Demons to Diamonds

The Good
Not many shooting games come with a twist. The only one I can think of is Sega's Carnival, where, as well as shooting as many targets as you can, you have to avoid ducks eating away your precious ammo. Another one is Atari's own Demons to Diamonds, which was released around the same time. It is aptly named because there are a lot of demons in the game. There are also diamonds in the game, but you have to earn them. In this game, there is no place for trigger-happy shooters.

You control a red turret at the bottom of the screen, and you must shoot demons that are the same color as you. If you do, a diamond appears either on the left or right side, and will travel across to the opposite side; and you must shoot it to get bonus points. There are also purple demons that, more of than not, outnumber the red ones. If you happen to shoot one of the purple demons, either by accident or on purpose, it turns into a skull which fires at your turret frequently.

Shooting enough of your own advances you to the next level. What I enjoyed most about this game is the increasing difficulty further levels most. By level three, for example, the actions gets quite frenetic, with more and more purple demons appearing than red ones. Furthermore, any skulls that appear on the screen move across the screen, meaning that remaining static is no longer an option.

The animations of the demons walking across the screen is smooth, and the way they morph onto the playfield looks neat. The score and the life counter is laid out nicely at the bottom of the screen, with the counter represented as vertical bars, not numbers like in other Atari 2600 games. I like how the screen flashes to indicate that you are about to enter the next level.

There are some interesting variations of the game, such as a two-player option that you can use if you are sick of playing against a computer opponent; and an option that makes the skull shoot slowly in one-player mode so that you have time to avoid its slot. As a person that only uses the one-player option, it's interesting to see what all these variations do.

The Bad
The only problem I have is the skulls themselves. One appear at the start of the game even before the first purple demon appears. Also, when the skull above you manages to shoot your down, you start in the same position where you got shot, meaning that the skull will wipe out all your lives in seconds. This actually happened to me more than once.

The Bottom Line
As far as Demons to Diamonds goes, what Atari did was take the shooting gallery concept and added a few of their own elements. As a result, this game is as addictive as Space Invaders, causing players to have "just one more go", mainly in an effort to overcome the dangers each level introduces and beat their previous score. You have your standard shooting sound effects, but you also have nice animations and a few variations that make the game interesting. If you still have an Atari 2600 and love shooting stuff, then give this game a go.