Ludography
Space Demon cover

1980 · Nintendo Research & Development 1 · Action · Arcade

Space Demon

Space Firebird is a 1980 arcade game published by Gremlin Industries, Inc. It is a "slide and shoot" shooter, similar to titles such as Galaga.

Released
1980
Platforms
ArcadeZilog Z80
Genres
ActionArcadeShooter
Developers
Nintendo Research & Development 1
Publishers
Nintendo
Perspective
Bird view / Isometric
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
Japan
Languages
English
Composers
Hirokazu Tanaka

About

Space Firebird is a 1980 arcade video game developed by Nintendo R&D1 and released by Nintendo in Japan and Europe. In America, the game was distributed by Far East Video. Sega-Gremlin also released a version of the game in North America.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players guide a ship through deep space while encountering spherical objects that appear to look like a bunch of comets or shooting stars. They suddenly shapeshift into large creatures called Firebirds as the player gets closer to them and start attacking the ship in ever more complex looping formations. As a Space Ship Commander, players must seek out and destroy three kinds of Firebirds in three missions. The names of the Firebirds are Gulls, Eagles and the Mighty Emperor (or simply "Emperor").

The Emperor is destroyed by four hits, the Eagle with two hits and the Gull with one hit. The Eagles drop bombs that are aimed at sabotaging the ship controlled by players. When hit, the bomb scatters deadly shrapnel. To avoid this from happening, players must destroy the bomb from directly beneath it before it crashes.

Legacy

A year later, a remake of Space Firebird titled Space Demon was released by Fortrek. In this arcade game, a spacecraft larger than the one in Space Firebird becomes lost and falls victim to the horrifying Space Demon and its accomplices. Players have to battle their way through the Demon's forces by shooting all of the satanic enemies including the Space Demon itself as they appear on the screen. Like Space Firebird, Space Demon also allowed players to make the main ship dodge from left to right and use the Warp Shield once every mission to zoom ahead and take out enemies by ramming into them.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Arcade31 December 1980Japan

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Publishers

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.