Good Game, Kuso Box Art: Demon Attack

This is an idea I had the other night for a regular feature, which will appear whenever I get around to doing it, in which I examine the spectacularly "so bad it's good" box art for a game that is actually pretty good, if not at least solid. For the feature's debut, we're gonna look at the box art for the classic Atari 2600 game, Demon Attack.


Demon Attack was developed and released by Imagic, a company formed by the second group of Atari programmers to jump ship and form a third party 2600 development studio, not long after Activision set the precedent. Imagic cranked out a surprising number of games in only a few years, including several pre-crash classics, like Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Laser Gates and Riddle of the Sphinx, but their most successful title was Demon Attack.

Gameplay-wise, Demon Attack was one of the many games in the then-flourishing "Space Invaders ripoff" genre, and was set apart by it's fast, tight gameplay, well detailed and animated (for the time) alien sprites, and that extra level of polish that set Imagic's games apart from the crowd. There were several versions for different consoles, and each one was slightly different, so as to take advantage of the features unique to that console. By merit of having a much bigger user base, the version for the Atari 2600 was the most popular.

This version of the game was programmed by none other than the great Rob Fulop, and we here at Camp Kusoge would like to take a moment to give this man a well earned salute. You see, after the Atari 2600 was out of the picture, Fulop went on to work on a couple of interactive "movie games" including a little masterpiece known as "Night Trap," and as if that weren't enough, the controversy surrounding Night Trap so annoyed Mr. Fulop that he then went the extra Kuso mile, and unleashed the Petz franchise onto the world. (get it? Petz Unleashed?... Is this thing on?) A franchise that endures to this day. And for those of you who've got anything bad to say about it, keep in mind that games like Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed were likely funded by the obscene profits raked in from Petz.

Best of all, when you look at who did what, it works out to about five degrees of separation between Night Trap and Sukeban Sachou Rena Wii, and that's not even factoring in Dana Plato.

Mr. Fulop, you're a man after my own heart; Camp Kusoge salutes you.

Anyway, for those of you who haven't yet pirated the rom, go do that right now, because Demon Attack is a kick-ass game, but that's not really the reason I'm writing about it. I do so because the box art is totally winner. Just look at it. Just... look at it!


See, back in the day, video games had to make do with the absolute barest of representations in order to get by. In fact, any time the 2600 was doing something more advanced than Combat, there was some kind of crazy-ass voodoo programming trickery involved. David Crane recently released a series of iPhone apps detailing the kinds of crazy tricks that went into making seemingly simple things work on the system. As someone who has trouble running programming the VCR (whoa, now there's a retro pop culture reference for you), my head spins at the thought of it.

The point of all this being that the box art was a big deal at the time, because that provided the imagery that you then needed to superimpose on these abstract collections of blocky pixels, by way of your own imagination in order to make any sense out of the game.

Ideally; of course. In practice, it doesn't always work out.

I'm not gonna comment on the curvy font, or the rainbow patterns, because things like that were in style at the time. What can I say, it was the early eighties. We're just lucky the whole thing isn't blindingly neon. What does warrant comment, though, is the picture of what I presume is the "action" of the game, as shown on the box.

I'm sure that for a young boy seeing that image on the box, it probably looked like the most badass thing this side of He-Man picking a fight with Godzilla, but as a grownup, I'm pretty sure it looks like toy dinosaurs that have been spray painted silver, with model jet wings glued awkwardly onto them, spitting glitter at each other while flying through SPACE (space space space). Not only that, but that T-Rex in the foreground looks like he's got some kind of rocket shoved clean up his arse.

Perhaps the best part of all is that this wickedly awesome picture has no real connection to the game itself. At no point do you fight dinosaurs with jet wings on them, at no point does anything spit glitter (well, actually, some of the attacks look a bit like glitter) and at no point do you fly through SPACE (space space space). Mind you, at no point are you actually attacked by demons either (they're aliens, according to the manual) so clearly, the incongruity didn't stop with the box art.

It's hard not to look back fondly on an image like this. It was a simpler time, when so long as your box displayed the game's title, what system it was for, that's all that mattered. Add to that any picture you want, just go by rule of cool, it's all good, and if you're a high tier company like Imagic, lovingly plaster your logo and distinctive graphic design as loudly and brashly as possible.

Silver jet dinosaurs spitting glitter in space that have nothing at all to do with the game; Camp Kusoge salutes you.