Defender II & Iron Tank retrospective: Let's Punch-Out!! some Nazis | NES Works #082

A pair of arcade shooter adaptations leads us into the second half of 1988 for NES Works, both of which deserve attention for entirely different reasons.
Defender II sees the publishing debut of HAL Labs (via HAL America), a well-deserved turn of events for a studio that was so essential to the early success of this platform. And this conversion stretches all the way back to those early days, speaking once again to the close relationship HAL and Nintendo shared as the latter made its way into the world of selling game consoles-including a bit of borrowed audio that raises the question of who pilfered from whom? Come for the footage, stay for the educated speculation.
Meanwhile, Iron Tank transforms T.N.K. III into a fairly ambitious (if not entirely refined) combat adventure with branching paths, a progressive power-up system, and even some narrative. Finally, we begin to see a glimpse of the quality that fans have come to associate with the name SNK.
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[@Scoth42]

It's worth noting that not only is the title music of Defender II right out of MTPO, but the sound effects too. The shots are punches, the hits are falls, aliens appearing are uppercuts, etc. It's actually pretty trippy to play if you've played a lot of Punch Out!!

[@childofcascadia]

The wave completed music is a slowed down version of the failed bout music too.

[@PaulSoth]

Digital Eclipse deserves a good deal of credit for adapting those rotary stick games into twin-stick shooters in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection.

[@Tim85-y2q]

Iron Tank was one of the few games my dad used to play with me back when I was a kid. A lot of fond memories attached to that title for me.

[@Yordleton]

Now every time you hear the Punch-Out music, you can remember it's half of a tune that is meant to sound ALOT like the Star Wars theme! The two main accented notes of the intro are meant to mimic the perfect fourth interval you hear at the very beginning of the Star Wars theme, and then the melody and chord progression approaches the ending of the phrase in the exact way the Stars Wars theme does as well.

[@sjspirtos]

Maybe Snake was a popular name because of John Carpenter’s anti-hero Snake Pliskin from Escape from New York?

[@MaidenHell1977]

Spent countless hours as kids playing Iron Tank back in 88/89. It was the first SNK game I had ever played and never having played anything from them prior, they left an impression of high quality on me and a developer to keep my eye on. Another fantastic episode. ❤️

[@HydraSavior]

In my head-canon, the Nazi blood you're adding to your tank treads when you run them over acts as armor. That's why your health is refilled slightly. That, or the tank is FUELLED BY BLOOD. Thanks for the episode, Parish.

[@JeremyParish]

I’d say it’s like Alucard’s Soul Steal, but that wouldn’t work on the soulless

[@HydraSavior]

@@JeremyParish Allow me to adjust my Nerd Glasses before I say that Alucard's Soul Steal works even on soulless inanimate objects, like Stone Skulls, breakable walls, etc. So: Genya "Alucard" Arikado was the Captain of the Iron Tank. Concluded.

[@leonardpaulson]

⁠@@Umqualquerporra Quips will NOT be tolerated within the hallowed realm of early game console history.

[@thecunninlynguist]

I love these little tidbits like how music may have been reused or composed by the same teams

[@FamicomVinnk]

I love it whenever I get a notification that a new video is up. I love learning more about the games I played as a kid and also love discovering games I never played. Thanks for these.

[@HybridAngelZero]

I don't know which made me giggle more, the beautifully cut Die Hard edit, or Jeremy's cheerful endorsement of running over Nazis 😂

[@housesitter]

Parish confirmed most ethically sound games historian

[@jdiluigi]

I love that it looks like you record face shots with a "shoulder fire" VHS camcorder my parents used to record me 1988.

[@JeremyParish]

I DO use a camcorder!

[@Alamyst2011]

@@JeremyParish Yep. And it is part of the reason I love this channel. Its like stepping back in time.

[@DrySushi]

@@Alamyst2011 I agree with the vibe of stepping back in time, still don't love the vhs. Jeremy's cadence, writing, shots and all are very high quality with unbiased cov rage while still giving his opinions. Something I imagine seeing on PBS in the late 80's early 90's.

[@shortcat]

Was impoper (or you could say lack of) deinterlacing an intended effect? It rustles my jimmies a bit.

[@njdevs1987]

Jeremy Parish endorsing running over Nazis with tanks... me too Jeremy me too.

[@jessragan6714]

Defender II is such a monkey's paw of an arcade port. "Wow, this is pretty good! It plays smoothly and the landers look better than ever! Oops, one of 'em just grabbed a humanoid. Let me save him and... wait? Where'd he go? He's supposed to hang from my ship, but he just disappeared! I can't warp through the stargate without humans! Auuugh!"

[@kennethchia4194]

I had Stargate on PC circa 1986; it was an excellent conversion considering it only used four colors.

[@thejackal007]

Great video. Looking forward to 2031 when you cover the Defender game for the Gamecube. Very timely video since I just started playing Iron Tank on the SNK collection and had little success getting far (good to know that it is hard and it's not just my lack of skill). Also the screen warping at the top at 7:54 is trippy.

[@bjornh1527]

I always did wonder why Stargate had the same music as Punch Out!!

[@MaximumRD]

I quite enjoyed Iron Tank on the NES. I did not get many games back in those days and I knew little about the game so I was pleasantly surprised.

[@Aboveup]

That belief that there's some hidden shared connection between games is something that I have some vague memories of with Illusion of Gaia and Chrono Trigger on the SNES. For some reason the wild reddish hair and blue tunic really made me think Will and Chrono were one and the same, and the connection was only made stronger by Illusion of Gaia being named Illusion of Time here in Europe.

[@findantu]

I think it's due to things like toriyama selling characters to anyone who would buy them and probably selling artwork under a surname for extra cash. There's a few devs back then who worked for different companies and sometimes at the same time so yeah concepts or likeness will bleed over somehow kinda like how everyone thinks all the nes snes FF are tied together but not really. But then there's Brave Exvius Wich does actually use it's story to link them all so 🙃

[@Aboveup]

There genuinely is no connection between Moto Hagio's character art for Quintet and Akira Toriyama's character art for Squaresoft. I was just a dumb kid.

[@mcbfilms22]

I have fond memories of Iron Tank because I would have to hang out at this kids house after school a lot, and it was one of the only good games he had. It was either that, Karate Champ😫 or Hoops😖. SNK finally got that overhead military shooter formula balanced with Guerrilla War, which is so blazing fast and intense that I couldn’t believe the NES was even capable of that type of game without the system overheating.

[@MrMegaManFan]

There seem to be some sync issues with the top of the screen for Iron Tank. I blame the way the code scrolls the game vertically and not your capture card.

[@JeremyParish]

No, it's an issue with the Retrotink 5X. I recently switched to using it instead of a Framemeister and am still ironing out the kinks.

[@MrMegaManFan]

@@JeremyParish No problem, I'm sure you'll get it sorted out. Thanks for explaining and for the content!

[@ValkyrieTiara]

Iron Tank is exactly the sort of game I would have loved in my pre-teen days. Anything with menus, swappable weapons, and alternate routes a la Mega Man and G.I. Joe definitely did something for me, even back then.

[@VahanNisanian]

Yukio Kaneoka composed both Defender II and Punch-Out. Also, the Hal Famicom ports of Midway arcade games were apparently supposed to come out in 1983.

[@JeremyParish]

Thank you for summarizing this video

[@JazGalaxy]

I beat Codename:Viper as, like, an 8 year old. Now I desperately want to see myself do it because I can’t wrap my head around how I could have been that coordinated as a kid and so terrible at it now. That game is hard!

[@Rando1975]

I'm the same way. While I was a pretty decent player when I was younger, I suck at playing those same games today.

[@jessragan6714]

Can't even fathom how I beat Castlevania III with its artificially raised difficulty when I was a teen.

[@LorenHelgeson]

I have a love-hate relationship with Iron Tank. One of the earliest video games I ever played as a kid, I've had a lot of hours put into it even recently. At the same time, it's also the first time a video game's difficulty upset me, to the point of a 7-year-old me rage quitting. As for those HAL-produced "pitch" games, while they were centered around then-archaic games, they were excellent conversions. Never played Defender 2 on NES, but the ports of Millipede and Joust are fantastic.

[@moshingsafely]

My memory of this game as a kid was that the cumbersome controls sort of felt right considering that we were piloting a tank. True, we never got very far before the game got impossible, but the extremely crunchy audio-visual presentation, ability to crush nazis underfoot, and that extremely intense tank-splosion upon death gave it an extremely intense feel. I was really happy years later to find an Iron Tank cartridge for less than a dollar to reminisce with.

[@MCastleberry1980]

That Defender II music sounded like smashing Punch Out and Star Wars together

[@baileywatts1304]

Wow, the tease of a possible NES conversion of Sunsoft's Kangaroo. That would be an amazing thing to behold. I had memories of that as a wee urchin as a sort of "there's Donkey Kong at the grocery store, you don't NEED to go to the arcade" experience.

[@GameplayandTalk]

Iron Tank looks like a lot of fun. I'll definitely have to fire it up! It's not one I got to experience as a kid back in the day.

[@RichardCraig]

5:44 - Poor Excitebike and that glitch in the intro tune, lol! If you reset the game, the lead instrument is still weird but at a different pitch. Reset it a second time and bingo, the music plays correctly! Found this out as a kid, the "third" version is definitely the "correct" version, but of course we all remember the first glitched version that plays at bootup.

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

I'd not heard of Iron Tank (or given OG TANK/TNK III a proper try) until the SNK 40th collection, and it certainly crossed a lot of t's (and dotted plenty of i's) for me even with the awkward turret control. I do dig how it didn't just port the original game over (something I was fairly used to coming from a microcomputer background), but added enough. This certainly has got me wanting to go back to give it a *proper* shot again, as it's certainly been a while since I took a trip to (8-bit) Normandy!

[@METR0lD]

I played a ton of the original Defender on Atari 2600 back in the day. I actually didn't even know that the sequel was on NES!

[@joeyservo]

Iron Tank was a frequent rental for me at the town video rental place. Loved that game, can't believe I missed this episode.

[@SeekerLancer]

I had no idea the HAL arcade ports were done as a pitch to Atari but it makes so much sense. Those games were always sort of a mystery to me so it's nice to finally understand why they were made. Iron Tank was a really fun game, one of my favorite SNK releases on the NES. So glad they dumped Micronics.

[@EinDose]

Top notch use of era-authentic TV-airing censorship of Die Hard, Jeremy. The games are good, too!

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Personally, I'd say it's way better than the ones done in the era, although that's due to the ones that had someone who didn't sound anything like Willis dubbing things like "Kemosabe" and "Mister Falcon" over it.

[@JeremyParish]

"Yippie-ki-yay, melon farmer"

[@milkcarton6654]

In the NES days, my brother and I had the unfortunate habit of buying games we hadn't tried before. After getting Pro Wrestling, which i had played at a friend's, the third game we would get for our NES (SMB was the first obvs) was Iron Tank, and it would be the first game we bought without having tried first( there would be too many others...). Well we got it home, tried it, found it ok but kinda too hard and after a few days pretty much stopped playing it for many months. My brother never went back to it, but eventually i decided well what the hell, i'm bored with my current games, let's go back to Iron Tank and see if it might not have something to offer. And it was then after finally giving it an honest try that i discovered a great shooter. Once you figure the game out, it's actually not very hard to finish it, and in fact after i did it once i pretty much replayed it through monthly for all the years we owned that NES (1988 to 1992) and having branching paths meant i didn't always have to replay it through the same. Anyway, along with Batman, it would turn out to be the best game we bought sight unseen. The worst would be Predator... Other games bought untried included: Bad Dudes - Fine as a rental but in no way worth a buy Cobra Command - way way too difficult and never got past like the second level or something Strider - fine but too easy and hence should have been just a rental P.O.W - Well... we had played it in the arcade but the NES version much to our dismay ended up not having a 2 players mode... still though this one was probably our third best untested purchase. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Fine but too difficult...and had we known they would release the arcade one just a little bit later, we'd have waited

[@jessragan6714]

I'll come to Rambo's defense in spite of how silly it can be, but Predator is a bridge too far. Pack-In Video should have packed it in and retired after that turd.

[@milkcarton6654]

@@jessragan6714 Oh yeah i was just talking about rambo with my brother yesterday and i mentioned Jerem'y review because it seemed that until him i was the only one who had enjoyed this game! I mean...flawed as a rambo game, but alright otherwise for what it was. I didn't own it though, but i borrowed it from someone for like a month or two and finished it circa probably 1989-90.

[@jessragan6714]

@@milkcarton6654 It's been some time so I don't remember the specific order, but either Rambo or 1942 was my first non-Super Mario Bros. NES game. (I can't say it was my first non-pack-in game, for obvious reasons.)

[@WikiRafa]

The Japanese versions of Joust, Defender II, and Millipede have simpler title screens, in the fashion of 1983 Nintendo releases, and the same song is played in all of them. The copyright of those three games says "1983 ATARI". We can only imagine an alternate reality where the Atari FC (or Atari AVS) is released in early 1984 alongside those games and the Nintendo Arcade conversions of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye. Would it be successful? I have my doubts.

[@GardevoirBoy]

Or maybe yet, have Nintendo own the Atari license back in the early '80s. That way, games didn't have to be censored so hard. Back then, nobody in America realized that too much censorship is a bad thing. Because they weren't familiar with the Japanese version, a lot of that content got censored because parents were worried that kids would have been involved in bad behaviors and wild activities if they leave it as is. As dense as it is, it was the truth. Censorship these days happens to keep things culture friendly. Nintendo only censors themselves now because they keep their games age-appropriate. That's why you don't see many M-Rated games published by Nintendo.

[@ginormousaurus8394]

I would have been impressed by the early Famicom games if they had been released in North America in 1984. The Famicom had superior graphical capabilities compared to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision, and ColecoVision. However, I don't know how many people in 1984 would have bought a new console to play better home conversions of familiar arcade games. The video game market was oversaturated at the time. Much of the NES' success was due to later releases like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda that had more depth and variety than games from the early 1980s.

[@TonyGearSolid]

Iron Tank has a very strong Jackal vibe going for it, which will make its NES debut just a few months later.

[@expendableindigo9639]

The dialogue was a bit too quiet compared to the sound effects in this video. At least, I think it's not just my headphones.

[@TimReviewsEveryNAWiiGame]

Out of curiosity has anyone been able to track down the Micronix dude? Feels like someone could get a good documentary out of that if not.

[@darktetsuya]

the Die Hard clip that cuts off at just the right part, LOL but I never knew the full story of these HAL Labs Atari NES ports, but that all makes sense! IRON TANK I kinda enjoyed, its all about 2110944!

[@nicholaszacharewicz693]

Did parts of the music in Iron Tank remind anyone else of the riff during the slower parts of Genesis' "Eleventh Earl of Mar"?

[@JeremyParish]

I didn't notice that, but I did notice that the tank crew is headed for London, and that will be their grave.

[@joshualewis3780]

"Now that's the kind of game I can get behind."

[@HPRshredder]

The explosion effects in Stargate look oddly satisfying.

[@nonamer29]

I'm wondering if Iron Tank planted the seeds for another SNK title "Guerrilla War"?

[@ginormousaurus8394]

Guerrilla War is more like Ikari Warriors, but better.

[@nonamer29]

@@ginormousaurus8394 Totally agree.

[@what3801]

I have a fond memory of renting Iron Tank and eating pizza on a weekend with my cousin.

[@magus2342]

I had never tried either one. Iron Tank looks serviceable but the turret mechanic has to be maddening. It basically requires a strategic approach in a game that wants twitch reflexes, for that alone I'd have given it a berth. I may go give Defender 2 a shot. The button-only controls of Defender in the arcade just isn't intuitive to me, but with a D pad, there's promise!

[@sarysa]

That stinger, though... Is it Bases Loaded or R.B.I. Baseball, I wonder. Either way, I didn't think we were that far into 1988 already...

[@absolutezeronow7928]

It's Bases Loaded. R.B.I. Baseball was already covered in NES Works.

[@philmason9653]

I liked how you opened the TNK segment. I never played this game back in the day, because the name SNK was synonymous with garbage in my mind precisely due to the Micronics titles you listed. It just looked Ikari again with the on-foot gameplay cut. Needless to say, I was completely baffled when SNK announced an entire console of their own. Luckily it ended up being an all-time favourite. I spent a good portion of this video wondering why SNK never revisited an Ikari title after they'd established popular characters around the franchise through King of Fighters. The third person cover shooter era could have been their moment. There's likely still an under-served market for that type of thing.

[@ginormousaurus8394]

Some of SNK's later releases for the NES are good, such as Baseball Stars, Guerrilla War, and Crystalis.

[@philmason9653]

@@ginormousaurus8394 Yeah, I got to play Guerilla War & Crystalis later on in the NES' lifespan. I really liked Crystalis at the time, thought it was really impressive. It's tough to go back to for me now though, due to the way you need to be so close to the edge of the screen to get it to scroll. That style of design became one of my pet peeves over time.

[@goranisacson2502]

A third person cover shooter Ikari COULD have been cool, no doubt about it, but I'm guessing their economical troubles prevented that. SNK has had a long and weird history, and while they tried to expand into 3d a few times with their fighting games and even a metal slug game, they weren't selling like they wanted to and they became bankrupt in the early 00's, so there just wasn't an opportunity for them to get the personnel or develop the tech to take advantage of their licenses. They have made a return recently though, but I don't think they're strong enough to diversify themselves into other genres just yet...

[@Mr._Sandman]

I still remember the first time I discovered Iron Tank. I also remember how terrible I was at it because I didn't understand the game, but 8 year old me back in the early 90's liked the explosions. Heavily underrated title.

[@rodneylives]

Aah! You noticed the music similarity (between Defender II and Punch-Out) too! I've always wondered about that! Iron Tank has been a personal favorite for me on the NES.

[@rodneylives]

Also: I love that this was posted just today, and it's already got 500 likes, around 1/12th of everyone who's watched it so far, that's a terrific ratio.

[@shane1489]

Always loved those Defender explosions

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Defender II would start the 1988 mini-trend of the NES getting ports of early 1980s arcade games (unless you count Tengen's Pac-Man as doing that). Millipede is interesting in that Atari Games spent time developing their own Famicom port of that in 1986 before it was abandoned due to rights issues (Namco would have been the publisher for this Japan-only release).

[@JaceyMitchell]

Defender may not have looked like much back when it was released on NES, but as someone who is discovering the NES library in 2024 I love the fact that it contains versions of games that even at the time were considered "retro". Even though that probably wasn't the word people generally used for them.

[@nimaiiikun]

i hated those yellow/beige enemy tanks in Iron Tank. after a certain point of the game.. if you didnt get the right weapons upgrades, it becomes nearly impossible late game when all the enemies cant be one shotted. i also liked how running over foot soldiers with your tank replenishes your health

[@AQuestionofCharacter]

Was so angry Iron Tank had that instruction manual mistake that mentioned two players.

[@johnathin0061892]

Should have mentioned Iron Tank's annoying bug where after defeating certain bosses the game will sometimes just leave you there and you can't continue. Happened a lot with that big ship that was underground. Boss blows up and you just stay there forever. Always get a password before you take on the major bosses.

[@MrJWTH]

It’s possible that he didn’t come across that particular bug when he played it.

[@JeremyParish]

I did not!

[@Mystemo]

The enemy soldiers in Iron Tank always reminded me of Kyle from South Park.

[@tekkensentai]

There’s a Star Wars motif in the defender 2 music too

[@robjackson4050]

punch out was first a arcade game did the arcade version use this song in question?

[@JeremyParish]

I don't know offhand, but the HAL Atarisoft conversions (1983) still came before any version of Punch-Out!! (1984)

[@matthewlane518]

Love that exitebike theme

[@jesseglenn8803]

Just got through all NES related videos. Wow that was an amazing journey while delivering pizza. I started listening a couple weeks ago. Thank you so much for everything you do for the community! Where can your books be purchased?

[@JeremyParish]

There are still a few NES Works left at Fangamer.net. Everything else will be reprinted soon!

[@jonothanthrace1530]

Wait, they were calling Stargate "Defender II" back in 1987? I thought that only started when the movie Stargate came out.

[@JeremyParish]

Nope. They actually wanted to call the movie “Defender II” but couldn’t because of the game

[@nerdonofriendo]

Jeremy great work as always. Do you ever think about reviewing contemporary games? Perhaps indie games with classic design or aesthetics? would be a cool idea for a new channel, and would help old gamers like me find things to play haha.. perhaps maybe someday? if you ever ran out of classic titles to talk about. Thanks for everything you do! love the channel.

[@JeremyParish]

Sorry, I don't have anywhere near enough free time for something like that.

[@nerdonofriendo]

@@JeremyParish i knew you were gonna say that. maybe someday when you run out of old games to talk about haha

[@andrewkaye2108]

I enjoyed Iron Tank and TNK III. Though i had to use a game genie to finish IT.

[@GardevoirBoy]

It's ironic how Defender II, Millipede, and Joust used to be Licensed by Nintendo. Now they are Published by Nintendo. I'm guessing Nintendo of American got impatient with Atari due to the latter making so many shovelware games back in the early 80s. Even though I forgive the people at Atari for being misunderstood about game handling, it is unpardonable to see Atari make so many shovelware games before Nintendo came along and saved the video game industry.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

The shovelware games on the VCS/2600 were from third parties that didn't have the quality standards of Activision. Atari's own games didn't really hurt it (2600 version of Pac-Man sold well and wasn't overproduced. ET sold over 1 million units). What hurt Atari more was the price wars between Commodore and Texas Instruments on PC that drove Atari's Computer division so deeply in the red that its console division couldn't save it.

[@GardevoirBoy]

@@absolutezeronow7928 So the games on the VCS/2600 that didn't have the quality standards of Activision and the expensive costs compared to the Commodore and Texas Instruments games on PC that caused Atari of America's console division to fall. So I shouldn't blame the bad Atari games, it was consumer gluttony that caused the video game crash. Even though Nintendo of America didn't need to be so censor-heavy, they did a very good job atoning for Atari's mistakes. Even if Atari games on NES were Licensed by Nintendo back then, they are now owned by Nintendo. Even though I felt sad for them forcing strict guidelines on third-party video games back in the day, I'm glad they saved the video game industry from extinction.

[@heavysystemsinc.]

There's a good chance the theme from both games is an old public domain or otherwise classic theme outside of games, just like mike tyson's punchout intro theme, which is from old boxing shows in the 50s.

[@Cole.....]

At least you got really good at Star Trek Invader.

[@somebaker2613]

Thank you!

[@JohnZyski]

I didn't know about this game.

[@Technosphile]

I’m so happy

[@MrJWTH]

I’m curious what the baseball game is and why Japan hated it?

[@JeremyParish]

Bases Loaded!

[@JohnZyski]

SNK wasn't a bad developer... I wonder what happened?

[@JohnZyski]

Tanks.

[@MotiviqueStudio]

I loved Iron Tank, but never finished it. I always had that sense of "shared world" when it came to early rpgs and text adventures (and this is long before I realized that there often was a shared world called "Tolkien".)

[@jamesmoss3424]

I will play defender 2.😀👍🎮

[@jamesmoss3424]

I will play iron tank. 😀👍🎮