Finally giving up on the TG forum.
The quote was:
I DON'T KNOW OF ANOTHER GAME THAT GIVES YOU A CHANCE TO RETRIEVE YOUR MAN AFTER THE ENEMY HAS GOTTEN HIM. PLUS WHICH, THE MEN ARE YOUR FRIENDS. IN MOST VIDEO WORLDS THE PLAYER DOESN'T HAVE A FRIEND. IT'S LONELY.
Think about it.
RETRIEVE YOUR MAN AFTER THE ENEMY HAS GOTTEN HIM
THE MEN ARE YOUR FRIENDS
Now, what games allow you get get back "your man" after the enemy has gotten him? A few people said Galaga, and indeed you can get your ship back after one of the aliens has captured it, but it's not a "man", it's a ship. And what "men are your friends" in Galaga?
In King and Balloon there is a man (the king) you can rescue by shooting the balloons that are carrying him away, but he's just one man...no
men.
Stratovox has people that can be rescued I think, but who would you interview about Stratovox? And is there a more well-known game that has men you can rescue from alien abduction? Yep.
Defender.
Those little guys that you are
defending are humanoids (men.) Ten of them. When you shoot a lander lifting one of them away he drops and you must catch him or if he falls more than a small height he will die. When all ten
men are gone, all landers are mutants, and you are in deep doo-doo.
A few people got Defender, but guessed the wrong person. Some said Ned Troide, who held a record on the game long ago, and one said the name of some kid mentioned in Time Magazine that marathoned the game, whose name I can't even remember. (I had to look it up.)
How about the guy that created it,
Eugene Jarvis. He also designed Stargate, Robotron, and went on to form his own design company, Vid Kidz. The interview in question was part of a feature on videogames that Playboy Magazine did in 1982. The piece on Jarvis was titled "What Sort of Man Invents Defender?"
http://atari.vg-network.com/articles/pb2.html
Well done, BeeJay.