Demon Attack

The Good
The movement of the enemy demons is rhythmic perfection. The simple sounds rising in pitch slowly raise your adrenaline through each wave. The box artwork by Imagic was fantastic compared to what Atari was putting out.

The Bad
I liked this game and had to buy it when it first came out. Not long after I got the chance to play the 8 bit computer version and loved it. It was a few years before I was able to afford the computer to play it on. And the only quirky thing about the game is that you warp back in after getting shot at the exact same spot often right back into enemy fire.

The Bottom Line
Wave after wave of demon birds descending on you dropping bombs and lasers trying to blow you up. They are very elusive and hard to hit. Some warping in to take the place of ones you blow up until you destroy the last in each wave. At higher levels they split in two as they get hit and then dive bomb your shooter. Shoot the bottom demon last that way it won't split and ones above can't split either. Make it through a wave without getting hit and get an extra shooter. You will need them.

The Good
Bright, colorful graphics, and a variety of different-looking enemies.

Good use of sound (different for each wave of alien).

Good use of speech.

Fast action .

Uncomplicated game.

Two different stages.

The Bad
Single-player only.

Game gets repetitive after a while.

The Bottom Line
In "Super Demon Attack" you begin the battle on the surface of the moon. You must destroy five waves of aliens. The start out wider than they are tall, making them somewhat easier targets, then become taller than they are wide, making them more difficult to hit.

After five waves, you launch into space to take on the Demon Base. You must first destroy a wave of small defending space ships before taking on the demon itself. You then repeat the entire sequence.

The graphics are very colorful. Each wave of aliens includes several ships, and two are on screen at a time with differing color combinations. The speech is excellent, although not every version has speech.

The Good
Another conversion made right. This arcade shooter conversion uses all new bells and whistles of 1984 PC. It means, if available, 320x200x16 colors graphics and 3-way sound on PCjr/Tandy. This made that game is looking (and sounding) closely to original arcade title and is much better than other CGA only arcade conversion of the time.

Regarding gameplay, nothing to object. Game is challenging, even bit hard, but 100% fair. Reaction to controller input is good, so it's really just about skill and to not make any error.

Another good point is that every new wave brings something slightly new. New enemy movement or shot type. It's not just "the same but more of it" like it was in Galaxian or Cosmic Crusader. This is refreshing.

The Bad
It's really overly simplistic game. There's not even main menu or high score table. It's just 'Press fire to start' and you're in action. If you're dead, only high score is remembered and again 'Press fire to start'. It gives me Atari 2600 vibes but on much stronger HW.

The Bottom Line
Very good space shooter. Ideal for evenings sessions on HTPC on big TV and with controller in hand. Again don't forget to setup your DOSBox / DOSBox-x to Tandy and enable Tandy sound as well for best experience.

The Good
The actual enemy craft are quite detailed sprites, and they vary as the game goes on.

The Bad
The gameplay is extremely repetitive, without anything close to an original idea.

The playing area doesn't cover the whole width of the screen, even though the borders aren't visually delimited, so it's all too easy to try to dodge a rain of bullets and find that you haven't got space to move.

After losing a life, you resume in the same place as before, without an invincibility period. As the baddies continue to fire while you're being regenerated, it's quite common to restart with a bullet about to hit you, meaning that you're almost certain to lose another life. In general it suffers from an old flaw - lots of extra lives, as an attempt to mask the fact that too many lives are lost arbitrarily and unfairly.

The Bottom Line
A rather pale Pheonix clone, with drab graphics and lots of gameplay frustrations. Your shots aim up the screen, attacking wave after wave of minions, some of which split when shot (the split ones drift down the screen towards you, dying if they hit the ground). It's surprising that this was released as late as it was.