31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 11 (Monster Party)

What? What the fuck?

Another day, another encounter with monsters that I had at a young age. I know I wrote about this for Nintendo Project Resumed, and I'm probably going to be repeating myself but with more eloquence and elaboration in order to make word bloat and have a post for today. Anyway, this is about Monster Party on the NES! I recall mentioning in the Castlevania post that I was given an NES hint book by my sister to deal with the inscrutabilities of Castlevania 2. To go into specifics, that book was Jeff Rovin's How To Win At Nintendo Games, Volume Three. This book was all text, mind, and ran through how to play the things and gave out passwords and junk. I still have the thing, all tattered and ripped and missing pages in the front and back because as a young child I was not nice to books. (I got better, though.) There were a few games in this book that I owned, like the aforementioned Castlevania 2 or The Adventures Of Bayou Billy. Some games in this book didn't sound appealing, but there were a few that enthralled me to read about, imagining what they were like. Games like Amagon, or The Guardian Legend, or Ninja Gaiden. Keep in mind that this was the 90's, and I couldn't just Youtube these things. If I didn't own the game, or have a way to rent it from our local video store, it might as well have been imaginary. This is the category that Monster Party belonged to... but Monster Party is in a rare category. It is one of two games that I got to play, in the 90's, after I got that book. With emulation I would get at everything in that book worth a damn, but the only ones I got at back then were Monster Party and Mega Man 2. Even then, Monster Party is in a class of its own because I only borrowed Mega Man 2. I owned Monster Party. Even the circumstances of me obtaining it are shrouded in the past. I found it at some store in Grand Bank, Newfoundland (a place I am quite fond of, if you've watched my vlogging of it) that is now a hardware store. It was something like 12 dollars, but this had to have been at least 1994, possibly 1995... or later. What was a little store in a smallish town in Newfoundland doing with an NES game, and one so specific as Monster Party? Either way, I had the object of my scrutiny and I was excited to play it. The book made Monster Party seem kind of weird, but it probably wasn't that weird, huh?

I was right. It was even fucking weirder.

At its strange, twisted heart, Monster Party is another celebration of all the monsters. It's in the title, even! It's on the cover! LOTSA MONSTERS! What you get instead is something like Castlevania a la Parodius, mixed with the unpolish of a lower-tier NES game. Monster Party is not tightly controlled or well balanced or anything like that. Gameplay wise, it does not hold up to the greats... but when did that matter? No, Monster Party skirts by and gets its way into your mind via its charm. The main source of said charm comes from the multiple boss fights. I swear, this thing is almost Treasure-like in how it throws boss fights at you, and all of them are weird as all hell. From the dead spider who apologizes for being dead, to the haunted wishing well, to the tempura shrimp that turns into an onion ring that turns into some other fried goodie, to the dancing zombies who you beat by doing nothing and watching them dance to death... I could go on, but you get the idea. It's memorable because of how bizarre it is. Some of this shit is legitimately funny; I saw a giant shark fin in the waters of one level, and then it jumped up to reveal a tiny shark that was wearing the giant shark fin to fool you into thinking it was a bigger shark. That's hilarious! Yet, we also play with the morbid and creepy. Case in point, the happy visuals of level 1 that morph into a bloody nightmare with bleeding skulls and spotted mandogs everywhere. How that didn't mess me up as a child, I've no idea. Not to mention the ending, which I'll not spoil but SWEET SHIT. This game stuck in my mind at every stage; reading about it in my hint book, playing it, recalling it during the days of emulation long after my copy had vanished. Still, we're in the magical alchemical land of video games, and there's always a secret history. This game came from Japan, but it did not come out there. A prototype exists, and its unearthing and dumping reveals the grim truth. This is not just a Monster Party. It is a Reference Party. As Derek Alexander shows off, half of the weird, gonzo, and off-the-wall shit in this game was a movie reference in the prototype. Hell, the goddamned thing is called Parody World! Rather than the product of mad genius, this makes the game just a reskin of copyrighted material. We should never have looked behind the curtain.


Still, it crackles. Oh, how it crackles. It's not the best game you'll ever play. It's not even the most fucked up game you'll ever play! It is, however, a game I don't regret playing, and one I'd love to own a real deal physical copy of again. I'd suggest firing it up in a form of your choosing this October. Give it a little go, even if you don't beat it. Look up passwords if you must to progress so you can see the other bosses. Or just watch the longplay. Experience the thing, because it's something wild that should be experienced.