The Game: Demons coalesce into existence in mid-air above your cannon. Send them back where they came from by force. (Texas Instruments, under license from Imagic, 1983)
Memories: Somewhat similar to the Intellivision edition of Imagic’s Demon Attack in look and feel, this TI version of the game takes advantage of that computer’s graphics capabilities to turn the attacking demons into little pixellated pieces of Lovecraftian horror. It doesn’t make the game better or worse, really, but it adds a certain frisson to have nightmarish alien jellyfish-like critters descending upon you. Why Super Demon Attack? Because it’s got super demons, plain and simple.
The game plays more or less like the Atari 2600 version – in fact, some of the elements of the original, in which I fully expected to deal with demons that split into two equally dangerous, smaller opponents once they were hit, never materialized. Super Demon Attack is a straightforward blast-fest.
Not that this necessarily means “easy” – almost half of the ships I lose in any given game are lost moments after a new “life” begins. This game demands speed – and if you’re not ready to move fast, you probably won’t live long enough to see the various alien horrors lined up to oppose you.
The only mystery that Super Demon Attack leaves for classic gaming archaeologists is why it wasn’t ported to the Colecovision, which was built around the same graphics processor as the TI 99/4a. Surely that would’ve offered more market penetration for Demon Attack than this computer version, though the answer to that puzzle may lie in a bruising legal battle fought over the Atari 2600 edition of Demon Attack.