Demon Attack 4-Player

● connecting

Connecting…

Controls

←→↑↓ or WASD — joystick
Space Z X or Ctrl — fire (hold it for rapid fire)
Enter or fire — START · 2 — SELECT (players; every game starts set for 4) · O — OPTION (game 1-4: normal, tracer, advanced, advanced tracer) — between games
Gamepads work too: stick or d-pad, A/B fire, Start, Back = SELECT, X = OPTION. On a phone or tablet, use the on-screen stick.
Watching? Press fire to get in line — or to take your seat when it's offered.

The game

An experimental modification of Imagic's 1982 Demon Attack cartridge for up to four players at the same time: red, blue, green and yellow laser cannons on the ground, each on its own joystick, against the same waves of demons. Move left and right and fire; a laser that hits scores for its player. Every player has three cannons in reserve and gains one at the next wave if not hit during the wave; the game ends when everyone is out. Bullets and the diving bird are no longer drawn over the cannons (their hits are still computed exactly), and a second cannon exploding at the same moment blinks instead of showing debris.

How the arcade works

Everyone here sees the same game. The arcade runs a real Atari 800, and your browser runs an identical copy in step with it — so there's no video stream, just the four joysticks. The first four people in get the seats; everyone else watches and can get in line. When a seat opens, the next in line gets 10 seconds to take it. Every game is a 4-player game: an empty seat's player is in it too, and whoever takes the seat takes that player over on the spot.