Defender II (NES)

Defender II is a port of the Defender sequel Stargate.

It's also the origin of the "Round Start" and "Round Lost" music from Punch-Out!!

Regional Differences#

Japan	US (Title)	US (Menu)

The US version completely redesigns (and removes the color cycling effect the Japanese one had, for some reason) the title screen, adding some extra copyright info, and moves the main menu so it replaces the added copyright info after pressing Start once.

If the 1983 copyright date and striking resemblance to early NES title screens in the Japanese release seem unusual, that's because this and three other Atari games (Millipede, Joust, and a unique port of Galaga that was never released) were originally created as part of an abandoned deal for Atari to distribute the Famicom in western regions. The development of these were outsourced to HAL, who ended up self-publishing the titles a few years after the deal was abandoned.

Japan	US

Like the other Atari ports, the US version redesigns the in-game graphics somewhat. The ship is changed from orange to blue (though curiously the HUD icon is unmodified), the humanoids are given a facelift, the white lines representing your current position are pulled back a bit, and the top score has been freed from its original square border.

Truncated Music#

As noted, the music that plays when a round is started was later reused in the arcade (and NES, albeit with different instrumentation) version of Punch-Out!! The arcade board uses the Ricoh 2A03, the same CPU that the NES included, as an audio chip/secondary CPU.

Hidden Text#

Present only in the US version at 657:

DEBUGED BY TOSHIO SENGOKU  ( Intelligent Systems )  1987/07/31 15:00

Toshio Sengoku also hid his name in other software such as FamicomBox and Revenge of the 'Gator.