The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Clash at Demonhead (a.k.a. Dengeki Bang! Bang!)
Don't miss this non-linear platforming action-adventure game on the NES with a great sense of humor.
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Vic Tokai
PLATFORMS: NES
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Fairly playable
It’s undeniable that Japanese culture has had a major influence on video games going back to the earliest coin-op arcade machines – the first major video game company, Atari, was named after a variant of the Japanese board game Go, and the most of the major arcade games, console systems and console games of the 1980s all came from Japanese companies.
For that reason, it’s unsurprising that Japanese manga and anime have had a profound effect on the look and feel of many games, and we take their popularity for granted today. It’s worth noting, however, that prior to the late 1990s when Pokémon, Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon helped to popularize manga and anime in North America in an enduring way, there was a general cultural distaste for the manga and anime style as well as for video games that looked or felt too Japanese. Many games that were brought over from Japan were heavily localized, sometimes almost beyond the point of recognition, to be more palatable to North American audiences. One famous example was the original Rockman, which Capcom christened Mega Man in North America (essentially abandoning the game’s rock ‘n roll them) and approving some legendarily awful cover art to replace the manga-style cover of the Famicom release. And if you’re interested in the topic, the website (and book series) Legends of Localization provides a significant amount of detail about the many choices (both good and bad) that were made to attempt to make Japanese games more marketable for North American gamers.
I mention all of this because Vic Tokai’s 1990 NES game Clash at Demonhead (known in its original 1989 Famicom release as Dengeki Big Bang!) is a remarkably Japanese game that somehow made it to North America with very few changes. The box art is clearly Americanized and the yen signs for the money you pick up in the game have been replaced with dollars, but the manual retains the manga-style artwork of the Japanese original and the game itself looks very much like an 8-bit take on an anime series. The sprites and large and often comical, with some characters bugging their eyes out when they’re hit and others running around with goofy grins on their faces. The game is also surprisingly colorful given the restricted palette of the NES, and the game works around the limitations to provide some pretty impressive environments and enemies given how much action there is onscreen.
One of the most interesting and distinctively Japanese aspects of the game, the extensive (and often humorous) “Talking Time” that goes on between characters via text box scenes, is also retained and even seems to be coherently translated. But these moments are also important to the gameplay; Clash at Demonhead loves to throw out clues during these exchanges, and it’s a good idea to keep a notebook handy and write things down.
The story of Clash at Demonhead involves a character named Bang, who’s part of a group called Saber Tiger that’s at war with a gang called Demon’s Battalion. Bang’s enjoying a beach date with his girlfriend, Mary, when he learned that Professor Plum has been captured by the enemy and has been imprisoned at the peak of Demon Head Mountain, where he’s going to be forced to set off a doomsday bomb. As you traverse the game’s world, you’re shown a map of the foothills of the mountain with paths that lead to different crossroads. Each route represents a different level where you can generally progress left or right to reach the desired exit, and many routes have an aboveground and underground section. Some also have important NPCs who provide clues, and others trigger messages from allies.
The layout of the world map allows for some easy backtracking if you need to return somewhere such as route 5, which contains the much-needed shop, which gradually provides all the gear you need to complete the game. Some of the gear, like the Aqualung or the Jetpack, is consumable and runs out, so you need to buy more than one piece if you’re planning on doing some heavy exploring. You can also summon the shop as you travel, but you have a limited number of shop calls you can carry, requiring you to visit route 5 fairly regularly until you’re geared up. (Shop calls are made additionally frustrating by the fact that the items in stock are randomized, which means you may have to improvise your plans if you can’t purchase a needed item when you want it.)
The gameplay itself mostly involves running, jumping and shooting things, but Bang has some additional abilities such as climbing walls, swimming and flying with a jetpack. To progress through the game, you have to first defeat seven enemy bosses (one of whom takes a big bite out of your health bar on the first stage), and each boss requires a different strategy and a willingness to learn patterns of attack as you uncover its vulnerabilities. Boss battles are accompanied by some humorous dialogue and are certainly one of the most entertaining parts of the game, but some can require some trial and error as you figure out what gear you need to have on hand to defeat them.
Towards the end of the game, there’s also a puzzle that determines which ending you get – a good one if you solve the puzzle correctly or a bad one if you don’t. Fortunately, the game has a password system that’s triggered by a device called the microrecorder, so you can effectively save your game before the puzzle and then see both endings if you prefer.
Part of the reason Clash at Demonhead is so well-regarded today is because it has a tendency to be weird in the best possible ways. There are plenty of easter eggs and gags hidden in the game, but the game also loves to mess with you. There’s a fake-out death scene where the game returns to the title screen before it allows you to continue. There’s a boss who makes you fight your girlfriend. There’s one NPC who dies dramatically and then, if you insist on visiting him again, continues to show up as an increasingly decaying corpse who urges you to get on with your quest. The first boss (or “Governor”) you meet, a skeleton named Tom Guycot, is a cape-wearing skeleton who seems like the game’s big bad at first, but once you reach his fortress, you find a demon who’s already taken care of Tom and made things much harder for you. As it turns out, even the demon isn’t the real threat; later on, as you reach the summit of Demon Head, Bang goes through several bad guys trying to figure out who the actual boss is and what the point of trying to blow the world up has been. (True to the game’s sense of humor, the answers are never satisfying and dip into silly melodrama towards the very end.)
While Clash at Demonhead is sometimes referred to as a Metroidvania (or as I prefer to call the genre, a progressive exploration game), I’d consider it only loosely related to the likes of Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night because the paths you wind up taking are a bit more linear and don’t necessarily require special skills to traverse. It’s more like playing an open-world Mega Man game where instead of having direct control of which bosses you battle in which order, you’re advancing through a series of paths in the order you prefer. It’s more similar in design to Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap or WayForward’s much later Shantae series, though it can be a bit more challenging than either of those games since there’s a lot of information to keep track of.
If you want to try Clash at Demonhead, you’re pretty much restricted to either finding an original cartridge or playing via an emulator since the game has not been officially released in any digital form. It’s worth the trouble, though - it was a remarkable game when it was first released, and it’s good enough that it still holds up today.
SIDE NOTE: Readers of Brian Lee O’Malley’s comic book series Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (or fans of the film or video game adaptations) will notice that Scott’s ex-girlfriend Envy Adams fronts a band called The Clash at Demonhead in a clear allusion to this game as well as the legendary rock band The Clash. If you are waiting for someone to persuade you to check out the adventures of Scott Pilgrim, the fact that it references Clash at Demonhead shows you deep its love of retro gaming goes.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!