D.A.S. the biggest video game bad guys you've probably never heard of

Hello friends, and visitors to the blog. The other day a random question popped into my head. What was my favorite evil organization in gaming history? Did I even have a favorite? Have you ever thought about the bad guys in your favorite video games? I didn’t mean the villains in game, but the evil organizations. The ones that returned more than once in a series? Evil groups had always appeared in the comics books, and cartoons. When I was a kid G.I. Joe fought against Cobra. The Autobots fought against the Decepticons. The Ninja Turtles fought against the Foot Clan. But could you think of a game series that had a recurring evil organization?

Since I wrote mostly on fighting games it might be Shadowlaw / Shadaloo. That organization got its start in 1991 with Street Fighter II. A dictator named Vega / M. Bison ran his own small nation near Thailand. This group, its soldiers, spies, and generals would pop up again, and again all throughout the series, and even some crossover games. Currently a rival group was introduced by the team at Capcom called Neo Shadaloo. Would they become major players in the franchise, or were they only going to be a part of Ed’s back story in Street Fighter V, and 6?

Shadowlaw had a great name, but I didn’t care to see them keep popping up in the SF franchise. Nor did I care about NESTS showing up in the King of Fighters franchise. I believed that fighting games were more unique when they focused on the fighters, their forms, and the challenge of facing the best. It was more interesting to me to see who could be the next great challenge rather than figure out a way to connect them all to a cartoonish villain again, and again.

One of my favorite enemy groups might be the Unknown Intellectual Mechanized Species (UIMS). They were just one of the many alien species challenging humanity, and the United Galaxy Space Force (UGSF). The Bosconians, and Galagans were also memorable enemies across the various Namco franchises. As cool as those bad guys were I thought that one of the rarest groups ever featured in any game series deserved more love. The D.A.S. (Dark Anarchy Society) in the international releases, Destroy And Satsujin (Satsujin means murder in Japanese) was a recurring villainous force from Irem's Arcade games.

The group appeared as the main antagonists in several titles by Irem, they include In The Hunt, Gun Force II/Geo Storm and Undercover Cops. There were a few things that made the groups, and games they appeared in unique. Primarily that none of the games were in the same genre. Air Duel was a SHMUP, a shoot ‘em up or shooter featuring a jet, and attack helicopter. The game was set in a near post apocalyptic future. D.A.S. would try to take over the world, and it was up to the arcade players to see them destroyed. They would lay low for a few years, and then try to set up their totalitarian regime through violence. Each game mentioned above would be connected by the same group. Probably the closest that D.A.S. came to world domination was with In the Hunt aka Kaitei Daisensou (Great Undersea War) in Japan. The submarine shooter was set in a version of the Earth where the bad guys had just about conquered every nation. With the melting of the polar caps, and the major cities underwater it was easy for them to clear out opposition using their superior naval forces. The last ditch effort to destroy their ocean-based super weapon came with the creation of a super attack submarine called the Granvia. 

The submarine that players controlled could dance circles around its opposition. I had talked about In the Hunt, and Air Duel on the blog previously. This conflict was serialized in a Gamest Manga by Masato Natsumoto. His vehicle design, and presentation were influenced by Masamune Shirow. He was a perfect fit for the world created by Irem. The series explained that the reason the sub was such an amazing weapon because its design was based on stolen plans for a D.A.S. sub-orbital attack ship. The weapons, and unique magnetic propulsion system was repurposed technology that would liberate the worlds from the oppressive regime.

The manga featured the brave pilots Jin, and Rei against the D.A.S. captain Sharking. Every encounter in the game was recreated, and the adventure was greatly fleshed-out. It was a shame the series didn't get a follow-up. These games were important in the history of arcade gaming not only for their content, but for their style of presentation. Visually there were no other studios that crammed as many details on their sprites as this team did. To this day no other studio could claim to have created sprite-based titles with as high a level of detail, and animation. The studios that came close like IGS, and their game Demon Front still fell short of that high mark. The members of that team applied the same amount of detail to everything they worked on. The D.A.S. gunships, tanks, copters, drones, and bases oozed with style. Now that they had covered the air, and sea shooters, they decided to make things interesting with a side-scrolling shooter.

Geo Storm was their response to popular franchises like Konami’s Contra, and Data East’s Midnight Resistance. The challenge was getting even closer to D.A.S. vehicles, upping the amount of detail, and letting us see the individual soldiers. They hit it out of the park, and no other studio could even compare to the work that went into Geo Storm. This group would get tired of waiting for Irem to start new projects, so they left and formed a new company called Nazca. The next gem for the Neo Geo was called Metal Slug. They were the only company capable of topping themselves. Metal Slug, and the team at Nazca were part of a massive legacy in gaming. Before they left Irem the Nazca team flexed their muscle in yet another genre. I talked about Undercover Cops during my history of the brawler series, it was one of the more unique titles of 1992. The fact that they were able to apply the same amount of detail in a brawler, and add new features to the genre meant that this team were made up of critically underrated game designers. Other studios that bounced around different genres were rarely good at multiple ones. They instead specialized in one type of game. The Nazca staff could seemingly do it all.

I would like to think that they started with D.A.S., and then worked backwards to figure out who were the heroes that could stand up to this unstoppable evil force. In the oldest games we were looking at massive D.A.S. ships, planes, and tanks. As Nazca learned to make games we started getting closer to the bad guys. By the time they released Undercover Cops we were able to see the monsters, mutants, and villains in a one-on-one setting. No other company had given us the big picture, all the way down to the individual foot soldiers for the evil organization. The nearest thing to that type of world building could be seen with the Rebel Army in the Metal Slug series. It made me appreciate the bad guys that went into the creation of a great series. I’d like to know if there was ever any evil group that you admired in your favorite games. Were they from a well established universe like Star Wars? Or from a horror series like Resident Evil? I’d like to read about them in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!