Back in the 1980’s, Atarisoft were doing official arcade conversions for the Commodore 64. Stargate was one of them, and we learn of this conversion thanks to Mat Allen who has documented the conversion briefly in Digital Press.
Phobos/Ready64 found a snippet in Video Game Update (August 1984 – see scans) which suggests that Jack Tramiel got Atarisoft to stop all C64 developments and focus just on Atari. It wasn’t the video game crash that caused the cancellation of titles. Thanks to Roberto Nicoletti and Phobos for the heads up.
It was suggested that Steve Evans had originally programmed the game for Atarisoft (as a modified version of Guardian as Stargate has been out there for sometime), and that he took his game and eventually had it released under the name of Guardian for Alligator Software. Rich Stevenson had a vague recollection that Steve gave him a copy of Stargate with that very name, to give feedback and improvements.
So was Guardian really originally intended as Stargate for Atarisoft? No it wasn’t. Thanks to Vinny Mainolfi, Steve confirmed that it was just a hacked version of his Guardian game. He was disappointed but amused when he downloaded a game image in later years with the changes. So, that rules that out firstly.
Then in 2013, Kurt Woloch discovered a photo at CES 1984 by GCC which seemed to show a portion of Stargate running on a C64. Jeff Minter had spotted and made a connection with the Vic 20 conversion – highlighting that the score panel areas look very similar. This suggested that the game was very likely written by Tom Griner.
Jeff also added that he saw an interview with Tom, where work on a C64 conversion was mentioned. Looking at Tom’s other C64 work, we can also see a slight bit of familiarity with Robotron and the Joust game which is also missing.
We’ve since confirmed that the CES screenshot was just a snippet of the VIC-20 version of Defender. However, the link had been made to Tom Griner early on as potentially being the developer – after his links to Defender on the VIC-20.
In 2024, collector Ken Van Mersbergen then found the master Atarisoft list on a tape backup and found the following information about the C64 version of Stargate:
ATARISOFT PRODUCT MASTERS – FIRST WAVE
COMPUTER NAME REV MEDIA
C64 STARGATE 1 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 2 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 3 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 4 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 5 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 6 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 7 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 8 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 9 EPROMS
This pretty much confirmed that the game existed in Atari’s own archives at some point – so we were in hope that something was out there, waiting to be discovered.
Well, in September 2024 – archivist Ken Van Mersbergen got in touch to say that he had recovered Stargate, and has passed it over to Games That Weren’t to add to the archive. The game was meant to be released during Wave 1 in 1983, but was never to be. We hope to find out exactly why very soon and will update the page when we have more details.
Although the conversion is by no means perfect, it is complete and fully playable, though Mat Allen has spotted a major bug where you lose a life after every level complete (something that would have got picked up had the game been tested). Overall though, it is a great glimpse of yet another piece of Commodore 64 history.
Thanks to Rob Caporetto for the great video on the game, which we’ve embedded at the top of the page.
Contributions: Mat Allen, Martin/Stadium 64, Kurt Woloch, Jeff Minter, Rich Stevenson, Ken Van Mersbergen, Phobos/Ready64, Roberto Nicoletti, Vinny Mainolfi, Steve Evans, Rob Caporetto
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Game_Stargate (zip)
Gallery
Update history
- 23/10/24 – Information about a bug in the game from Mat Allen and video from Rob Caporetto.
- 17/09/24 – Tidy up of page and confirmation Steve Evan’s “Stargate” was an unofficial hack.
- 11/09/24 – Ken Van Mersbergen saves the game and passes over to GTW! Almost case closed!
- 17/06/24 – Ken Van Mersbergen finds details of the game existing within AtariSoft’s archives at somepoint.
- 06/01/17 – Rich Stevenson confirms that Steve Evan’s original game was called Stargate, later renamed to Guardian.
- 20/01/14 – Confirmation that Tom Griner was the developer.
Unfortunately as I’ve already informed Frank, the found game is bugged, most notably you lose a life when you complete a level. So you can’t go more than a few levels before it’s game over!
Thanks for the reminder Mat, just updated the page. Hopefully that can be fixed sometime and a shame it wasn’t picked up from a testing phase before cancellation.
In the 1980’s a lot of computer games released for the Home Computers, the companies wanted to maximise profit at the time, and so avoided licensing Arcade games; so games like Stargate were produced.
Isn’t that Defender for the C64? It looks 1:1 like it. Can someone here explain the connection between Stargate and Defender?
Defender on the C64 was a completely different development by Joe Simko about a year earlier: https://gb64.com/game.php?id=2079&d=18&h=0
Tom’s development was separate, and was meant to be a straight conversion of Defender’s sequel. There should features such as cloaking, which wasn’t in the first game – though I’ve not checked if that was implemented in the C64 version (or if other features have made it). It is possible that Tom may have based some of his code base from his original Defender game on the VIC-20 (which he coded), which may give some similarities with the original game.
Found the master Atarisoft list on atape backup and found the following information about C64 Stargate:
ATARISOFT PRODUCT MASTERS – FIRST WAVE
COMPUTER NAME REV MEDIA
C64 STARGATE 1 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 2 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 3 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 4 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 5 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 6 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 7 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 8 EPROMS
C64 STARGATE 9 EPROMS
So it looks like it exisited in Atari’s archives at one point.
Thanks Ken, that is a great finding – just hope that the data can be found some day!
I’ll add details to the page with credit to yourself.
Let me throw a spanner in the works here and let you know that I actually have a copy of Stargate by Steve Evans (unreleased at the time). I worked with Steve during both his Alligata and Alternative days and Steve game me a copy of the game so I could suggest some improvements.
Cheers Rich for confirming. So it looks like Steve produced it with the possibility of it being an official conversion with the original name, then Alligata got him to rename it to skip the licence costs? :)
Looks to me like the c64 in the partial screen is running Tom Griner’s code; if it is indeed Stargate on the c64 then it is likely derived from his existing Vic 20 Defender code.
Compare the lives/score/bombs display in the partial screenshot
http://galleryszy.stevenanne.net/archives/2005/05/tsk_tsk.html
with the same area from the Vic 20 Defender
http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/rtm9/index_files/defender-vic.gif
I saw an interview with TEG years ago where he mentions working on the c64 Stargate but I never saw his final version.
Thanks Jeff! Great spot, and I think also it looks like he may have been involved on the conversion of Joust that never got released.
Certainly I believe the Stargate game in GB64 is a hack of Guardian. Whether it started out as an official conversion is up for debate. I’m not entirely convinced.
I’d be surprised as well if it was official!
Seems like the following page contains a portion of a screenshot of C-64 Stargate as shown by Atari on the CES:
http://galleryszy.stevenanne.net/archives/2005/05/tsk_tsk.html
(look for the partial screen shown on the right)
Thanks Kurt! Added to the entry and left the question open now if the Stargate game we have there was in fact just a hack. Again, this may have been a casualty of the gaming crash.