Phoenix (1980 video game)

Phoenix
Arcade flyer
Publisher(s)	JP: Taito US: Centuri
Platform(s)	Arcade, Atari 2600
Release	Arcade December 1980 (JP) January 1981 (US) Atari 2600 February 1983
Genre(s)	Fixed shooter
Mode(s)	1-2 players alternating turns

Phoenix is a fixed shooter video game developed for arcades in Japan and released in 1980 by Taito. The player controls a space ship shooting at incoming enemies that fly from the top of the screen down towards the player's ship. There are five stages which repeat endlessly. The fifth is a fight against a large enemy spaceship, making Phoenix one of the first shooters with a boss battle, an element that would become common for the genre.

The game was created in Japan by an unknown developer. Following the game's release in Europe and Japanese arcades in 1980, Phoenix was distributed in the United States by Centuri, where it helped the company turn a profit after a loss the previous year. Atari, Inc. contracted the rights to develop a home port for the Atari 2600 and sued Imagic for their game Demon Attack, which they felt was too similar to Phoenix. The 2600 version was released in 1983.

The Atari port of Phoenix received positive reviews from contemporary video game publications such as Electronic Games, Electronic Fun with Computers and Games, and The Video Game Update with some reviews in Blip, JoyStik and Video Games felt it was not as strong as the similar game Demon Attack on the Intellivision. Retrospective reviews of the arcade game from Eurogamer and AllGame praised the game as expanding on formulas established in earlier shooter games.