Along with Activision, Imagic was one of the biggest outside developers of games for the Atari Video Computer System, and just like Activision, Imagic was also founded by a group of disgruntled former Atari game designers. Imagic had a number of big hits in the video game cartridge department, one of the biggest of them all was Demon Attack.
Although modeled after the hit arcade game Galaxian, Demon Attack was usually accused of being a rip-off of the video game Phoenix instead. Personally speaking, I really prefer playing Demon Attack on the VCS over both of those other two games. When I was kid, Demon Attack somehow managed to find its way into my Atari 2600 multiple times a day, every single day.
The player controls a laser cannon fighting-off multiple waves of demons as they repeatedly attack from the sky above. According to the video game's backstory, as the player, you are supposedly stranded on the planet Krybor. As a little piece of personal reminiscence, there was a truly creepy television movie from my childhood called Gargoyles, it starred Cornel Widle, and it aired a lot on TV when I was little kid. When I played Demon Attack I used to pretend those demons were actually the gargoyles from that movie. If you come across a copy of it, check the film out, it's dated, but still fun to watch.
The game was programmed by Rob Fulop who while he was still with Atari was the programmer behind the VCS port of Missile Command, those two games alone make for an impressive career, but Fulop had a couple of more hits to his name, and was later responsible for the infamous video game Night Trap. Demon Attack was critically praised at the time of its release and is remembered as one of the best games ever produced for the Atari Video Computer System.
Is it worth owning? What do you think? This is an essential title for all Atari collections.
-Jay
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