Demon Attack

Demon Attack
Developer(s)Imagic
Publisher(s)Imagic
Designer(s)Rob Fulop
Programmer(s)Atari 2600
Rob Fulop
Odyssey 2, Atari 8-bit
Dave Johnson
Intellivision
Gary Kato
Artist(s)Michael Becker
Platform(s)
Release
March 1982
  • Atari 2600
  • March 1982
  • Intellivision
  • 1982[1]
  • Odyssey 2
  • 1983[2]
  • TI-99/4A
  • 1984[3]
Genre(s)Fixed shooter
Mode(s)1-2 players alternating turns

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. 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 has exclusive console rights too. 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.