Minter, though, has long had a weak spot where Defender is concerned - his versions of it and the coin-op follow up Stargate for the ST and Amiga a few years back (in a package which also included Jeff's own take on a sequel, called Defender 2), were awful, bringing in a host of unwanted new ideas (mouse control, autofiring) and dumping important features of the original (like Hyperspace, depending on which control system you used) from the so-called 'conversions'. Defender 2 itself was an overcomplicated, overdetailed, overfast and under-playable disaster. Ironically, around the same time, Midway released the coin-op Strike Force (Defender 3), an insanely frantic but superb blaster which showed 90s Defender could work, but was far too tough for most arcade-goers and sank without trace.

Unfortunately, Jeff doesn't seem to have learned any lessons in the intervening years, either from Strike Force or Tempest 2000. In T2K style, this cart features 'Classic Defender' (a semi-close but ludicrously easy version of the original), 'Defender Plus' (an eye-searing mess borrowing several ideas from Stargate, but throwing away most of the good ones), and Defender 2000 itself, which is less of an update of arcade Defender than an update of Jeff's own Defender 2.

Flaws? Again, it's far too easy - you'll clear the opening 20 levels first go, although you won't have any idea what's going on. Visually, it's a shambles. The extreme speed, coupled with the vastly swollen graphics, an overdetailed background and - worst of all - the addition of vertical scrolling means that you simply can't tell what's happening 95% of the time. The powerups merely add to the confusion (rescue a few humanoids and they attach to your ship as options, unleashing a barrage of fire so fearsome that most enemies are wiped out before they even register onscreen), and indeed the only way to play the game so it makes any sense is to creep around at the slowest possible speed, whereupon the highly sensitive controls make flying your ship like trying to steer an oil tanker around an ice rink.

Whether on PC, Game Boy, Amiga or almost any other platform, there are half-a-dozen excellent ways to play Defender in 1996. Choose one of them - this is an insult to its memory.