Cheetah Defender Light Gun

The following review was taken from Your Sinclair November 89

As we all know, lightguns are basically a fun, if limited addition to Speccy gamesplaying. First off the mark was actually the Stack Light Rifle years ago, but it was a bit crap. The biggie of course was the recent Amstrad/Spectrum Light Phaser. But that had its disappointments too, namely the rather flimsy construction and horrible black and white bars it splattered across Operation Wolf.
It was only a matter of time before a joystick company entered the fray, and the first of these to do so is the popular joystick and funbox maker Cheetah Marketing.

The Defender is a nice piece of work. The moulded plastic body is dark grey with bright red handgrips. The design is quite modern and sturdy looking I s'pose, but still with slightly naff Buck Rogers-like tendencies. The hand grip is raked forwards to make it slightly easy to aim and hold, and weights have been added inside the body to improve the feel and balance.

Accuracy-wise, the Defender seems to be pretty sharp. Most of the time I aimed at something I hit it, which means one of two things - either the gun is accurate, or the software is really good at reading the gun. You do have to be fairly square to the screen, and not too close, or the focus of the gun goes all to cock.

There are six games bundled with the gun, Jungle Warfare, Advanced Pinball Simulator, F16 Fighting Falcon, Supercar Trans Am, Bronx Street Cop and Billy the Kid.

In conclusion, the Defender looks better and is cheaper than its current competitor, the games are better and its generally more fab !