Games of our Lives: Demons to Diamonds

This week’s Games of our Lives is Demons to Diamonds. Anyone remember this game? I loved it when I was a kid.

Long before the Atari 2600 unsuccessfully tried to duplicate arcade classics like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, its programmers created wonderful little games that engaged imaginations as much as hand/eye coordination. Demons To Diamonds
took things one step further and put real life into its 8-bit graphics
with a cool little story in the instruction manual, which set the game
at a carnival, and included a churlish demon who told players, "So come
on, reach for your laser, exercise your trigger finger on us. Put us
through our paces and we’ll dazzle you with demonic tricks!" Players
knew right away that they were in for a good time.

[. . .]

Kids today might not like it because: After years of online gaming, playing with a person who is sitting the same room frightens and confuses them.

Kids today might like it because: The manual tells them, "Although DEMONS TO DIAMONDS was
primarily designed for children in the 6 to 12 age range, we find that
people of all ages enjoy this engaging game." Don’t argue, just do what
the manual says and nobody will get hurt.

Check out the full column. I think I snuck some funny into it, and I don’t want to rob the AV Club of your precious clicks.

15 thoughts on “Games of our Lives: Demons to Diamonds”

  1. Wil,
    I so remember running over to my friend’s house after school because he had an Atari and cable TV. (smiles) Fond memories.
    As to your temporary new home here, why not point your wilwheaton.net to resolve here until you are ready to bring the main site back up? It doesn’t take very long to change and you can change it back when you are ready for WWDN version 3!!
    Take care.
    -gil

  3. Wil, I’ve tried emailing you this week and it’s bounced back. I know you’re having trouble with your site, but is there any way of getting in touch with you? I don’t want to go into it here, but I genuinely need to get in touch with you- follow the link in my profile page to find out a bit more…
    I’ll keep trying your email, but if it doesn’t work, what do I do?? My email is at the bottom of the ‘About The Blog’ page on the site linked to in my profile…
    Phew!… what we do to avoid the spam bots.

  5. I remember this game well.
    Wil, do you still have your old Atari stuff? The common games like this are easy to come by if you don’t have it. My brother and I still have our 2600 from 1977 along with a healthy collection of cartridges.
    I still have a 2600 (that new Flackback 2) on my desk at 3D Realms, the Duke Nukem people. Just played good ol’ Combat today, the original Deathmatch. Ha! 🙂

  7. Don’t exactly remember Kaboom the game but I DO remember Kaboom the cereal :). That was yum. Heh. Ahh.. atari memories. I loved pitfall.

  8. one of my dearest friends has a bunch of old Atari gear, including this game…all i remember about it is that i got my ass kicked, repeatedly. i also remember my 6 year old nephew kicking my ass at Pong (him and his brothers had the Atari pack for Sega)…THAT was embarassing…

  9. I used to have a 2600 — purchased at a garage sale — but it got lost/destroyed/absorbed by aliens many years ago.
    Coincidentally, I saw a sorta “re-issued” version of the 2600 at the store today. It had something, like, forty games built in and looked sweet as hell. I think it only cost thirty bucks, too. I might just have to procure myself one.
    JAB

  10. Oh yes, I do remember Demons to Diamonds… on my friend’s Ataris.. arrgh!! As a girl (as if that made a difference), my parents never felt that Ataris were beneficial to my personal growth. So they got me a TI/94A, a Texas Instrument computer thingie. Anyone remember those?! I think I recall, it had 16K of memory!! By the way, I plugged it in a few months ago while at the ‘rents house and gawd-dam, it still worked!
    I also remember Odyssey. Odyssey anyone? It was lame but I remember it.
    Finally my parents let me have a Nintendo later on. I guess they gave up since I was over at my friend’s house playing Super Mario Brothers and Zelda all the time and thought it’d be nice if I spent more time at home.
    Oh yes, Kaboom RULED!! I also loved Pitfall. Oooh.. anyone remember a Kool-aid Man game?!!! Ah, nostalgia is fun sometimes. Especially since I always found that word dirty.

  11. Oh yes, my husband votes the E.T. game as the worst Atari game ever. At least the Kool-aid man game was free, after sending in your Kool-aid points (took a year or two to get all the points too.)

  12. Man, Super Mario Brothers was and is still one of my favorite games. It got to the point where I could beat the game in about twelve minutes (using the warps, of course).
    JAB

  14. So I finally saw the episode of CSI that you were in. I didn’t even realize that was the one until your name showed up on the guest star list.
    Even though you were only in what, 2 scenes?, I thought you were still fantastic. I can’t wait to see you in more, if you do keep acting.
    If you’ve ever heard of the British comedian Eddie Izzard, that’s fantastic. If not, you should check out his concert Glorious, and go to the end with about 10 minutes left. He starts talking about technology, computers specifically, and his frustrations with them. It is quite hilarious, if I say so myself.
    Hope the WWdN stuff is going well. Can’t wait to see it.

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