Demon Attack

Demon Attack is an arcade style action game first released for the Atari 2600 in 1982 and later ported to numerous other consoles and computers. The game is similar to other arcade space shooters such as Space Invaders or Phoenix and has the player attempting to shoot various invaders to earn as many points as possible. Due to similarities with the arcade game Phoenix, Atari filed a lawsuit against Imagic which was eventually settled out of court.

Like many other space shooters, the player controls a ship at the bottom of the screen which can only move left or right. In the upper portions of the screen demons appear in waves which the player needs to shoot. The demons appear in limited numbers at one time, and when a demon is destroyed a new one appears to take its place until the level is completed. The demons attack with various types of weaponry depending on the level; this includes lasers, multiple bombs, or clusters of lasers. On more difficult levels the demons will split into two smaller demons the first time they are shot. Once all the demons on a particular level are destroyed, the player moves on to the next, more difficult wave. There are 84 levels in all; once the 84th level is reached the game repeats but without increasing in difficulty. In some versions of the game (including the Intellivision, PCjr, and TRS-80 Color Computer) there are additional waves where players need to attack the demon mothership; here numerous demons attack while players attempt to shoot through a shield and eventually target the ship's eye. After the mothership is destroyed, the game continues again to the normal style levels. A version was published for the TI-99/4A as Super Demon Attack which features different graphics for the demons, however the overall gameplay remains the same.