DemonStar (from developers of Galactix, Raptor: Call of the Shadows)

[NY00123]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DemonStar

 

This is a top-down vertical scrolling shooter, from the same company that brought Galactix and Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Consisting of 18 levels, this game, retroactively also known as "DemonStar - Original Missions", had an initial demo release by the end of 1997, before having a proper release in 1998.

8 more levels, known as "Secret Missions 1", were further released in 2002, followed by 8 levels of "Secret Missions 2" in 2003.

Recently, a new release of the Original Missions was released via Steam, including a remixed mode not present beforehand.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2577180/DemonStar__Original_Missions/

 

It's still being updated. Certain features, like keyboard remapping, are planned to be re-implemented, due to the removal of Windows-specific code.

Scott Host (the owner, and also the coder of the new version) hopes that sales of this version will assist with funding further development of Raptor Remixed.

[Dynamo]

I remember DemonStar! Doesn't it also have a custom soundtrack by Bobby Prince? It's cool to see it back in action.

[Devalaous]

A long long time ago I bought a controller to play Doom with on my PC, and it came with Demonstar SM2, presumably for the people that bought a controller without a game to play yet (or, for people whose games turned out to be unable to support controllers *glares at Unreal 2*)

 

It was hard as balls and impossible to get far in....but the music was AWESOME.

 

 

[Plerb]

I played Demonstar as a kid! It was on an eGames compilation CD (Raptor was as well). It was a cool game.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Dynamo said:

I remember DemonStar! Doesn't it also have a custom soundtrack by Bobby Prince? It's cool to see it back in action.

Yes! A couple tracks were even used for Doom: The Lost Episode and they are a perfect match!

Edited December 21, 2023 by Rudolph

[Fonze]

I loved raptor as a kid, would be awesome to see that remastered. Never heard of demonstar but it looks pretty cool! Will add to my wishlist.

[NY00123]

11 hours ago, Dynamo said:

I remember DemonStar! Doesn't it also have a custom soundtrack by Bobby Prince? It's cool to see it back in action.

It does, at least in what's known as the Original Missions (from 1997-1998). The situation differs for the Secret Missions (2002-2003), and is a bit complicated for the first part of them.

 

The Original Missions (OM) indeed have MIDI tracks of Prince. The Secret Missions 2 (SM2) have digitized recordings of Scott Host. With the Secret Missions 1 (SM1), this depends on the version. The less commonly known version 5.0 from 2007, possibly made for Reflexive Entertainment, also has a digitized soundtrack of Scott Host in SM1. It'll further be used as a base in a new version of SM1, similar to the recent release of OM.

 

In versions earlier than 5.0, SM1's intro track is still essentially the same digitized one, but all the rest are Marcus Knudsen's MIDI tracks. Even during SM1's intro, an empty MIDI track is played, in parallel to the digitized one that can be heard; Probably since playing an intro MIDI is also what happens in OM. Migrating to Host's digitized tracks in SM1 as of v5.0 obviously made it closer to SM2 in style, while I also heard about copyright-related concerns with the MIDI tracks for SM1.

Edited December 22, 2023 by NY00123

[S3M_XM]

I think I remembered playing a 60-minute trial back on RealOne Arcade when I was younger, it's nice that Scott brought back that game to modern computers.

[Biodegradable]

Oh cool, now I have an excuse to talk about this. A few months ago I had been growing a little nostalgic for Raptor. It was one of the first games I played a lot back in the MS-DOS days after Doom and wanted to revisit it. I found that the two current ports of the game on Steam aren't terribly well received, but learned from one review that the developer Scott Host had crowd-funded his pursuit to put out a new remaster of the game. I quickly followed him on Twitter where I found out about him also remastering DemonStar to help create some buzz about the Raptor remaster. I also watched Host stream some last-minute dev stuff over on YouTube and got to interact with him a little.

 

While I'd been waiting for DemonStar to come out, I've been trying out other SHMUPs over on Steam and really acquaint myself with the genre. I'm pretty bad at them, honestly but still find them pretty fun. I wish Host all the best with finishing up DemonStar and highly anticipate the return of Raptor!

[Redneckerz]

This game was the SHMUP for my youth. For years i never could remember what it was called. But it is a forgotten classic.

[BeachThunder]

Awesome, I have never actually heard of DemonStar, but Raptor's cool

[Murdoch]

Enjoyed Raptor, never heard of this. Interesting.

[Lila Feuer]

Was very fond of DemonStar in my youth, I last played it in 2014.

[Grain of Salt]

FWIW, the Demonstar games are essentially an offbrand version of the Raiden games* (vaguely similar to Jazz Jackrbabit 1 and Sonic), except with much less evil gameplay (in Raiden, as usual for arcade shmups, you have 1 hp and 3 lives for the entire game, and the opposition you face basically requires careful study if you want to have a chance of beating it without numerous continues). So if you like demonstar you have a bunch more games to check out that you might like (particularly there's an old windows port of Raiden 2 which has selectable difficulty and options for more lives iirc, so it ends up being very close to a demonstar game. but with better art. although it has a weird stretched aspect ratio which is pretty distracting if you've seen the correct way the game looks. you could also just play raidens 1, 2 and DX on mame)

 

* "What are the actual similarities?" well I'm glad you asked. Here's a list of the gameplay elements both Raiden and Demonstar have:

• Red and blue ships for player 1 and player 2, which look veeeery similar.
• Weapon powerup item that shifts between 3 colors and spiral around the screen. One color is a wide spray of yellow projectiles, another is a fast projectile that fires straight up, like a laser.
• Missile powerup that shifts between 2 colors, one of which is aimed missile and the other fires straight up but theoretically does more damage. Missiles fire at the same time to your main attack and are like a parallel weapon system.
• Bomb powerup that shifts between 2 colors, one of which is a scatter bomb that explodes around you and the other is a projectile that fires straight up and then explodes a little way from your ship, taking longer to go off but theoretically doing more damage (in all raiden and demonstar games this bomb is pretty useless, heh)
• You take off from a floating aircraft runway thing at the start of stage 1

If you look at the HUDs they even have the same information in the same place for some reason (in fairness it's common to have these things in roughly those places in arcade shmups I guess)

 

To answer the question, I do like the demonstar games though. As others have said, they're that same chilled out PC shmup style as Raptor. I think Raptor has better art and music, but Demonstar possibly has slightly less nothingy gameplay. SM1 and SM2 also greatly improve on Raptor and demonstar 1 in that they made each stage visually unique.

[NY00123]

I can mention first that version 1.1 of the remix has been released recently (January 15, more-or-less). Albeit I had another reason for posting now.

 

As a little disclaimer, for the ones not aware:

- I found myself in contact with Scott Host a few years earlier. It was originally Raptor-related, with @nukeykt having greater involvement thanks to earlier reverse-engineering efforts, but that might be a different topic.

- As a consequence, I've been granted a copy of the game. The video linked here should demonstrate this copy.

- I've actually also gotten beta access a short while before the release, albeit not doing much pre-release testing.

 

And so, here's the video. Following a textual segment about DemonStar and the re-release, level 1 is demonstrated in legacy and enhanced modes, side-by-side. I actually used the less common vertical orientation / TATE mode, currently with the aspect ratio of 5:6. In total, 12:6 for the video itself.