Stargate

1981 · Shooter · Arcade

Overview

Stargate (1981) is the sequel to Defender, adding an invisibility cloak and a warp gate to Williams' demanding side-scrolling shooter.

Deep Dive

Stargate keeps everything that made Defender hard — the wraparound planet, the scanner, the humanoids to protect, the dense controls — and adds more. The inviso button cloaks the ship and destroys anything it touches, and the Stargate warps the player across the planet, straight to a humanoid in trouble. Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar designed it as a refinement of their earlier game, and it is often regarded as the purer challenge of the two.

Developer Story

Stargate was designed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar at Williams Electronics in 1981 as the sequel to Defender. Jarvis added the inviso (temporary invisibility), the phaser (fires across the entire screen), and the eponymous Stargate — a warp tunnel allowing instant travel across the playfield. The game is considered by many to be a refinement of Defender rather than a true sequel, as it retained all the original mechanics while adding complexity.

Did You Know?

Stargate added three new weapons to Defender's arsenal: the inviso (invisibility cloak), phaser (screen-wide weapon), and the warp Stargate itself.
The game was released as "Stargate" in most markets but renamed "Defender II" in some regions to capitalise on the original's name recognition.
Jarvis later said the phaser was so powerful that it broke the game's balance — experienced players could use it to trivialise difficult situations.
Despite being the sequel to one of the highest-grossing games of 1981, Stargate sold only about 20,000 units.

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