Monster Party

Moby ID: 15567
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Description official description

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.

This is a side scrolling adventure, similar in play to Super Mario Bros., but with monsters and skulls. The game itself is infamous for its outlandish quotes.

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (NES version)

19 People · View all

Game Design
Programmers
Graphics
Music
Presented by
  • Bandai
  • Shinsei
Game Design (げーむでざいん)
  • Hiroshi Haruna (Undead Haruna [あんでっど・はるな])
  • George A. Kamiya [じょーじ・えー・かみや]
  • Lucio Kobayashi [るちお・こばやし]
  • Dragon Nakashima [どらごん・なかしま]
Programmers (ぷろぐらまーず)
  • Baki Carpenter [ばき・かーぺんたー]
  • Hiroshi Haruna (Undead Haruna [あんでっど・はるな])
  • Toru Hayashi (Demons Toru [でもんず・とおる])
  • Nurikabe Tarō [ぬりかべ・たろー]
Graphics (ぐらふぃっくす)
  • Dragon Nakashima [どらごん・なかしま]
  • Lucio Kobayashi [るちお・こばやし]
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 69% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 17 ratings with 3 reviews)

Truly a unique game for NES.

The Good
The game is truly nothing like any other game. The little bits of gore make this not too bad and gives you thrills similar to Freddy or Jason.

The Bad
This game is challenging! Plus the quotes said are pretty weird. Imagine a venus fly trap saying "Hello Baby!" and then attacks you with bubbles, or imagine a pumpkin saying "Please don't pick on me" then comes flying at you. Plus a rotting corpse saying "Sorry, I'm Dead." Or one invisible guy saying "Empty."

The Bottom Line
Even though I haven't beaten the game yet, this game is addicting, but tough. This is a must for the NES fan.

NES · by powerstone05 (344) · 2005

Sorry, I’m dead.

The Good
What game stars a kid who wields a baseball bat to defeat quirky monsters? If you guessed Earthbound, you’re wrong. Also, I don’t know how you could’ve got that question wrong, unless you weren’t looking at the past few links you clicked. The correct answer is Monster Party, a game, like many of the games I review, I hadn’t heard of until very recently. Monster Party is one of those odd games that bear the distinction of being developed in Japan but never actually released there. In fact, I’m not sure how it got released over here in North America either, because it is flippin’ packed with gore. I used to think the little spurts of blood in Golgo 13 were pretty impressive, but this game has that beat.

The goal in Monster Party is simple and also awesome. Almost every level has three bosses hidden in various doors. You must destroy each of the bosses to receive a key that unlocks the level’s exit. So Monster Party gets points right out of the gate for focusing on boss battles. You play as Mark, who is brought to Dark World by Bert in order to free it from the monsters that are running amok. As Mark, you wield a bat which can be used to bludgeon enemies to death, or to deflect projectiles back at them. You can also pick up pills off the ground, which transforms Mark into Bert for a short time. Bert can fly and also shoot fire at enemies, which is a lot more powerful than the bat. It just goes to show what you can achieve when you eat pharmaceuticals that you find lying on the ground.

Monster Party features a delightful mix of humour and horror. Sure, you’ll often find yourself wandering around in nightmarish hellscapes, but next thing you know, you’re fighting an animated pair of ghost pants! Many of the bosses are downright hilarious. One of my favourites is a fried prawn. After dealing enough damage to the prawn it then turns into an onion ring, and then into what appears to be three onion rings on a stick. Can you say, “Best boss ever”? I can. The boss sprites are also very big for an NES game, making them even more impressive.

There’s a lot of that simple NES charm to be found in Monster Party. Remember how hilariously naïve Blaster Master’s opening cutscene was? Well, Monster Party has one that’s quite similar in its innocence. I recommend looking it up because it is absolutely ludicrous. Each of the bosses say a quick taunt before you fight them, and some of them are terrific. My favourite by far is received when you enter a boss room that contains nothing but a rotting monster corpse. Luckily, the monster hasn’t forgotten his manners and apologizes with “Sorry, I’m dead”.

All of this comes together in quite a unique little package. There is a lot of variety between levels, with no enemies repeated on any two stages. Each level also has a different feel to it, which is quite commendable. Both Mark and Bert control remarkably well and both of them are fun to play as. The music is a bit of a low point, as none of it is memorable and it is so quiet compared to the sound effects. However, none of it is blatantly annoying, which is a plus in my books.

The Bad
So, I beat Monster Party the day I received it, in one sitting no less. I did feel inspired to pick it up for a second playthrough, but I can’t guarantee you’ll do the same. There aren’t any difficulty options, so if you want extra challenge you’ll have to make your own up. I’ve got one; beat the entire game without transforming into Bert. I’ll have to try that one day, but now I’m off topic. If I had bought this game at full price when it was released, I would have been pissed. Luckily I only spent five bucks on it, so it can be forgiven for being too damned short and also too friggin’ easy.

Okay, so honestly it isn’t THAT short. Eight levels with a bazillion bosses between them is fairly lengthy for an NES game, and there are no lives (though, there are infinite continues) so if you die, you’re back at the start of the level. However, some levels are shorter and more linear than others. In as early as my second playthrough, I finished the game in under an hour. If, for some reason, you can’t complete the game in one sitting, there is a password system so you can continue from where you left off. Fortunately, there is no stage timer to hurry you along, but that just adds to the game’s lack of challenge.

The problem is the game is so easy it never took me more than two attempts to beat a level. What really surprised me was the overall lack of instant death, a rarity for the NES. Even falling into pools of water merely damages you slightly. That means the only way to die is by enemies whittling down your life bar. However, you’re given an absolutely massive health bar. I’m serious; it stretches all the way across the screen. It’s filled less than half way up at the beginning of a stage, and I was never able to fill it all the way to the top, but it still isn’t difficult to wind up with too much health. Worse yet, you get a health bonus for completing a stage, and your health bar is carried over to the next level. If you die, your health is reset to the default amount, but if you quit and enter the password you received from completing the level, you get it all back. Yeah.

There are a lot of boneheaded design issues in Monster Party. Instead of enemies randomly dropping pick-ups, specific ones drop specific pickups. For example, if you kill an enemy and he drops a heart, that means every time you leave the screen and come back, he’ll drop another heart. To offset this, the developers made the decision to create a limit on how much health can be found in each stage. While this does prevent you from grinding for health, do you know what else could have prevented this? A shorter fucking health bar.

It’s an overall lack of polish that brings Monster Party down. The graphics are blatantly tiled, with tree tops ending in a straight line. Collision detection, especially when it comes to deflecting projectiles, is a bit wonky. There are punctuation and formatting errors in a lot of the text. Rewards for destroying a boss are sometimes rendered completely intangible through glitches. There’s one perplexing bug in the seventh level. Like many of the levels, level 7 has three bosses. Oddly enough, though, you only need to defeat two of the bosses to receive the key that allows you to unlock the exit. If, however, you fight the third boss after you’ve received the key, the key will vanish from your inventory and I don’t think there’s any way to get it back except by replaying the level. At least, I hope that’s a bug.

The Bottom Line
I enjoyed Monster Party a lot more than I thought I would. Really, I figured I was picking up a throwaway title. I thought I’d pick it up, play it for a little while, and then I’d put it away and never think of it again. However, Monster Party really hooked me and I wound up playing through it more than once. It’s also a neat little oddity because so much got by Nintendo of America’s strict censors. There’s a lot of blood and horrific imagery, but what surprised me was the presence of crosses. Nintendo of America was very adamant about removing religious imagery from their games, going as far as preventing Shigeru Miyamoto’s own Devil World from being released in North America.

Anyways, I’m off track. If you can forgive the ease and brevity of the game, then Monster Party is well worth a look. It’s a solid platformer with lots of charm and imaginative boss battles. Overall, it’s a really GOOD game. It’s too bad that it is let down by some poor design choices and an overall lack of polish. With all these retro revivals going on, I wonder what the chances are of Bandai revisiting Monster Party? Slim to none, I’d imagine, but a guy can dream.

NES · by Adzuken (836) · 2010

One of the most bizarre games ever. But it's fun.

The Good
It's just so dang hilarious! You play as a shiny-haired 8-year-old boy who sees a giant meteor, then it turns out to be purple gargoyle! His name is "Bert" and his dimmension is being taken over by monsters. Thus begins one boy's genocidal rampage against an entire race of monsters from another world, using only a BASEBALL BAT. Plus, you can turn into a green monster by taking, belive it or not, little green pills.

The Bad
Sometimes you would laugh so hard at the insanity of this game that it would become hard to play and then you would lose.

The Bottom Line
Get this game if you're depressed. I guarentee you'll start laughin the instant you see the title screen.

NES · by Jimmy Sherrill (8) · 2004

Trivia

Cancelled Japanese release

Although planned for release for Japan, this game was only released in North America. However, a prototype of this version of the game exists. Differences between the prototype version and the eventually released US version can be viewed here.

Uncensored

This is one of the few examples of a licensed NES game that somehow managed to slip under Nintendo's tight censorship protocol. Although the title screen for the US release was slightly altered (with green slime instead of blood), the game still featured plenty of gore, as evident in the second-half of the first level. The end is also particularly gruesome (not to mention bizarre). There is also blood drenched skeletons on the round start screens.

Information also contributed by Sean Sigurgeirson

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Related Sites +

  • Catch my javelin!
    Site with some information and more importantly pictures of all the many bosses in the game and their bizarre quotes.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Scott Monster.

Additional contributors: Apogee IV, Alaka.

Game added November 18, 2004. Last modified March 21, 2024.