Demons to Diamonds (Atari 2600)
There is a simple yet delightful absurdity behind the premise of Demons to Diamonds. The game’s goal really is as simple as the title says: shoot demons to turn them into diamonds. The manual doesn’t even try to really justify why demons are turned into diamonds, it just gives a strange framework for the game by pitching it as some sort of cosmic carnival game. One thing video games will teach you quickly though is that seemingly unusual premises are often established to suit a fun gameplay idea, and while Demons to Diamonds can’t match mushroom-chomping plumbers or fast blue hedgehogs, it still has clear benefits to making the gameplay fun before considering how to contextualize it.
Demons to Diamonds will at first seem a familiar creature. You control a gun on the bottom of the screen and are able to move it right and left until you hit the borders. Many early arcade and Atari 2600 games were about shooting up at some dangerous creatures, but once you hit the button you’ll see its first divergence. The longer you hold the button, the longer your laser is, the shot firing upward until you release the button. You don’t fire and forget, you have to hit your targets square on, and your targets come with a few complications. Two types of demons will crab-walk across the screen and you are only supposed to shoot at one of them. If you are playing as first player, your target color is red, and if you are second player, your target creatures are a pinkish-purple, although you can of course play this game on your own. If you shoot one of the demons you are meant to shoot, it will be obliterated and you get a few points, but a diamond will also appear on the edges of the screen, and if you can shoot it before it shatters itself on the other side, you will earn the real points boost you need to rack up a high score.
If you shoot the wrong color demon though, a skull will take its place on the playfield. Skulls will attack players with small laser shots, and even if you are cautious enough to only shoot the proper demons, a few will spawn in to cause you trouble and keep you moving during play. Things start calmly enough, but as the game continues, the play area will be cluttered and your shots will have to be much more precise to ensure they hit the right demon and snag the diamonds. Once a screen has been cleared of all the demons it is willing to spawn, you’ll move on to another one where they move faster and come in greater numbers, and if you’re skilled enough, you can keep up with the steadily growing chaos of demons, skulls, and diamonds. Even if you aren’t quite skilled enough with the laser blasts and skull shot dodging, Demons to Diamonds gives you a fairly generous five lives and you can earn more with a high enough score. You can even shift the mode on the Atari to make the enemies slower to give you more time to acclimate to it, but it will eventually reach the same fever pitch and crowds of the regular mode once you get far enough.
Like many an Atari 2600 shooter, your ability to enjoy Demons to Diamonds will be based on how well it hooks you with its task. Some might kick up the difficulty too quickly, others might not have much variety in enemy positioning, but Demons to Diamonds ramping intensity and the need to avoid shooting certain enemy types to keep things safer allows it to stay dynamic even on repeat playthroughs. Moments like having to decide between safety and trying to shoot a diamond while skulls are firing on you or trying to squeak a shot between a cluster of demons to hit the one that is the right color makes it more than just twitch shooting, but there are a few little hiccups. After a death, you come back to life right where you died, meaning that sometimes you’re set up for a second death if the skulls are firing on all cylinders. When the screen gets cluttered with skulls, you have no real recourse besides waiting them out until they disappear, but those moments of downtime don’t last all too long unless you’ve been incredibly careless with your shots.
The combination of forgiving elements and having some control over the pace of play means that sessions in Demons to Diamonds can be quite long compared to other space shooters. The shifting enemy spawn patterns ensure it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting the same fight over and over, and it’s fairly satisfying to be able to have a good amount of time to build up your score before you croak. It will always be about that basic task of turning demons into diamonds though, so it’s only got the same longevity of any simple shooting gallery game, just with less to potentially turn you away from it than some of its peers.
THE VERDICT: Demons to Diamonds is an Atari 2600 shooter that sounds a little odd but uses it’s core conceit as a way of standing out from the crowd. Timing your shots is important but not too slow and not so difficult that the experience drags on, and that’s even with the game allowing you to make a few mistakes. It’s still a somewhat simple design with a few issues like chain deaths, but the game lasts long enough that you can engage with the unusual task of turning demons into diamonds and blasting them for points. Quick strategy and escalating challenge is a good way to keep a simple shooter like this one from growing stale.
And so, I give Demons to Diamonds for the Atari 2600…
A GOOD rating. Tinkering with the simple “shoot up at enemies from the bottom of the screen” formula ensures that Demons to Diamonds isn’t forgettable, and small traits like your shot going further the longer you hold it down aren’t just added in to make it seem different. It has that split-second subconscious decision-making that makes more complex shooters engaging, although it does take a while to get there and Demons to Diamonds will never break away from its basic core concept. It’s a fine game to own for players who like Atari games, and it feels a touch above games like Spider Fighter in making the waves of enemies diverse, but its design is still more about grabbing you for short-term engagement or hoping you get on a tear that makes it hard to quit for a bit.
In addition to the charmingly happy demons on the game box, Demons to Diamonds’s weird premise makes shooting some fairly ugly sprites with repetitive sound effects easier to stomach. Once you’ve pushed past those slight drawbacks, Demons to Diamonds shows it’s got just enough to call a player back if they feel like blasting something that’s not totally straightforward.