ChäoS;HEAd

This article is about the original visual novel. For other uses, see ChäoS;HEAd (disambiguation).

ChäoS;HEAd cover for physical copies of the Windows PC game

ChäoS;HEAd cover for DMM.com digital downloads of the Windows PC game

ChäoS;HEAd VN Opening

ChäoS;HEAd Prologue

ChäoS;HEAd (カオスヘッド, Kaosu Heddo), described as a “Delusional Science Adventure” (妄想科学ADV, Mōsō Kagaku Adobenchā), is a mystery, horror, and science fiction visual novel game developed by Mages (formely known as 5pb. inc) , Nitroplus, and RED FLAGSHIP. It released for Microsoft Windows on April 25, 2008.

Its enhanced version, ChäoS;HEAd NoAH, was originally released for Xbox 360 on February 26, 2009, and later ported to PlayStation Portable (PSP) on June 24, 2010, iOS on November 10, 2010, Android on January 24, 2012, PlayStation 3 (PS3) on November 22, 2013, PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) on August 21, 2014, and Nintendo Switch on February 24th, 2022. It was later released for Microsoft Windows via Steam on October 7, 2022.

ChäoS;HEAd NoAH is the first official game in 5pb./Mages’s award-winning Science Adventure Series, which was later followed up by Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, ChäoS;Child and Anonymous;Code.

ChäoS;HEAd NoAH later received a direct sequel titled ChäoS;HEAd Love Chu☆Chu!, an anime adaptation, Internet radio shows such as ChäoS;HEAd Radio - Delusion Radio Station, several light novels, two drama CDs, and five manga: ChäoS;HEAd, ChäoS;HEAd -Blue Complex-, ChäoS;HEAd H, ChäoS;HEAd Official Anthology Comics, and ChäoS;HEAd Love Chu☆Chu!.

ChäoS;HEAd NoAH later inspired a thematic sequel titled ChäoS;Child in 2014, which serves as the fourth main entry in the Science Adventure Series. ChäoS;Child received an anime adaptation 2017.

The Game

The original version of ChäoS;HEAd was for Windows PC in 2008 and has a screen resolution of 800x600 (with a 4:3 aspect ratio, as opposed to the 16:9 aspect ratio seen in later games in the Science Adventure Series), running in 32-bit color on Nitroplus’s N2System game engine. There are two different versions of ChäoS;HEAd for Windows PC: the original release, which worked on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, but not Windows 7 or later, and the Nitro The Best Vol. 4 release, which added Windows 7 and later support along with (optionally) a joke feature called the Lingerie Conversion System (LCS) which displays most characters in their underwear. Once the Nitro The Best Vol. 4 release came out, the original release was discontinued in favor of the new version.

Both versions (if not patched with the Chaotic;Head translation patch) require the Windows locale set to Japanese. This can be done on a per-application basis without changing the system locale using Locale Emulator on Windows 7 through 10, or Microsoft AppLocale on Windows XP and Vista (requiring a workaround to install on Windows Vista). The original ChäoS;HEAd release (if not patched) also has to be run in Windows XP Compatibility Mode on Windows 7 and later, while the Nitro The Best Vol. 4 release actually is compatible with all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 through Windows 10. None of these are issues with the patched game.

The enhanced version ChäoS;HEAd NoAH improves on the ChäoS;HEAd game with improved widescreen graphics rendered at 1280x720, a revised script, and several additional routes (one for each heroine). It was originally released for Xbox 360 in 2009, and later ported to PlayStation Portable, iOS, Android, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows.

Characters

Here is a brief summary of eight of the characters of ChäoS;HEAd:

• Takumi Nishijou - The protagonist (nicknamed Taku), he is an otaku shut-in prone to delusions who just wants to watch the anime Blood Tune and fantasize about its heroine Seira Orgel, and play the game Empire Sweeper Online as his player characters Neidhardt or Liselotte. He tries to avoid going to school or anything else in real life as much as possible.
• Seira Orgel - The heroine of the anime Blood Tune, she does not actually exist and is just an anime character; in that anime she is a magical girl who fights evil. However, Taku is obsessed with her and constantly has delusions about her, her delusional version mostly focusing on being a moral support to Taku and encouraging him to be a shut-in and avoid dealing with anything painful.
• Nanami Nishijou - Taku’s little sister and a freshman at his school, Nanami regularly checks in on him to see if he is doing well, which he finds very annoying. They argue a lot and have a dysfunctional relationship, but deep down they care about each other.
• Yua Kusunoki - A senior at Taku's school who always wears glasses, she starts out as a creepy stalker of Taku, but they become fast friends, bonding over their shared interest in Blood Tune and Seira, and they could almost be seen as a couple. She is also a bit of an amateur detective, researching things like the New Gen serial killings, which she wants to solve because her sister Mia Kusunoki died in the first New Gen incident, the Group Dive.
• Rimi Sakihata - A cheerful pink-haired girl Taku first sees at the site of the Cruc-affixion murder, she later turns out to somehow be close friends and classmates with both Taku and Taku’s friend Daisuke Misumi in their same junior class, at least according to her and Misumi, but Taku is still suspicious of her and calls her “the demon girl”. Eventually Taku warms up to Rimi and accepts her as a friend after she repeatedly helps him out.
• Sena Aoi - A senior at Taku’s school, Sena is scary and seems like she might be violent. She carries around a large glowing sword with her everywhere in public, is really into science, and loves eating blue “Crunchy-kun” popsicles.
• Ayase Kishimoto - An eccentric chuunibyou girl obsessed with mythology, Ayase is also known as FES as her stage name as the vocalist of the popular four-piece Gothic punk band Phantasm. She writes the songs for that band and they supposedly predict the future. She is a fellow junior at Taku’s school but in a different class.
• Kozue Orihara - A mysterious transfer student to Taku’s junior class, she looks much younger, like a middle school girl, and never says anything out loud. She turns out to be a psychic, able to communicate with people telepathically, which she uses to get around her inability to talk.

Interface and Story

The story of ChäoS;HEAd takes place in Shibuya between the dates of September 28, 2009, and November 6, 2009, and centers around the mystery of the “New Generation Madness”, a series of suspicious murders and “suicides”, along with various other strange anomalies that occur. You play as the protagonist Takumi Nishijou, who (along with several other characters in the game) often has delusions. These delusions are the main way to make choices in this visual novel game, through the Delusion Trigger System, where you can either choose a positive delusion, negative delusion, or to not have a delusion at all and just see reality, at various points in the game. Along with that, occasionally the game has Yes/No questions for the player to make choices, but this happens less often.

As Takumi Nishijou, your player character is a borderline hikikomori (a shut-in who does not get out much or interact with other people in real life very often), who attends high school as little as possible, only two to three days a week, and also an otaku who is really into the anime Blood Tune (aka Burachu) and its heroine Seira Orgel. The game usually plays from Takumi’s perspective, although sometimes there are scenes from the perspectives of other characters, showing for example what the police detectives are up to or what is going on with the six heroines.

ChäoS;HEAd has three different endings (A, AA, and B), as well as one early bad ending/game over. The early bad ending/game over happens in Chapter 6 if you make the wrong choices. Then, on a new game, before beating it, only the first two endings, the A and AA ending, are available, and which of them you get is decided by Yes/No choices in Chapter 10. The A ending is a shorter version of the AA ending and the AA ending is considered the true/good ending. After getting either the A or AA ending, the B ending is unlocked, and then to get the B ending, at least 11 of 17 of the Delusion Triggers have to be chosen in a certain way. There is a guide to the endings of the game on the ChäoS;HEAd Guidance page, for people having trouble reaching all of the endings.

Development

This section needs expansion. You can help ChäoS;HEAd Wiki by expanding it.

Executive producer Chiyomaru Shikura pitched the idea of ChäoS;HEAd by giving a six-hour presentation on it, which, according to Tatsuya Matsubara, overwhelmed everyone present. At the time, it was titled The Sword of Sorrow (哀SWORD, Ai SWORD).

Music

The original ChäoS;HEAd game for Windows PC features five songs. The game starts with Find the Blue as its opening theme, the music for the game’s opening title sequence.

In Chapter 2 of the game, Takumi Nishijou and his friend Daisuke Misumi go to a Phantasm concert to see FES and see a live performance of the song A Contract of Blood to Seal Our Sin.

There are three ending songs: Desire Blue Sky for the AA ending, Gladioul for the A ending, and Cry for the B ending.

「Chaos;Head」 Opening (N1 PC) 「Find the blue」 《 Waifu2x 4K 》

Opening Title Sequence

Merchandise

This section needs expansion. You can help ChäoS;HEAd Wiki by expanding it.

Translation History

The original English fan translation for ChäoS;HEAd for Windows PC was the TLWiki Patch many years ago, with its final version being "TLWiki Patch Release Candidate 1" on 28th September, 2008. It is called Release Candidate because it was not the final release, many additions were planned: Chaos;Head PC Trial bonus chapter, translation of TIPS, Chapter 10B “this-is-bullshit-to-replay-everything” savegame, etc. On 7 July, 2009, the group reached out to the localization company JAST for the official release of ChäoS;HEAd in English. All C;H PC fan patch development ceased after and the team moved on to other projects.

Later Release Candidate 2 was released by "ghost" in 2010, modifying the original RC1. This patch is notorious for some of ghost’s questionable decisions such as removing 5pb. logo from the game because he disliked the logo design, binding the cancel button in the menu to the LCS switch, adding an alternative auto mode, and so on.

So in 2010, Blanchimont took over development to make the installation less of a headache and put out three versions of the "Less Headache Version". Project Blue Sky took over development after "Less Headache Version 3" and renamed it the "Di-Patch", releasing Di-Patch versions 1.0 through 2.5, which mostly focused on fixing all those bugs. Then a new team started by "nipkow" took over patch development after "Di-Patch 2.5" was done and put out the Chaotic;Head patch, starting at version 1.13 and currently at version 1.30, which is the best patch currently available. You can find the Chaotic;Head patch version 1.30 here. Prior to version 1.30, the Chaotic;Head patch needed the Lingerie Conversion System (LCS) patch to be installed, the Nitro The Best Vol. 4 version has it preinstalled, but not the physical retail version; now this patch works with any version of the ChäoS;HEAd game for Windows, including versions without the LCS patch.

The in-game glossary is still mostly untranslated in all of these patches, but all other text in the game is translated to English, and with the latest Chaotic;Head patch you do not have to change your computer’s Windows locale to Japanese using Locale Emulator (on Windows 7 and later) or Microsoft AppLocale (on Windows XP/Vista) like with earlier patches. It can be run on Linux or Macs using Wine, and has multiple font options. The biggest improvement of the Chaotic;Head patch over all the previous patches is upgrading ChäoS;HEAd’s N2System game engine to the version from JAST’s 2011 English release of Nitroplus’s game Deus Machina Demonbane (斬魔大聖デモンベイン, Zanma Taisei Demonbane), which is what made it no longer require a Japanese locale and made it compatible with running on Linux or Macs using Wine.

Sequels

ChäoS;HEAd Love Chu☆Chu! is a romantic comedy visual novel that is the direct sequel to the True Ending (Blue Sky) of ChäoS;HEAd NoAH. It is much more lighthearted than ChäoS;HEAd, as a gal game that parodies other gal games, in which Taku is trying to become more social with the girls of ChäoS;HEAd, who are all in love with him now. Despite being a humorous game, it is actually canon in the Science Adventure Series and its events really do take place in the shared SciADV universe, except of course for the parts that are just delusions.

ChäoS;Child is a thematic sequel to ChäoS;HEAd, also set in Shibuya and involving Gigalomaniacs, DI-Swords, etc., but several years later. It deals with the so-called “Return of the New Generation Madness”, a new set of similar serial killings that take place, and is a mystery / horror / science fiction visual novel just like ChäoS;HEAd. The aftermath of what happened in Shibuya after the events of ChäoS;HEAd is covered in ChäoS;Child, along with some new things that are different. It is the fourth main Science Adventure Series game, very favorably rated/reviewed, and available in the west as well.

Trivia

• One of the early names of ChäoS;HEAd was “Gigalomaniacs (provisional)” (ギガロマニアックス（仮）, Gigaromaniakkusu (Kari)), before the creators decided to go with the name “ChäoS;HEAd” (カオスヘッド, Kaosu Heddo) and have a signature naming style including semicolons in the middle for the Science Adventure Series. In Steins;Gate, when Future Gadget #8 is called “PhoneWave (Name subject to change)”, the creators of the Science Adventure Series were making fun of their own naming process and engaging in self-parody (the last-mentioned piece of information seems to be pure speculation and should not be taken as fact).
  • Two other prototype names were Ai SWORD (哀SWORD) and C.O.D.E.