedious and boring. I even hated having to do it in Vice Project Doom.


 

Yeah, for that you would either need everyone to post videos or live stream their runs.
That wouldn't be doable.

I got video footage of my 1st run, and I will try to improve upon it, but I highly doubt I will be able to reach 500K, because I really suck at saving humans. I think I can push it 15k, 20K further at most.
Kudos to anyone who manage it.
 

this is not a shooter, its an arcade game. and im not good at arcade games. 33k is my best score so far. 

oh the "please dont point press" rule is in effect... booooo. 

low score to wave z would have been a better choice. 
 

That's be incredibly easy, though.
 

Quite so, yeah.
Let the mars people take all the humans, avoid killing the square enemies and the flying saucer (you will have to dodge them through the wave, though) and you should get to wave Z with the least amount of points possible.
I believe bombs don't give you points as well, so you could use them to decrease your score a bit.
 

Is 33k really your best? I got 150k on Sunday and I would expect you to be able to top that.

And of couse it's a shooter. Defender is like the granddaddy of horizontal shooters and the sequel is basically the same game. It's a shooter in sort of the same way that Kung Fu Master is a beat em up. (Although amittedly NES Defender II is not an exact port of the arcade.)



 

ya, 33k is all i got. i keep backing into enemies. like i go to shoot them and miss then try to turn around but the momentum throws me into the enemy. plus im just not good at tgis game. i get shot down alot. 

maybe easy but it would eliminate any "please dont point press" rule. it would make a definite score. the way the rule stands now you get penalized for clearing a wave quicker,no? 
 

maybe a horizontal shooter but its an arcade game first. it plays more like an arcade game than a shooter.

The only way to prove progress in Defender II is to take a pic of the wave completion screen. You can't prove where you died. It's not really possible to have a low score contest in this game.

Probably the best rules would be to disallow point pressing but also remove the z wave limitation so that you can get as many points as possible without point pressing, but the mods want to prevent this game from becoming a marathon.

Yeah it doesn't really get any harder, so I'd just have my emulator running on my pc nonstop and play all day.

I wouldn't have the patience to do it, but yeah, I would go for a lot more waves than wave Z.
The difficult caps really fast and remains the same for the rest of the waves.
 

Even the world record run on Youtube is under three hours. It would be interesting to see how long the resident shooter/arcade pros could keep going without any limitation.

Yeah, they actually penalize you for clearing a wave to fast, since by cleaning the wave quickly you get less square ships (300 points per) and flying saucers (400 points per).

 

Wow is that all? Jeez.

It is a bit over 1,500,000 points.
You could crush that score pretty easily.

 

oh boy im terrible. 49k and i die in the first wave half the time. lol.

i like the momentum in smb3 but not here :/

If you miss shooting the enemy, it is better to just fly over or below it rather than trying to turn.
It is too easy to die here due to the momentum. Your ship is much faster than they and their shots are. Make use of that speed.
 

I had this game as a kid. A few years ago when I played the Atari 2600 version, it seemed like it was a lot more fun than I remembered the NES version being. Hopefully I can give this a try again over the weekend, but I doubt I would be able to put up a score good enough to crack the top 8.

It'd be great to see you put up a score, top 8 or no!