Rob Fulop, the game designer who snuck his initials into Missile Command while working at Atari, gave us Demon Attack as Imagic’s first offering, putting Imagic on the map. I’ll gush about Demon Attack further down. They also brought in some (I assume) disgruntled Intellivision designers and launched a stellar line of unique games for that system like Microsurgeon, Truckin’, and Dracula.
Their strategy of course extended to include home computers, and they brought three to the Commodore VIC 20. Two one might suspect, but the third was just good luck for VIC 20 owners.
Demon Attack (Imagic)
Designed by Rob Fulop / VIC 20 version by Bruce Pederson 
Demon Attack on the Atari 2600 is a game so insanely perfect, so peak early eighties fixed-position shooter, that even though the formula had been done to death at that point, it was all new again. Crisp, colorful graphics, varying ship designs with ships dividing into two, and sound design that blows the player away - it was all there.
It was a huge hit with players and critics and became Imagic’s flagship title, in a race with Miner 2049er to get on as many consoles and computers as possible. The difference is that Imagic cranked all of them out in-house, whereas Miner 2049er was licensed to a bunch of different companies.
On the VIC 20, Demon Attack is completely faithful to the Atari 2600 version. The movement of the player’s ship and enemy patterns are identical. The awesome WHOOSH when the alien ships warp in, the pounding soundtrack that goes up an octave throughout each wave, increasing the tension - all faithfully reproduced.
Strategies and tactics from the Atari version apply here. The player gets one bullet in the air at a time, but so do the enemies. There are three enemies on the screen at a time at first but up to six once they start splitting into two.
In spite of those numbers, only the ship closest to the bottom of the screen will shoot back, with different types of bullets. The enemies start by warping into the screen at different altitudes high, medium, and low. Once the ships are eliminated another one warps in to replace it, until the end of the wave.
As the wave approaches its end, ships stop warping in and ones at higher altitudes will drop down toward the lower layer until they are all gone. Finishing the wave without losing a ship nets the player a bonus ship, up to a point I assume, and another nice little audio tone.
Imagic choose a weird color scheme for the VIC 20 box of black and silver rather than black and the usual rainbow colors seen on Atari and Odyssey 2 releases. It's a little weird but it was a tumultuous time in game packaging I guess. Whatever the box, Demon Attack is a masterpiece and an essential part of any console or computer’s collection if it was released for it.
Atlantis (Imagic)
Designed by Dennis Koble / VIC 20 version by Bruce Pederson
Atlantis lead the second wave of Atari VCS titles released by Imagic following up on their success with Demon Attack with another cool shooter, this time with multiple placed cannons doing the shooting rather than a moving ship. The cannons defend multiple sections of domed city and other things from invaders coming from above. Like Missile Command, the game ends when the city is destroyed.
As with Demon Attack, the enemy exists in several layers of sky above. They fly across the screen starting at the top layer and if not shot down emerge from the side again, one layer down. When they reach the bottom layer they fire on and destroy one section of the city.
On the Atari VCS version the player has three guns - left, center, and right - but subsequent versions removed the center gun, narrowing the options for the player. The guns on each side of the screen shoot at a 45 degree angle towards the center of the screen, so the player’s defense rests on shooting enemies coming from the right with mostly the left gun and vice versa.
It might be tempting to lean on the left or right gun in that situation, firing off enough shots to nearly create a wall of laser fire, taking out most enemies at the higher altitudes. That strategy won’t work long, though, as some speedier ships come into play later that can be low before the player knows it.
A mix or balance of using both guns is ideal, then, but challenging. I’ll admit I’ve never gotten too far in Atlantis, but like most Imagic games, it’s always fun to try. Atlantis on the Commodore VIC 20 looks, sounds, and plays great, even if it’s a bit brutal seeing one’s failure lead to several cool underwater domed cities being destroyed on one’s watch.
Dragonfire (Imagic)
Designed by Bob Smith / VIC 20 version by Tim Yu
Another great Atari VCS game that came after Atlantis was Dragonfire by Bob Smith, a two-screen action game where the player has to avoid the titular dragonfire that comes in the form of fireballs while gathering treasures.
The first screen has the small figure of a player running left across a beautiful bridge, spanning across a moat between two castles, and dodging fireballs. They come at different speeds and levels, so the lower fireball at pixel knee level must be jumped and the higher, faster fireball at face level must be ducked. There is a discernable pattern on the first and maybe second crossing, but after that the speed picks up and it gets a lot harder.
The danger is running into two at once while on the bridge; the lower one and the higher one coming at the player at the same time. Care must be made to avoid this, so it is wise to time going forward and jumping over the slower fireball in between the faster fireball shots.
Crossing the bridge, the player enters the dragon's lair where the large and angry dragon runs across the bottom of the screen shooting fireballs straight up toward the top of the screen. The lair is filled with treasures the player must grab for points, with the room exit at the top left only appearing once every treasure is grabbed. The dragon is a little slower than the player but shoots fireballs constantly in a sort of upside-down Kaboom pattern.
The key to survival in this room is to keep moving, of course, but back in the day I came up with running in a sideways "8" or infinity symbol, back and forth, picking up treasures that way. If I missed one, I kept moving and came back for another pass in roughly that same pattern. This kept me ahead of the dragonfire pretty well. After a few sets of the two-screen challenge, the speed ramps up drastically on both parts of the game.
It's important to note that having a two-screen game at all was still a pretty big deal back then, especially for the Atari VCS, but Imagic provided that for them as well as Commodore VIC 20 owners. With Imagic one can expect crisp graphics and sound quality and they certainly delivered that on the VIC 20. Dragonfire is quick, crisp fun that never gets old.
Those are the three games Imagic choose for the Commodore VIC 20 before moving on to the Commodore 64 for their last few years. These were safe, surefire hits and VIC 20 owners were glad to get them. Personally, I would have liked to seen some of their Intellivision exclusives ported to the VIC as well. Microsurgeon, Truckin', and several other of their hits would have played well on the machine. Oh well.
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