Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game created by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.
Fulop designed the game after leaving Atari, saying he was not properly reimbursed for his work on a port of Space Invaders. He co-founded the company Imagic in 1981 and began developing Demon Attack.
Demon Attack (Atari 2600)
It was the first game he developed that had a graphic artist, Michael Becker, who created eight-phase animations for the demons. On the games release in 1982, it received positive critical attention for its graphics and gameplay and became one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games, and the best-selling game developed by Imagic.
Programmer Gary Kato created a port of Demon Attack for the Intellivision console which added a final boss mothership. The boss was similar in gameplay to the final boss in Phoenix (1980), a game Atari had exclusive console rights to. This led to Atari filing a suit against Imagic. A settlement was reached in January 1983, with Imagic being allowed to release Demon Attack for several video game consoles and home computers in the 1980s.
Demon Attack is set on a surface of a planet, when strange winged creatures float above, threatening the player. They attack, leading the player to retaliate by shooting at them with a laser cannon.
Matthew House of AllGame described the game as a fixed shooter. The players start with three lives, called bunkers in the game, which are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Each time the players are hit by enemy fire, they lose a bunker, and the game ends when all bunkers are depleted. The waves of enemies grow more complex as the game progresses, with wave five having enemies divide into two smaller enemies after being shot. Later waves feature enemies who will dive towards the laser cannon.
The players can move left and right at the bottom of the screen to avoid enemies. The game offers different modes of play, including a Tracer Shot mode, which allows the player to guide lasers after they are shot. Two-player games can either be played competitively against each other or as a co-op mode. In the co-op mode, the two players alternate every four seconds on who controls moving and firing the ship's laser. In competitive mode, each player controls their own laser cannon at simultaneously with their own score and bunker count. If one player loses all their bunkers, the other player continues until all bunkers are lost.
In the Intellivision version, the boss fight with the demon flagship named Pandemonium appears after three waves of enemies are defeated. It is destroyed by eroding its shield with lasers shots and aiming for a small rotating wheel of vulnerability.
More details about this game can be found on Wikipedia.org.
This version of Demon Attack was designed for Atari 2600, which was commercially very successful video game console of second generation produced by Atari from 1977 to 1992. It was the first console that used removable memory modules with games. At the time of its greatest fame, more than 30 million units of this console were sold for about $ 200 a piece. To date, the game library for this console contains nearly 1,000 original games. More information about the Atari 2600 can be found here.
Recommended Game Controllers:
You can control this game easily by using the keyboard of your PC (see the table next to the game). However, for maximum gaming enjoyment, we strongly recommend using a USB joystick that you simply plug into the USB port of your computer. If you do not have a joystick, buy a suitable USB controller on Amazon or AliExpress or in some of your favorite online stores.
Available online emulators:
5 different online emulators are available for Demon Attack. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game Demon Attack are summarized in the following table:
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This version of Demon Attack was designed for Atari 2600, which was commercially very successful video game console of second generation produced by Atari from 1977 to 1992. It was the first console that used removable memory modules with games. At the time of its greatest fame, more than 30 million units of this console were sold for about $ 200 a piece. To date, the game library for this console contains nearly 1,000 original games. More information about the Atari 2600 can be found 
