GOTD – Clash at Demonhead
Clash At Demonhead – Action (NES)
Vic Tokai, inc.
Here’s another NES action game with some twists. It plays as a side-scrolling, fairly standard platformer. You shoot enemies and they go down (some later than others). This is all well and good, but there need to be some qualities to distinguish it from everything else, right?
Clash At Demonhead has an inventory and money system sort of like that of Solar Jetman. In CAD, you get money either dropped from enemies or from selling gold (which you are likely to do once, maybe) you can mine in some areas. You can spend this at the “Super Shop”, which you enter by using the “Shop Call” item (or, if you run out of them, in specific areas like Route 5). The shop doesn’t always have everything in stock, but repeated tries will allow you to buy any item in the game. Money is generally not too hard to come across.
The plot is one of the most humorous anime-based stories I have seen. I am not sure whether it’s intentional (it seems that way), but this game has the unique distinction of having nearly every anime cliche in the book. You will fight demons deep in caves, encounter aliens on mountaintops, encounter hypnosis, rescue fairies, and rescue a hermit trapped in a cave. If the robots were a little bigger and there were elves, they would’ve covered everything.
You are Bang (great name, huh?). You were taking a well-deserved rest after your last mission in 199X when you were called for another mission. Professor Plum has been kidnapped and forced to make a nuclear bomb by an unknown ‘terrorist’ group (The “7 Governors”, led by Tom Guycot). Thus it stands.
Later in the game, you can rescue a hermit who teaches you magic. At first you can only temporarily micronize yourself, but later (after you get enough energy over your max by collecting powerups) you can recover health and teleport to any route.
The game is rather large for an NES game, but not impossibly so. There is no save feature, and the game is likely to take at least 3-4 hours to beat. Conrols are smooth and you will only find difficulty when you’re moving too fast (speed shoes or jetpack). Some platforming areas are difficult, but then you can always save up money and purchase more jetpacks to fix that issue.
A great game by a relatively unknown company. I recommend trying it for the novelty, if nothing else.
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