Earth Defense Force
video game series
Earth Defense Force, known in Japan as Chikyū Bōeigun (Japanese: 地球防衛軍; lit. Earth Defense Forces), is a third-person shooter video game series created by Sandlot, originating as an offshoot of D3 Publisher's Simple series. As of 2024, it consists of eleven entries with six main installments, developed and published by various companies since 2003. The series follows the titular Earth Defense Force (EDF), an international armed force that fights to defend Earth from alien invasions by extraterrestrials that field massive insectoids in their war against humanity.
Individual Earth Defense Force releases generally receive mixed or average reviews, but the series has been lauded for its simplistic yet entertaining premise and campy tone, and it maintains a strong cult following.
Premise
Earth Defense Force has roughly five separate continuities as of 2024. However, in general, all entries in the series share a similar basic premise, following the Earth Defense Force (EDF), a specialized multinational defense force established and supported by every country and staffed by the world's militaries, tasked with defending Earth and humanity from external threats. The vast majority of Earth Defense Force installments are set after the discovery of the Ravagers, an intelligent and organized alien race, with the formation of the EDF sometimes explained as being a precautionary measure. The Ravagers prove to be hostile and attempt to invade Earth, deploying massive insectoids such as ants, ticks, pillbugs, beetles, hornets, and spiders to destroy Earth and exterminate humanity; this prompts the full-scale deployment of the EDF to fight back and repel the alien invasion.
The series installments are mostly set during the 2017 invasion, during later invasions in 2019 and 2025, or, in different continuities such as the one introduced in Earth Defense Force 5, 2022 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earth Defense Force” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.