Demon's World / Horror Story

Demons World is a 2D scrolling shooter arcade game created by Toaplan Co. Ltd. The video game was released in 1989. Toaplan Co. Ltd. is a Japanese game developer established in 1984. Most of the famous game franchises developed by this company were scrolling shooter games and some of them are Truxton, Knuckle Bash, Zero Wing, Hellfire and Out Zone. Toaplan developed games for big video game companies like Romstar, Taito, SNK, and Data East. After 10 years of operating, the company declared bankruptcy in 1994.

Demons World is a platform and scrolling shooter arcade game, you are required to control the hero, help him navigate through a horror-themed play area and kill all hostiles he encounters on sight. The game consists of several stages which are all linear and auto-scrolling, this means the play area is always scrolling even when the hero is not moving. However, you still have the liberty to move the hero backwards and forwards on the screen. As the screen scrolling, new locations are displayed on the screen, navigating these locations sometimes require the hero to jump or double jump platforms to reach power-ups or monsters he must shoot. Each stage of the game has a boss which you have to defeat to successfully complete the stage and move to the next challenge. Also, the hero carries a gun which can be upgraded after collecting power-ups, the gun can fire normal bullets, fire lasers, bombs, 3-way spraying bullet guns, flamethrowers, and grenade launchers. These power-ups come in random letter and signs and they mostly appear when you shoot any of the hostiles.

The game starts with non-hostile characters running from the directing the hero is headed as they are being pursued by a flying green demon. Shortly after, flying pink demons appear and your hero must fire his gun at them on ground level or jump to reach floating demons. As you shoot demons, they explode and fade away. Floating demons can descend to hurt your hero but you score points and power-ups for blasting most of them, so kill as many as you can. Asides the floating demons, there are rolling barrels which can crush the hero if he does not jump them. The second stage features a similar environment as the first, but here, the rolling barrels appear more often. There are also monsters who appear through the doors and gates along the street. Some of the other levels in the game features fewer demons and monsters and more landslides, you must jump them and avoid falling into huge pits along the terrains you pass across. There is a fire rain level where the hero only has to avoid as many as he can so as not lose a life. Other levels have demons and ghosts from popular Japanese folklore.