Stargate (video Game) - Legal Issues

Legal Issues

The game is also known as Defender Stargate and Defender II. The latter name was used in home video game releases, due to legal issues (according to the bonus material for Midway Arcade Treasures, Williams wanted to "make sure they could own the trademark" on the Defender name). The name Defender II has been used on all of its home ports, and game compilation appearances; however, there were never any Defender II arcade units. To complicate matters, the Atari 2600 port was originally sold under the Stargate moniker but was renamed to Defender II for a later re-release.

This sequel adds new enemy ships to the alien fleet such as firebombers, Yllabian Space Guppies (note that Yllabian is based on "Yllab", the word "Bally" spelled backwards, a friendly poke at Williams' then-competitor, Bally Midway), Dynamos and Space Hums. The Defender ship is now equipped with an Inviso cloaking device, which renders the ship invulnerable when activated, but has a limited charge. A Stargate will transport the ship to any humanoid in trouble. There are now two special stages, the Firebomber Showdown and the Yllabian Dogfight, that occur every fifth and tenth wave. As in the first game, if all the humans are captured the planet explodes and turns all the landers into mutants.

The game is much harder than its predecessor, though world-class players such as Wes Simonds, Bill Fye, and Charles Warrell are all known to have scored over five million under strictly-controlled tournament conditions.