Demon Attack

aka: Demon Attack +, Super Demon Attack
Moby ID: 9448
Atari 2600 Specs
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Description official descriptions

Demon Attack is an arcade action game with gameplay similar to Phoenix. You control a laser cannon at the bottom of the screen and need to destroy wave after wave of brightly colored demons. The demons bounce around the screen in bizarre patterns and try to destroy your cannon with bombs or lasers. When you shoot a demon, it will be replaced with another or will split into two smaller demons depending on which wave you are playing. When the required number of demons for the current round is finally destroyed, you can move on to the next, more difficult round.

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 99 ratings with 4 reviews)

Simplistic and unexciting, even by 1982 standards

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.

Atari 2600 · by Martin Smith (81669) · 2004

Hypnotic and Zen like minimalistic shooter. A classic.

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.

Atari 2600 · by gametrader (208) · 2005

Good arcade conversion

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.

PC Booter · by Vladimir Dienes · 2023

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Lawsuit

In 1982 Atari sued Imagic due to Demon Attack being to similar to Phoenix.

Version differences

The PC Booter version of Demon Attack was available on both a PCjr cartridge and a 5.25" disk. Both versions were identical, except the disk release had a title screen which was missing on the cartridge version (probably due to the more limited size of the PCjr cartridges.)

Awards

  • Retro Gamer
    • Issue 46 - #13 in the “Top 25 Atari 2600 Games" poll

Information also contributed by PCGamer77 and Servo

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Servo.

TI-99/4A added by Corn Popper. Videopac+ G7400 added by chirinea. Odyssey 2 added by Kabushi. Atari 8-bit added by Martin Smith. TRS-80 CoCo added by L. Curtis Boyle.

Additional contributors: RKL, Corn Popper, chirinea, Nélio, Patrick Bregger, S Olafsson, Rik Hideto.

Game added June 18, 2003. Last modified March 11, 2024.