| System: NES | Developer: Bandai |
| Monstery Party, I admit, is not that great of a game, but I still have a strange fondness for it. It's a game that's weird for the sake of being weird, and on that level it succeeds more than some other games I've seen that tried. As the average everyday kid, Mark, you travel to a strange planet to fight an assortment of monsters. With the aid of a special vitamin pill, you can temporarily transform into the dragon, Bert, who can fly all around the screen. |  |
 |
Mark and Bert will need to defeat a couple of bosses in each stage in order to progress to the next one. The bosses can be found by entering the right doors, and the joy of this game is not knowing what crazy creature you'll confront next. Some monsters are your typical spiders and dragons, but others are quite bizarre! Some of the weirder things include a crazed Punk Rocker (with no legs), a cute kitten that suddenly turns really mean, a haunted well, and breaded shrimp. Yes, breaded shrimp. Aside from the doors, the stages don't have much in the way of level design, but there is one level that is a rather large and confusing door maze. This level is also home to walking pairs of pants, proving that even minor enemies, not just the bosses, can be quite weird and amusing at times. |
|
Another thing interesting about Monster Party is that some aspects of it seem to have slipped past the Nintendo Censors. Blood was censored and removed from most NES games, but Monster Party has buckets of it, though it's mostly all used for background. The ending, however, is so disturbing that I'm a t a total loss as to how THAT was allowed.(I won't give it away; you'll have to beat the game on your own to see it. The game is so easy, that it shouldn't give you too much trouble.) However, it would seem at least one boss was censored: the aforementioned breaded shrimp. When these guys slide by in the opening sequence, they have red stuff (ketchup or blood, I'm not sure which) dripping from them. But that red stuff isn't there when you fight them in the actual game. I'm guessing it was censored from the boss fight, but Nintendo missed it in the opening sequence. |
 |
Monster Party is a unique little game that's worth picking up if you're into collecting and find it cheap. The bizarre bosses and their funny one-liners alone make it worth playing. |
 |
|
 |