No More Heroes and Resident Evil devs’ cult shooter Shadows of the Damned finally gets a PC release this year
Blast demons with a gun who is also a motorcycle who is also a demon while shouting “Taste my Big Boner!”
Shadows of the Damned, the unexpected collaboration between No More Heroes, Killer7 and Lollipop Chainsaw creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, will finally see a PC release with a new remake later this year - over a decade after it first hit consoles.
Written by Suda51 and produced by Mikami, Shadows of the Damned arrived in 2011 as a typically offbeat third-person shooter from Suda’s studio Grasshopper Manufacture, putting players in the boots of “Garcia Fucking Hotspur” as the demon-slayer blasted his way through a Hellish demon realm to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend Paula.
Helping Garcia was Johnson, his demon pal who could transform into a full armoury of guns, a flashlight - used to weaken darkness-dwelling demons, Alan Wake-style - and a literal motorcycle amidst lines like “Taste my Big Boner!” and "Aim for the cracks and shoot it with your hot Boner." (The Boner being Garcia’s revolver, obviously.)
As you can probably grasp from that if you haven’t played it, it’s a very silly affair, soaked in Suda’s trademark love of rock music and punk stylings as seen in the likes of No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw (which is also due a return). Mikami’s influence comes through the game’s solid survival-horror-tinged shooting and genuinely demonic monster designs, despite the goofy approach. I remember liking it a good amount at the time, despite never really gelling with No More Heroes, though I was also a literal teenager at the time, so I can’t speak to how its crass tone might land today.
The original Shadows of the Damned never went further than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, potentially one reason behind reportedly small sales despite a generally warm consensus about its engaging gameplay and charmingly rompy road-movie feel. This year’s remaster - the title of which will probably tell you whether you’ll get along with it, as it’s called Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered - will inspire a proper PC release for the first time, landing on Steam later in 2024.