A Look Back At Monster Party

Anyone who grew up playing video games probably has a few obscure releases from their childhood that have stuck with them. You know the kind of game I mean -- something that isn't particularly memorable, well-loved, or (if we're being honest with ourselves) all that good, but you played it so much in your youth that it will always occupy a strange nostalgic part of your brain. For me, Monster Party is one of those games.

I think part of the reason it pulled me in so strongly is that Monster Party does a great job of making young boys feel like part of the adventure via the main character. Sure, five-year-old Phil loved playing as a robotic bad-ass in Mega Man or as a super spy in Metal Gear. But in Monster Party, you play as a little kid walking home from a baseball game.

Hey, I played baseball as a kid! I played it badly, but still. And Mark is a name not dissimilar to Phil! I could be this guy, or so my young brain reasoned. Sure, I never met a weird space gargoyle named Bert while walking home from a game, but it could have happened. Unlike other games that transported me into another world where I took on the role of someone else entirely, Monster Party let me step into a bizarre scenario where I was the hero (along with my purple monster companion).

Also, for the record, although I played baseball, I never wore a t-shirt with a giant "P" on it to a game. Either this Mark kid is a total bad-ass, or his mom has devised a somewhat pathetic scheme to help the other kids remember his name.

Anyway, the protagonist isn't the only reason I remember Monster Party so fondly. The game is also incredibly weird. Even getting past the space gargoyle angle, this has to be one of the most bizarre NES games ever released.

It starts out colorful and upbeat, like so many games on the system. You walk along hitting bad guys with your bat and doing some light platforming. Then you come across a giant cactus in the background...and the whole world transforms into this:

I don't remember my exact thoughts the first time I hit this moment when I was a kid, but I'm almost certain I didn't sleep that night. Looking at screenshots of the game today, I'm still a little surprised that Nintendo let Monster Party squeak by onto the NES, given its gory and grotesque art style.

If the aesthetic isn't weird enough, take a look at the list of bosses in this game. Each of the game's eight levels contains three boss encounters, and they're pretty much all insane. The first boss is a giant, bubble-shooting plant that greets you by saying, "Hello! Baby!" In level two, you encounter "Shrimp Attack," a boss whose three forms are a fried shrimp, an onion ring, and a shish kabob. Shrimp attack also calls you "baby." How did I comprehend this as a child? How much did this messed up game warp my brain?

Other bosses you'll encounter include a haunted well that throws giant silver coins at you, a minotaur that attacks you with miniature cows, and a punk rocker. My personal favorite is the second boss of level one: the dead spider. In a post-modern twist that would be at home in a Hideo Kojima game, you enter the room only to have the boss tell you, "Sorry I'm dead." After a couple seconds of watching a fly swirl around his corpse, you hear the victory music and can leave. Congratulations on your hard(ly)-earned victory!

Considering all this oddity, it should come as no surprise that Monster Party developer Human Entertainment was the first team to employ Goichi Suda (a.k.a. Suda51), one of the craziest and most interesting developers working in the industry. Suda wasn't with them yet when Monster Party was being worked on, but I'm not surprised he emerged from the same studio nonetheless.

Sadly, despite my undying nostalgia for it, Monster Party has largely been forgotten. With publisher Namco Bandai resurrecting the somewhat thematically similar Splatterhouse series, is it too much to hope that Monster Party could get some love? Or maybe even just an unlockable port of the game within Splatterhouse? Probably.

I'll have to settle for my memories and seeing how they stack up to reality on a Monster Party Replay at some point in the future. In the meantime, join me in reminiscing and check out a couple videos of the game below. There's a lengthy gameplay clip, and as a bonus, a short video showcasing the epic dead spider boss encounter.

[Some info and images from this story via SydLexia]