The gameplay of Devil World is an interesting twist on the classic Pac man formula. The player must collect dots that fill the aisles of the maze, but unlike Pac man, Tamagon must have a cross to collect dots. The cross also gives Tamagon the ability to breathe fire which when directed at an enemy, which will stun them turning them into white dot with a yellow center, which Tamagon can eat. Enemies will respawn even if Tamagon eats them. The other challenging aspect of Devil World is that the Devil is sitting at the top of the maze controlling a frame which covers most of the visible part of the maze, but not all. The Devil gives commands to two demons at the bottom of the frame, and if Tamagon is caught between the frame and a wall of the maze, Tamagon dies.

Once the player collects all of the dots, the screen will flash and the maze reloads, this time with no dots, but four Bibles instead. The four Bibles are positioned near the four corners of the frame and aren’t affected by the walls of the maze; they just stay in each corner until Tamagon retrieves them. Once Tamagon has a Bible, he must place it in a red box with four holes, one for each Bible. Since the Devil controls the frame the player can move in, there are multiple red boxes that Tamagon can stash the bibles in. When a Bible is placed one of the red boxes, the other boxes fill in as well, so it doesn’t matter which box the player uses. After the player successfully places all the Bibles in the red boxes, the screen flashes and the Devil leaves the top of the screen and a “Bonus Box” maze appears. The player has 30 seconds to capture as many Bibles as they can, which like the before, has Bibles in each corner and mixed throughout the maze that aren’t affected by the walls of the maze. The stage then finishes and loads a maze again, this time with a different enemy group and the color pallet swapped. The next nine stages include variations of different enemy groups and maze layout and after that, the game repeats with the last enemy group. Just like Pac man, the game keeps on going and going until the player runs out of lives.

Devil World had two cart variations, the standard pulse line cart that Nintendo used at the beginning of the Famicom’s life cycle and a nicer looking graphic one. The pulse line carts were pretty much the same for every Famicom game, most of which have the same color pulse line as the cart color (Devil World and Pinball do not though). The pulse line carts started in 1983 with Donkey Kong and ended with Devil World in 1984, and in total their were 14 games released with the pulse cart design. The carts feature both Japanese and English titles for the game as well as “Family Computer” on the top of the cart in Japanese. After Devil World, Nintendo turned away from the consistency of the pulse line carts and republished the games with more colorful game art.

The music of Devil World is great, adding nice breaks of high energy beats during breaks in the action. The rest of the time it’s the simple sounds of dots being eaten, mixed in with the sounds of Tamagon breathing fire, killing enemies, or collecting ice cream cone like objects that add a great sound to the game. The games music is understated, almost made up of the sound effects, but if the player is moving, the sounds almost form a nice variety of ‘music.’ The intro and stage complete music is great, a nice little catchy beat that gets the gamer in the mood to attack the Devil’s World. Take a look at Devil World's gameplay and take a listen to the games' great music:

Stay tuned for Part Two of our Devil World history, including an in depth look at the politics of why Devil World was never released in the USA, only here on the PG Blog!