NES box art for Monster Party, the cover of NEStalgia episode 191

191 · MONSTER PARTY

▶ Game info

VerdictPlay it

GenrePlatformer

ReleasedJune 1989

SeasonSeason 5

DeveloperHuman Entertainment

PublisherBandai

October 15, 2021 · 50 min · transcript available

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You are a young boy with a baseball bat named Mark. On your way home from a baseball game, you encounter a monster named Bert. Bert needs your help in saving his planet from the evil monsters. You learn how to fuse with Bert and become a monster fighting gargoyle. You'll spend most of the game attacking bad guys by swinging your bat at them or volleying their fire.

SHOW NOTES

Monster Party Longplay

Monster Party Prototype

Our verdict: Play it

Human Entertainment made this platformer and Bandai released it in 1989. Only Mike and Sean were there. We expected Universal movie monsters or a pile of party games. We got a kid named Mark, a baseball bat, a demon named Bert and a trip to hell. We loved the ridiculousness, and it is a Play it, but it did not make the Essential Games List.

What works

The tone. It starts as a normal side scroller, then the screen glitches, the trees grow faces and everything bleeds. Dogs with human heads, fish with legs and eyeballs with tentacle feet follow. It is goofier than scary, and we're laughing with it, not at it.
The bat. It deflects projectiles if you time it right, and the bosses are built around that. It doesn't feel like a horror reskin of Mario.
The bosses' one-liners. Every boss says something strange. A favorite is the minotaur throwing baby cows at you and saying "move it." The fried-food bosses add to the charm.
The transformation. Grab the pill and you turn into the demon: you fly, you shoot, and it is easier than playing Mark. The timer feels about right.
The crawl. You crawl like a worm, which beats not being able to crawl at all.

What doesn't

The doors. They are everywhere, some hide bosses and some hide nothing, and you end up clearing all of them to get the key. That makes the key feel like an added contrivance. We would rather have had bigger levels.
Two kinds of boss. One walks back and forth and jumps. The other is a turret. You deflect projectiles at both, and they act like they don't know you're in the room.
Plain platforming. It is bog standard. Level two has ceilings too low to really jump, and the haunted house level is the most frustrating, with blue fireballs that find you.

Worth knowing

A prototype turned up in which the bosses were famous movie monsters. The pumpkin was an ape from Planet of the Apes, the eggplant was the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, and the Grim Reaper was a giant Xenomorph. Dracula never shows up in the final game.

The manual is its own joke. It tells you Medusa throws snakes, and it calls the dancing zombies "zombies from Japan."

The bottom line

Play it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. Sean found it a joy and unique, but suspects rose colored glasses. Mike called it a second-playthrough game: too rough for everyone, but a good bet if you are down with 8 bit games and have played the essentials. It could be a cult classic. We will revisit it when we record Best of 1989.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

Monster Party! It's a scream!

And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Sean, it's just the two of us, and that's pretty spooky for the listeners, but not just because this is happening around Halloween time. It's just spooky to hear you and me knowing that we have complete control over the essential games list today. That's true, but that does also pose the quandary of there being a split. So I kind of forgot what happens then. I think nothing happens. Yeah, I think it just doesn't get on. That's kind of spooky. Yeah, we're agreeable guys. Yeah, I always say what you want me to say. Absolutely. Just read the script.

Yes, I just read the script. Yep, there you go. It was line 31. Yes, I just read the script. Anyway, just in time for Halloween, we have Monster Party. I don't know if Nintendo knew that somebody was going to start a podcast around 2018, like in January, and that their games would sync up with games that are not being released around Halloween time, but somehow would sync up with their calendars for when they release the episodes of their podcast. But this is now twice in a row. That's pretty cool. We had Castlevania 2, Simon's Quest around Halloween last year, and now this time we have Monster Party.

Of course, Monster Party is releasing in June of 1989, but none of this matters, right, Sean? Like, you don't really care when you buy a spooky game. It doesn't have to be in October. No, but like, you'll just, you'll play it a little bit in June, and then you'll definitely get in the mood again in October. It's all about the feel, you know?

Yeah, and I would say Monster Party is definitely all about the feel. Going off the name alone, right, Monster Party, can you describe to me the kind of game you were expecting? Were you expecting anything off of this before you played it? I was correct in assuming that it was going to be about like vaguely horror themes, but I thought that the genre was going to be more of like a summer games sort of thing. It was going to be like a bunch of party games, but a universal movie monster themed.

Yeah, Monster Party to me implies like, you know, you're going like level by level as the different like universal Hollywood monsters, you know? Also like one level, you're Frankenstein, one level, you're Dracula, the mummy, all that stuff. I mean, some of those characters are in this game, others are not. But Monster Party wasn't my idea of like playing as like this kid named Mark with a baseball bat being transported to hell. And his demon friend, Bert.

Who tricks him into fusing bodies with him? Which I guess in some ways is like possession. Yeah, but okay, so let's just recap this for a minute, okay? Mark, right? The protagonist of the game. His name is just Mark. Not even anything that interesting. He's on his way home from what I got to believe is a baseball game because he has a baseball bat. It was indeed a baseball game. He's approached by this Griffin demon. Well, hold on. You're skipping. Okay, well, I didn't know if I needed to. He looks up into the sky and sees a star and then the star gets big. And he's also crying now because of how beautiful the night sky is. And then he realizes that the star had fallen in front of his feet and it was actually a monster all along.

And that's Bert. And that's Bert, right. Who also just again like very normal name. I don't, you know, I guess Bert, Mark, they could be friends with each other. He's a very like affable guy too. He speaks pretty, like he's pretty friendly. Yeah, and you know he's familiar with the English language. Yeah. And he just kind of approaches and he's like, you know, hey, I'm Bert. And Mark's like, what's up? I just, something about that what's up is just classic. I'm not even making that up. That's literally what Mark says. I forgot about that.

Yeah. He's like, he's like, yo, it's a demon. And the demon's like, I'm Bert. He's like, oh, what's up? What's up, Bert? It's like my world has been taken over by other demon evil things. I need you to help me. And then Mark's like, but I don't really have like anything to help you with there. Like I'm just a kid with a baseball bat. It's like, oh, that's fine.

That's perfect. That'll do. Doesn't it seem odd though? Like Bert isn't also, he doesn't seem that convinced that the baseball bat's gonna work. He's like, oh, that's really all you have? Like, well, whatever. Like in the dark world, I'm sure a baseball bat will be fine. Like he seems like he's improvising. Yeah. I mean, but whether he's improvising or not, I think he's, he's not taking this seriously enough. If this boy, the baseball bat is all he thinks is gonna help him.

Yeah. If you took the time to learn the English language from the dark world, you would think that you would like know about, you know, the world militaries or, you know, just like more important. Like more important people than nine year old Mark on his way home from baseball camp. Yeah. Or maybe, maybe he's speaking like a Bissell or, or some, or some demon language and Mark just hears it as English. So maybe he, he isn't really all that well versed in human behavior anyway. So they call it the dark world.

Um, but at first it's not like, you know, I mean, I guess like the enemies are a little creepy and what have you, but it's not like too scary. And then there's just this moment within like the first minute of gameplay where the screw, the screen like glitches out. And then all of like, like all the trees have like faces and they're like, everything's bleeding.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's just like a lot of, uh, gross out and blood and like, you know, weird enemies and stuff like that. And at this point you've got to assume that Bert tricked Mark into going to hell.

I, I guess that's, that's one way to look at it. I will say that like, cause this is otherwise just, it starts out just as like a normal side scroller with the kind of like cut kind of good feeling, uh, controls. And he just got the baseball bat, he hit stuff with it. Um, but then that moment when that happens, uh, like it, that I think it really earned that moment. Like that was actually something that kind of freaked me out when it happened. Um, I don't know what your initial reaction was to that.

Yeah. Well, I would say it freaked me out if only just because like the game becomes so much more graphic than you would expect from Nintendo. Yeah, exactly. Like, like you mentioned the blood on the faces and everything like that, but even like there's guys with just their like legs and asses sticking out from the ground. Yeah. And, and, um, dogs with human heads and, uh, fish with, with human legs. It's all, it's all very strange. Right. And don't forget that, you know, the, the members of the Beatles are walking around on fire too. They're just like, I guess the Beatles.

Oh, that's, that's what you're saying. You meant, I was like, I don't remember the Beatle enemies, but, uh, you know, it's like these English looking guys who kind of look like, you know, what makes them look British or yeah, I don't. It's the haircut. I don't. Okay. So you're talking about the, the, the black beings that kind of look there like they're also on fire. Oh, they're definitely on fire. Okay. They look British to you. You don't think that they look like they're dressed like, you know, like an alternate outfit of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or something. Like. I would say they don't look like they're dressed. I feel like we're looking at their charred skin. It's very, it's very unsettling.

Except for that. We can see that they have a face. So I'm thinking that that's their hair, that black stuff, you know, like you can see a face a little bit. Right. You see that? Like. I don't actually. I don't think that's your skin under the, okay. Yeah. Anyway, I'm getting pretty into it, but I was surprised to see the Beatles in the, in the game. I guess it's a Rorschach test. You just got to watch out for the Beatles is all I'm saying. Yeah. Because they'll, they'll be there waiting for you in hell. But everything has a face in this game all of a sudden. It's like every, every tree has a face, but also every leaf on a tree has a face.

Every block has a, has a skull. Um, I, I'm pretty sure like there's no shortage of, of just like body horror in this game. You've got like half fish, half man. You've got eyeballs with tentacles for feet. There's just like a lot of graphic stuff going on here and I'm digging it. Yeah. I, I really liked the aesthetic that they went for here, even though it's, um, kind of goofy if you take anything out of context. But for some reason when everything is this, uh, this eight bit horror look, it all really works together. Um, yeah.

Right. Cause you know, it's also, like you said, it's a side scrolling platforming game. So, um, you know, there's like a, there's a way that we're used to playing those games because they're, they're pretty easy to make after Super Mario Brothers laying down the ground, uh, the blueprints and stuff like that. But this game is, has pretty good controls like overall, like, yeah, it could do with maybe like your baseball bat having a little more powers as we don't have to constantly attack enemies as they continue to move towards you.

But for the most part, like it's pretty, it feels pretty good to navigate around this stage and fight these enemies. And they're not, they're not like littering the screen with them. So it's more of just like taking in the world and, and being in this world that is like the shocking part of the game and not like making your way through the levels. Right. Yeah.

And one of the thing that I I'd like to note about this game is like when, when we talk about how, um, one note, I guess, or how much of the design of this game is just its theme and how it really leans into its theme for everything. Like when I think of games like that now, or in a lot of like, I don't know, like PS1 era games, like that was really the only thing that was unique about it. Um, it was just a reskin of a game you had played dozens and dozens of times, but, um, this game has enough unique game mechanics, uh, like especially using your baseball bat that it doesn't feel just like a horror version of Mario or a horror version of, uh, some other side scroller. It actually has like a fully formed design.

Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Like you said about that baseball bat, like it can even deflect projectiles if you hit with the baseball bat at the right time. Which is a very, it's used a lot that like the whole bosses are about that. The blueprints of a good game are here for the overall objective though. It's not just about getting from left to right, right? There's no like goalposts that you have to clear or, you know, end of stage walk through. There are these doors that are just everywhere inside the levels.

And some of them have boss fights. Some of them have, uh, nothing. Nothing is an option. You could just walk into a room and have to leave it. And then others have like, you know, small enemies or puzzles or something like that. I don't think there's actually any puzzles, but like. There's a dance sequence. Yeah. The dance sequence, uh, just different things happen behind these doors. I guess is the point I'm trying to get across. But ultimately the goal is to find a key that you then take to the end of the level. And it's not really finding a key. It's really just clearing everything. Like you don't get the key until you fight the bosses. If like, if there are multiple and you grab all the question marks, I think.

I believe you're right there. But also like, you know, doesn't that just make the point of the key kind of silly? Like, shouldn't we just have it be that you have to. I think it's more just like. The bosses of the stage. Yeah. It should just say clear and then say yes.

Right. You know, I think like just something, it seems like the key thing is just the added element of being like, make sure you do. Like you have the choice, right? Like you do it in whatever order you feel like. But there's really no reason to go like all the way to the end of the stage and go to a door there. And then go back track and go to another door. You're better off just attacking the doors in sequence. Right. Unless I'm missing something. I mean, yeah. Power ups or hidden things that you need to get first. Yeah, I would say that you're definitely correct there. I remember missing one and kind of not understanding what the key was. But that was just because I found a couple empties. And I'm like, oh, I guess I don't have to go into these.

So that can be a little unclear. But after you realize that, oh, I just have to go into everything. You don't run into that problem anymore. Right. And so it's like the game. The gameplay is pretty solid. It's the tediousness of going through the doors, knowing that you have to go through all of them, too. You don't get to like skip a door because you need to go through all the doors. It's like that objective is just a little strange. And it's also not clear from like from what Bert was telling you. Right. Like I wouldn't know that, you know, like you said, you you miss a door and you didn't realize what the keys were about. So that's just that's just the way it is.

It's you know, it's not like the end of the world for me. I'm not saying I can't play this game because getting the key is really hard. Just a noticeable difference between what should have maybe just been like get through the level to fight, you know, the mid boss and then the final boss of the stage or whatever to progress on might have been a little.

It isn't it is an added contrivance. Right. Exactly. And I feel like the boss fights in the game are are an element of their own. Right. Like so the bosses are all like really unique looking and like some of them are like clearly based on horror movies, but others are like just a just a Halloween esque thing like that pumpkin guy that you fight. Don't pick on me. Yeah. Don't pick on me. But they all say something weird, too. The bosses definitely are their own thing because every boss says they have a one liner strange. Yeah. Who was your favorite?

Sorry, I'm dead. And he's not even a boss. But I thought that was really funny. That was actually also like it could have been scary. And if you were playing it in the right context, it's just so unexpected. And like when it's unexpected and also kind of underwhelming for like in a horror setting. It's kind of eerie. I don't know if you know what I mean there.

Well, yeah. No. So it's like that's another thing where it's like mood building, though. So I could imagine if you're in like Silent Hill. Right. You go into a room and somebody says, sorry, I'm dead. Like that is scary and has like a sense of dread to it. But this game can't quite reach that level of like of scare, you know, like where I think I see sorry, I'm dead. And I can't help but like laugh, you know, it's too colorful of a game. I know. Still like live in that world.

But you're right. It does teeter that line a little bit. But even just, you know, we're talking about the body horror, but even just the bosses that you go through the game, there is a like what the fuck factor to it. Like that fried shrimp tempura. Yeah. No, that was just fried food in general, I guess. Like there's yeah, there's the tempura. Then there's an onion ring. And then what I guess like a corn dog. I don't quite remember the last one. But yeah, I don't I don't know if there's any like urban legend or any source for that.

But it was definitely definitely added to the charm of the game, I guess. My all of these things have a recipe for like cult status. Yeah, like everything we're playing right now is like something that I could imagine just freaked people out if they rented this game or something. They were like, oh, this is weird. But then occasionally, like, you know, over time, you'd be like, oh, have you tried Monster Party?

Like it's this really like it's this body horror game where like you play as a kid with a baseball bat. But so many fucked up things happen. Yeah, I think my I think the freakiest boss to me is like the giant. It looks like a giant mosquito slash like dust mite or tick just because I don't it's seeing a giant tick probably wouldn't make me very happy.

And I think my favorite boss, though, is the minotaur that keeps throwing like baby cows at you and you have to smack the cows back at them. And his one liner is move it. Right, right. Move it. Yeah. And again, like, you know, it's all fun stuff. It's all fun and games throughout. So it takes itself like I think it takes itself as seriously as it needed to.

Right. Like it is a full game and it's not a buggy mess. I will say that the bosses behave a little strangely, though. Right. Like, could you imagine if modern bosses behaved the way that they do in this game? Like, I feel like these bosses don't even exactly know that you're in the room with them.

No, they're just doing these things. And that's definitely one of the cons of this game. While the bosses all have a unique design to them visually, they really only come in two flavors for the most part. There's one that just walks back and forth jumping sometimes and you just have to avoid it while deflecting its projectiles back at it. And then there's like a turret. Right. And that one, it just stands still and it throws projectiles at you and you have to deflect them back at it.

So those are really the only two modes of boss play that I can that I saw really. Right. Yeah. It just, you know, we didn't even talk about this last week, but that's something very impressive about Mega Man 2's like any kind of mini boss or boss fight. It's like you felt their presence in the boss fight. Like you felt like they knew where you were, most likely because they did, but like that they behaved accordingly to like, you know, you had to be on them and you had to be doing stuff. Maybe it's just because they moved faster or because they had like wider spreads of damage. But I felt like going from Mega Man 2 to Monster Party, these boss fights just felt very strange because you can just kind of like hang back and watch their pattern.

And then you can also, in a weird twist of NES like hard games, this one you can just kind of go up to the enemy and strike and take damage at the same time. So just like maybe try to race the boss's health meter against your own. Yeah, if you have a lot. Because you can have a lot of health in this game. It's just for me, I never, I didn't really end up in that situation a lot because the moment to moment gameplay, like within some bosses and like in the regular levels, it is hard. It's pretty unforgiving.

Yeah, I feel like the game wants you to focus more on not fighting some of these enemies, especially in the later stages. As the enemy sprites get bigger and as they become like things that take a lot more hits, you kind of either just have to take the damage boost because you don't get any knockbacks. That's pretty good. So you just take the damage boost and go on. Or you can use your like weird, in this game you're able to crawl like a worm. Oh yeah, that's funny.

And it's literally like a worm. You will crawl and then you can lift your butt up and bring it back down. And that's how you... Literally do the worm, yeah. Yeah, do the worm and everything like that. And I liked that that was included because in a normal game you would just have like laying down like a pencil and then just moving like straight. This amount of motion to the character means that, you know, they clearly thought like, well, we have to give people a reason to do this crawling action. It's not just there. Yeah, or they wouldn't let you crawl at all, which would be much more frustrating.

Yep, yep. So there are some enemies that you just have to like, I guess, you know, at least what I did was like just suck it up and try to get past them. Another good reason for, you know, making it so that you don't have to go to these doors and do all these things and maybe just setting up the level that way is that if you didn't, you know, if you have all these doors littered throughout, you have to kind of deal with the enemies, right? So maybe that's the like meaning behind the doors. Maybe. To make sure that you don't just skip through everything in the stage? I guess so. I think the game is difficult enough without it, but you're right. I think that it's sort of a balanced thing.

I don't know exactly what it was. I think it happens via either a question mark pickup or after a certain amount of things are killed, but eventually you do transform into Burt, right? Do you know the... Oh, it's a pickup. It's not the key. Okay. It's the pill. And sometimes... Got it. You just won't notice that you picked it up because you're just moving forward through a dead enemy.

So it sort of spawns underneath you. But yeah, then you turn into Burt and you get to fly instead of jump. So while your vertical movement is a little bit slower because you're flapping your wings instead of doing one big jump motion, you can just go wherever you want. And you don't have your baseball bat anymore, so you're not deflecting enemy projectiles. You're shooting, I don't know, fire breath or something. So you're a little bit more powerful.

And in some ways it's a little more awkward, but more often than not, it's definitely easier than playing as Mark. Yeah, I was going to say that when I first turned into Burt, it seems necessary to put a timer on him because he's pretty up.

It was just like, I think I got him right before I went into one of the boss fights. And then when you just go into the boss fight, it's like, you know, just because again, the way they program these bosses just kind of wander around the stage. It's not much stopping them from just like having you fly up above everything and then just come down when they're ready to attack.

Yeah. And go bananas on them. So thankfully there's a timer to Burt because Burt is very strong. And that's like a cool thing, right? It's like you want to have a cool transformation. I think they give you the right amount of time as him. It doesn't feel like it's worthless because you don't like it's too short. And it doesn't feel like you're at too big of an advantage because it's too long. So they did that right.

But what are they trying to say about like Mark, nine-year-old Mark? Remember, I pinned him as nine years old. We have no idea how old he is. But like nine-year-old Mark popping pills to turn into Burt. Like, is he just on a trip? Is he really Burt? Is Burt real at all? I think that's a good – I think that's a pretty valid way to view this game. I mean, if we want to think of it as just a bad trip, maybe Burt was a 23-year-old drug dealer and has tricked this boy into thinking that his neighborhood is different layers of hell. So I think that's a good way to look at it. Well, look no further than like level six, okay?

In level six, you're like inside – let's take off the high goggles for a second. You're in someone's house, okay? There are chairs that are being moved. And tables. Right, and tables. And then there's also like walking trousers. There's just trousers.

There's somehow an enemy in this game, but like they're literally just pants without a top to them walking around the stage. Those could just be people moving. Those could be the movers, and they're moving these chairs into like a U-of-all. They're the movers. Yeah, they're the movers, but you came into the house, and now you're beating the shit out of them with a baseball bat. Yeah, so you're talking about I guess like the Haunted Mansion level, which is infuriating. That's actually where I stopped playing because I could have just looked up a route, but I didn't. I was trying to brute force it.

But the other thing that's annoying about this level is you're also just being assailed by these unknown things that are shooting like blue fireballs at you. And they always seem to intersect with where you're standing. So this is the most frustrating level of the game. It's just a leak from the top floor bathroom. That's why they're moving. Oh, it's a yo. They're moving because the shower won't stop leaking, so they need to get out of the house before it floods.

That's a good read. It's a good read of it. I don't even know if it's a good read. It shouldn't be this easy, right? This is all improv. But you're talking about stage six being as far as you made it, but that does mean that you made it to like I think it's the stage before that when you're in that water stage or whatever. Or maybe it's even before that. But the stage anyway where you fight like a bunch of faces just like floating on the walls. Did you see that?

Oh, that is actually after, I think, because I did not get there. Right before the house is sort of a forest level. If it's a little bit more jolly, it could be mistaken for a Mario level, I would say. I'm saying it's the water level, but I'm calling it the water level because we find out Mark is allergic to water. And even though he's not drowning and he's able to stand in it, he does do damage. Yeah, but no, I think the faces one is I think I'm watching it right now. The faces one is after the house and it kind of looks like a magic eye.

From. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. The faces thing, though, to me is like that's like courage, the cowardly dog level scary, you know, where it's like, all right, it's still in a kid's game. It's still in a kid's TV show, like whatever. But it's freaky. Yeah. This one freaks me out. I don't like it. I don't like this one one bit.

But, you know, this is this is the game we get after after level six level seven takes like a weird turn to where there is clearly like I think Jason has shown up into the game. You know, like if you're watching the playthrough, there's like guys with hockey masks. And OK, they appear to be they appear to be either umpires or. They're like catchers, you know, but they look like Jason.

But I don't know. Like, again, are these the people that Mark plays baseball with that now he's turned against? OK, what? OK, no, I see the I see the level now. I think that there isn't enough other baseball iconography to say that this is like sort of delving into Mark. Bats are totally a part of baseball. OK, but swing. Hold on. It's a different kind of bat, of course. I mean, the bats throughout the entire game. I'm talking about this particular level.

It does not speak to a specific part of Mark's id that I would say that this level is specifically baseball trauma related. There's a guy named Royce. Maybe Royce was his coach and he was like he was inappropriate with him. But other than that, nothing else. Baseball. All right. What about the sub boss where you fight the 27 members of the Chicago 1919 Black Sox?

I did miss that one, I think. Yeah, I understand how you could miss it. No, no, no. People have to understand we've been telling the truth mostly throughout this episode. And this is this is the point I wanted to get to is that like at a certain at a certain point when I was playing this game, I realized we could never do it justice over audio.

Like, I hope you guys played this game before you came and listened to the episode, because this is a game that you need to just like you need to play and you just need to talk it out loud. Like, this is the kind of thing that I was just continuously shocked, but not in like a bad way. I was just I was just shocked. I was like, wow, I can't believe they found a way to make it more ridiculous than just from the very get go. The what's up to the Burt Griffin. Like what's up?

What's up? You know, what's up? Yeah, not much in my planet. We have guys whose feet just come out of the ground. They grow like plants, you know, and so I think like these musings are really fun to like point out and everything like that. But I don't want people to think that we're making fun of the game. If anything, we're laughing with the game. Absolutely. I'm pretty sure that they know that they made a ridiculous game on purpose. Yeah, I think there's.

Okay, so if you're just if you just boot it up and you just watch the opening cinematic, you might think like, oh, they're not doing it on purpose. But then you play a little bit more of the game and everything else is like that. But yeah, you know that they're doing this. This is their thing.

Sean, we've been heavily focused on combat and general weirdness of the game, but it is it is more than anything. It's just side scrolling platformer. So did the game have good platforming mechanics? Was it was it engaging enough? There's not too many like pits to fall in or or like puzzle solving mechanics. So does the platforming stand out at all or is it more just like a way to make it this way?

You can't just keep walking left to right. It's very simple combat, but the bat is used more as like a tool than just to like jump around and jump on stuff. So I'd say that it is more like an action platformer. The platforming itself is pretty by the book. There's there aren't any navigational tools like you just jump stuff. And when you're burnt, you fly to stuff.

So I'd say that it's pretty bog standard platforming. Yeah, nothing. I was actually surprised. I was saying, like, is this an action game or is this a platforming game? It seems like the verdict is platformer, but I don't think it really matters at the end of the day which genre these kinds of games fall into. But I was surprised to see like, you know, just that there wasn't much thought put into, you know, even in level six you were talking about where it's like, yeah, there's a lot of doors going to different places and stuff like that. But you're mostly just like going up to a bunch of doors and choosing which ones you want to go inside. Yeah, you're just walking to them. You're not platforming. Yeah, there's no maze element to anything.

Yeah, I think level two, you can't really jump at all. Like you're you're in you're underground somewhere. I don't know if it's a sewer or just a cave, but the ceilings are so low. It is just a maze. It's not a particularly difficult maze. I think you still have to go down every hallway to get to doors.

But they took the entire idea of platforming out of that level. Right. Yeah, it's more like the platforming element is just a way to continue to move across the game and that it never really like evolves throughout. Right. Yeah. I guess like, you know, level five with the water level I was talking about, like, yeah, there's now like you could fall into the water and take some damage, but it's still nothing like consequential. And the platforming itself is just there's these floating rocks everywhere and you just jump from one to the next.

So it's not really a difficult platform or even one that's really like thought about. It's just like this is the level. So we're doing it this way. Yeah. Did you know that Monster Party wasn't always going to be this random of a game? It actually had a prototype that I think was found in like the early 2000s where and I think a lot of it was then later like uncovered inside the game's code so that you could actually like like they're still in there. But essentially each of the levels, the bosses were actually villains from famous horror movies. Yeah, I did. I did read a bit about the prototype and how no one really has access to it really, except for, I think, one dude.

I hate when that happens, by the way. Like, it's a bad look. Yeah. Yeah, I did hear about that. I didn't know that it was supposed to be more cohesive, but I did know that the enemies were differently designed and more like almost copyright infringement sort of thing. Yeah, it was very strange because the pumpkin ghost thing that we were talking about at the beginning of the game, which, of course, they didn't know it at the time. But now that could just be seen as the little dude from Trick or Treat, right? Yeah, nowadays. Yeah. Now it's an established Halloween movie, but at the time they had no idea.

That apparently, that pumpkin ghost dude was supposed to be just like an ape from Planet of the Apes. Oh, okay. And like it had the Statue of Liberty like falling in the beach on the background. Yeah, the only one. It's not even up for debate. Yeah, the only one that I'm aware of from my digging was the eggplant that was actually supposed to very much be more the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

Oh, right. Audrey, yeah. Yeah. And then the Grim Reaper in this game is actually, it was supposed to be the Xenomorph from Alien, but like a giant version of the Xenomorph. I know. There's so many Xenomorphs that we've played through so far. They have the biggest influence on video games ever. Yeah. And then also one of the, like, there was a giant cat inside a box and that was going to be first one of those gizmos that then turns into a gremlin. Yeah. Well, he's a cute. Oh, shit. Wow. Now I'm, I hate that I can't remember the name of him.

They're Mowgli? No. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, does it? No. You know, and then just, like, thinking about what these things actually were in the games, right? Like, man-eating plant then turns into, it turns out in the prototype was supposed to be Venus flytrap. It's like, yeah, I feel like they got close, right? Like. Mogwai.

There you go. Sorry. What was your question? No, I was just saying, like, I feel like they kept most of, like, these things, that eggplant thing. Yeah, they're still in the same. Might as well be. Yeah, they're still in the same realm. They're legally distinct.

And they had to be a little bit more creative in some regards. Not so much with Grim Reaper, but. Right. They had to, like, oh, what's a scary, what's a scary vegetable?

But that's more of a monster party, right? The prototype version sounds like a monster party where you're taking famous monsters through famous movies and putting them as the final bosses of each level. Like, if only Dracula had shown up in this game, that would have, you know, that would have been cool. For sure. I mean, but is Monster Party even, like, even in that, if it was the prototype, is Monster Party even that good of a title?

Like, is it really descriptive enough for what's happening? Like, well, you know, the prototype was probably called something like Monster Mash since they clearly didn't care about infringements of any kind. Yeah. They probably were like, yeah, we'll just steal the song title, too. Because, like, okay, yeah, there's a bunch of monsters. But are they really partying? Like, let's just say that there's a bunch of, there's, like, a bunch of, let's say, actuaries around. And they're not drinking. They're not dancing or having a good time. Is that a party? They're sort of doing what actuaries do. Because that's not a party.

I understand your complaint. Yeah, this is just what monsters do. They scare and they eat you. What would you call it? Okay, but remember when those zombie, those mummy guys came out and they danced for you? That's a party. That is, you're right. This game is just named after that one room where they say, watch us dance. And. Yeah. You're right. That's exactly what the idea was. That was the prototype. Was that, it was just that. They were like, hey, look, we can make mummies dance in video games. And they're like, oh, release it. Call it Monster Party.

The thing about the manual that I find most interesting, though, is, like, at first they're telling you, like, the names of the enemies. And, you know, important information. Like, Medusa attacks by throwing snakes. Shrimp attack. No information necessary, right? Like, they don't even give you anything to say. Did they actually say no information necessary? No. I'm just saying they didn't put any information there. Oh, okay. But they did want you to know that Medusa throws snakes.

Then, you know, giant bull man, he shoots cows at Mark. Like, that's important information. It is important. No. Yeah. You know, silly as it may be. Then you get to, like, Mad Javelin Man. He throws javelins. He says, catch my javelin. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that makes him the Mad Javelin Man. But then you get living dead. Zombies from Japan. Why the specificity? Is that the dancing zombies?

Yeah. Huh. I don't know. They're not doing a particularly Japanese cultural dance. It just seems like they're flossing or something. Maybe they thought, again, because that was the prototype, they were like, oh, man, this dancing is so impressive. We have to make people believe that, you know, Japanese people can dance. We need to represent Japan here. Right. Exactly.

I don't have much else other than that because I'm just shocked at, like, how, you know, like, you could spend at the time probably the games were like $40, $50, $60, whatever you spent, right? Because everybody just made up prices back then. You would spend that money. You'd come home and you really just don't know what you're getting. The manual says one thing. The game is another thing. The story is just too far out there to comprehend. Yeah. The cover promises enemies you'll never see. Uh-huh. Yeah. So it really is just a lot. Absolutely. And it's funny because there are no, like, there's no sequels and spinoffs. I could have listed off, I guess, other Halloween games. This stands as a monument to NES horror. Right. Exactly. It is its own thing.

It's definitely a game that, like, I'm sure, come on, you never heard of this one. Never. Yeah. Me neither. Like, this is the kind of thing that, like, when you have 670-something games on a system, this is when you're, like, hold up. Like, you missed this one. Deep cuts. It's like, yeah, of course. Yeah. These are the deep cuts. Monster Party is a deep cut. Actually, you know, the game plays. Yeah. Like, this is not a buggy mess. It is what it is. So, I'm very surprised with what we got here. I don't know what to make of it. Well, you're going to have to. Ooh, I'm going to have to. You're right because we have a little thing that we do at the end of each episode and it is called the Essential Games List.

Sean, I literally just said I don't know what to make of it. So, you're going to have to go first. Please give us your vote for Monster Party. Monster Party. Yeah. I also don't really know what to make of it because I'll have to say that this was a joy to play even when it was kind of frustrating. But I didn't say frustrating all that often in this episode because everything else about this game just tickles me.

But, yeah, a game that is so heavily leaning into a theme like this and is so bizarre about it. I did not expect to play as well as it did and to have depth of mechanics like, you know,

platforming notwithstanding. I think that the use of like just where your main method of fighting an enemy is to just deflect the thing that comes at you. It's not really all that well. Like, it's not it's not it's not tread well tread ground in the NES so far. So I'd call that unique and pretty well implemented. So it's got it's got the aesthetic. It's got the gameplay. I hesitate to put this on the essential games list just because I think I'm I'm looking at it through like just rose colored glasses right now because it's so unique. And I appreciate uniqueness in the recent sea of sameness. Some games notwithstanding.

But if you've never heard of this game and you didn't play it before listening to this and you somehow got here, I am still recommending to play this game because it it is so unique. So I yeah, I can't put it on right now, but play it. All right. Well said. I will add to that that yet. I mean, this game has a lot of charm to it. It seems like ahead of its time, actually, for the kinds of jokes and humor going for versus when it came out and especially just against like other video games like we really didn't see too many examples like this in general from that scene. So, you know, I'm very surprised by it.

I do think, though, this is a this is a game that's on like that second playthrough of NES games for people. So there's like the essential games list. Right. And then there's for people who are like fans of the NES. And I think this one falls on that. Like you it's too rough around the edges to suggest that like everyone should play Monster Party. But if you are like down with 8 bit games and you like a lot and you either like or have played most of the games that we've suggested so far on the essential games list, I just think there's a good chance you're going to like this one.

Goofy as it may be. Tedious as it may be to just like go through the doors. I do think the doors were one of the bigger mistakes for the game. It probably would have been better to just make the levels bigger in scope.

But just being able to like experience a familiar genre in a different kind of way. I think Monster Party really excels at that. So it's getting my play at recommendation as well, but only for people who have gone through the actual essentials first. This is not a game for people who are like familiar with modern games and then go back and try Monster Party.

That said, I totally could see this being a cult classic. And I will also acknowledge that there are a lot of rough edges on this game that we didn't particularly call out because, again, it's a game that you have to like you just have to verbalize it as it's happening. There's so much weird stuff happening in this game that you either like might love or might hate. And it's really hard to do that on the audio version of a show.

So I think we'll just yeah, we'll leave it at play it. Yeah. And I think, you know, if this has the staying power in my brain and after a little while and whenever we record the best of the year, maybe we'll revisit the idea that it's essential or not. But yeah, for now, just a fun little gem. To the best of my ability, it looks like we'll be recording best of 1989 on December 16th,

2022. All right. I cannot wait. It will have a chance again. Just give it a whole year. And seriously, if Monster Party is still in the discussion around December 16th of 2022, then maybe it is worth considering. I think any game that can stay in the conversation that long.

Greetings. Podcast listener. I, Count Dracula, have returned from the mists of Transylvania once more to address a most grievous insult. The creators of Monster Party have failed to include me in their festivities. Once more, my Transylvania twist has been rated second best by inferior judges of dance and style, by instead inviting a group of skeletons to dance from the land of the rising sun.

For this, there can be no mercy. The makers of Monster Party cursed for a thousand years that their game will forever be not essential. If you are looking for a good game to play this Halloween, may I suggest Castlevania II, Simon's Quest? Until we meet again. Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween. And be like, oh yeah, I'm totally prepared to do a podcast on this. Isn't that right, Sean? Yeah, totally, Mike. I've definitely played more than just the first level. Yeah, there you go. So another game that's like that is next week's game. And that's why we're giving everybody fair warning that if you're the kind of person who plays these games and then listens to the episode, you might want some more time for next week's episode of – it's called Nabunga's Ambition. Nabunga's Ambition. Sounds ambitious. It is – yeah, he's definitely got a lot of ambitions. It's a, like, Koei grand strategy game. I'm really going to use the words grand strategy. Okay. In an NES game. We thought Desert Commander was doing something.

I got a small taste of this one earlier this week because I knew I would have to start prepping for it in advance. And I still am not sure how we're going to talk about this one. So everybody should be looking forward to that episode.

In the meantime, though, if you're looking for more nostalgia, hey, look no further. We got 190 episodes in the bank for you to check out. And if you listen to all of them, why don't you just, like, tweet at us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter and say, I've listened to all 191 episodes. And I would say that there's more than that. There are specials and there is a game jam episode. And you're a liar. Why aren't you a super fan? Here. What would you say to them, Sean? If you've done all of those things already, then what I would suggest is to go through all of your favorite episodes.

Cut up everything that we say and just create your own episode with different things that Mike, Joe, me, or Sam have said. And, like, just make other conversations and then upload that as Stald Nesja.

And, yeah, there are endless episodes that can be used made of the building blocks of our previous episodes. I thought you were suggesting that they would make a clip show. No, no, no. Not a clip show. You take our words and rearrange them so we could talk about anything. Right. Don't forget, we once, at the end of an episode, gave everybody the alphabet. That's true. We said every letter of the alphabet individually so this way they could reconstruct that into being whatever we wanted them to be. So there you go. The tools are there. And if you need that much more content, it's like, you know, podcast Minecraft.

The tools are there.