Was wondering if you knew about a couple demons that haven't been seen since the very earliest games. Zoma is a Vile who appears in MegaTen 1 and Majin Tensei; he looks like a Buddhist statue in the former and a blue Horkos in the latter, oink oink. Dodongo is a unicorn thing that appears in MegaTen 1 and both Majin Tenseis. Is it meant to be the Zelda boss? Weird pull if so.
Zoma totally stumped me back in the day ( I never figured it out, probably because I was expecting it to be mythological when it apparently isn't-- I also don't have any MT1 books for potential verification), so I'm gonna have to defer to what the Megami Tensei wiki says, that it's a reference to an evil god from a manga series called Silk Road [シルクロード]:
This manga seems pretty obscure and I can't find much beyond its covers, but this one here might depict its Zoma considering the title is ゾマの祭り--Zoma no matsuri, Zoma'a festival. If it is Zoma (I cant be sure going only by this cover illustration, but it's interesting for our purposes that it appears to have an Indic aesthetic. It's definitely Buddhist, but I say Indic instead because of a possible correlation I'll point out after this comparison of all Zoma's sprites and the demons with which it is palette swap pals:
Of all the gods Zoma (a supposedly evil god) could have been a palette swap with, it's Lakshmi. This is interesting not because Lakshmi is generally seen as a benevolent goddess, but that she does appear in Buddhism as Kichijoten--note that the Buddhist-like figure on the manga cover has two heads, and one of them looks quite feminine. This context tells me that this Lakshmi palette swap is probably a soft confirmation that the MT1 Zoma is indeed this villain from Silk Road.
The KMT sprites go in a different direction and, instead of copying Lakshmi, it uses Kali (whom I forgot to include because this ask is taking hours to answer and I want to be done with it already)! Kali:
And then, finally, in Majin Tensei, Zoma is a swap of Orcus/Behemoth. Without knowing more context from the manga, I can't really fathom a guess as to why this would be appropriate in addition to the Hindu goddess templates, but color me intrigued to know more.
As for Dodongo, it's just an Ultraman monster. It and Zoma (plus lots of D&D foidder like treants and mummies) prove that this first Megami tensei game was still playing fast and loose with its definition of what a demon could be!
