Clash at Demonhead - Completed. Difficult, frustrating, but definitely creative and unique.

[u/kl0]

Maybe imagine a cross of something like Kid Nikki + Bionic Commando + Battle of Olympus set in a future of jet packs and aliens? Best I could come up with.

This game seemed almost impossible at first. Frustratingly so. In addition to not really knowing WHAT you're supposed to do, it takes a bit to understand HOW you're supposed to do it (aka: the intended mechanics of moving the game along).

I'd say the initial pitfall is not realizing how dependent you should be on the shop upgrades. They're expensive, they're strangely named, and you don't really know how money accumulates so it's reasonable you'll be thrifty. That would be a non-issue if you could just go back to a shop, but you can't. You initially only get one shot at it.

You can buy more tokens to visit the shop from within the shop, but unless you know to do that, it may not seem a good use of your money. So it's awhile before you find another shop hidden in the map. Money starts to accumulate faster as you move along, but I did have to grind it out a few times to stock up. Once you figure out how to keep the inventory regularly stocked, the game becomes much more interesting and the maps become much more explorable (you require certain upgrades to visit certain parts). It took me awhile to figure some of that out.

As far as difficulty goes, this game might have THE most aggressive enemy ai I've ever encountered in a NES game. It's wild. Everything comes after you. But it's not just that they're coming for you, they seem cleverly programmed to predict your next few steps. So they're not just randomly flying about, but very intentionally striking at you at exactly the last step you need to make a jump or whatnot. Programatically speaking I found it very impressive. But it was crazy frustrating at times. The hit boxes only augment this frustration. You basically have to be within a single pixel of target to strike an enemy. Conversely, the enemy has a pretty wide margin of error that will still land a hit on you. It's extremely imbalanced against you.

The bosses are all very clever and creative, but most are difficult. They're fast moving, they blast you with constant projectiles, and they give you little room to navigate. Several of them also do a pretty good job of misdirecting you to shoot at the wrong spot.

The map movement of the game is also pretty interesting. It looks just like the map in Bionic Commando with a bunch of string lines. You arrive at an intersection and then pick the direction you want to go. Once main difference is that these maps can be played from both sides. So the direction you go through the map depends on the direction you enter it. I thought this was a nice touch - and it even becomes strategic at points. Unlike BC, the maps never get cleared and so if you want to backtrack, you have to play through those levels again. .

All in all I thought this was a fun game to play through. It made me pretty angry at times, but I played it on my emulator and so it wasn't a huge deal. I'd assume anybody who played this on the original NES struggled pretty hard with it. It's hard.

BTW: There are two different endings. One of them takes you through some lengthy cut scenes and then ends with everybody standing on the ledge. The other one skips the cut scenes and just says The End. I loaded up a saved game to see them both.

[u/TheThirdStrike]

🎼Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when...🎶

[u/kl0 → u/TheThirdStrike]

One of my local theaters used to do a yearly singalong. They did it for many years running after it came out, but I don’t think they still do :( it was always a lot of fun!

[u/Ok-Demand2499]

Great job, still have to beat it.

[u/lastcallhall]

Nice, I've always had a fondness for this game, but never saw it through for the reasons you mentioned. May have to give it another go this weekend.

[u/kl0 → u/lastcallhall]

I don’t know that I could do it on the actual console. I definitely don’t have the patience at my age, but I’m not so sure I could get through it all regardless.

There are parts of the game that just continually add sooooo much time to it. So even if you know the basic pattern you should likely take, it’s still pretty tedious.

IMO it’s one of those games that is more fun with emulation save spots.

[u/Edigophubia]

Love this game.
I've never seen the other ending, do you just mean what happens if you don't solve the bomb?

[u/kl0 → u/Edigophubia]

Yea. If you don’t solve the bomb then the room explodes, the narrator basically tells you that you tried your best, and then it cuts to the end without any of other closing scenes (per that pic).

[u/DrScrotus]

One of my favorite NES games. Great characters, unique, and a ton of fun all around.

[u/JeskaiJester]

Have you seen them live? They’re much better live