Defender of the Favicon
It’s been almost 30 years since Defender first hit the arcades. Since then millions of us have flown space crafts over a wrapping mountainous landscape shooting at aliens and rescuing humanoids. Mathieu ‘p01′ Henri has created a new version of Defender with a twist – this time you play it in the area where you’d normally expect to find a favicon.
Mathieu explains how it works:
Each frame of the game is generated on the fly in JavaScript into a 16×16 canvas element, then converted to a 32bits PNG image and used in place of the favicon. The core of the game act as a state machine. Notice a few details such as the pause when this window is not focused, and the resuming and game over transitions.
Ahh, the dilemma of how to show off a 16x16 demo...
Considering Defender is hard at the best of times Defender in a 16 x 16 sized box is no packed lunch either even with the tweeks Mathieu has made to the gameplay, but if you’re feeling brave or just want to appreciate the effort that’s gone in to this tech demo, give it a whirl.
Best viewed in Opera or Firefox.
View the Defender of the Favicon game
Related demos