Monster Party - NES

Monster Party was (in 1989) the most awesome video game I had ever played in my life.  Period.  Not only did you get to periodically turn into a monster by consuming a giant pill, but you were fighting your way through 8 stages of monster mayhem through The Dark World....each with several bosses along the way.  After completing all 8 stages you face off against the Dark World Master.

The cover of this game is awesome...we've got Dracula, The Gill-man, Medusa, Some kinda Red Bigfoot/Troll Monster, A Giant Venus Flytrap and a knock off of H.R. Geiger's Alien.  Wowwee!  What a collection of monsters!  The only monsters that actually appear IN the game are Medusa (who is actually a giant snake with snake hair) and the Venus Flytrap monster...which looks nothing like the vicious carnivore on the cover.....it's pink and it shoots bubbles at you. 

In the game you control Mark...a kid who is visited by a monster named Bert who begs him for his help to save his home, Dark World from the monsters running rampant.  Bert tells Mark that his "weapon" will be useful in the fight against the monsters.  Mark's "weapon" being the baseball bat that he's carrying.  See, he was on  his way home from a baseball game when Bert confronted him.  Before ya know it, Bert uses some kind of alien gargoyle magic and fuses himself together with Mark.  During play, when you consume a giant pill that looks like a colored Tylenol, you will transform into Bert for a short time. 

As Mark, you swing your baseball bat to either strike enemies or to deflect their projectiles back at them.  As Bert you shoot, laser bullet things......and you can fly....which is awesome.  The problem is that the two characters are on two different ends of the spectrum when it comes to difficulty.  Mark is a pain in the ass to use sometimes....especially when there are multiple projectiles coming at you.  Bert on the other hand almost makes the game too easy......so I suppose that sort of balances it out.....except for the fact that it often seems like Bert is nowhere to be found when you need him the most.



Fried Shrimp Attack!



Monster Party, or Parodi Warudo Monsutā Pātī as it's known in Japan, is truly one of the strangest games for the NES....and that's saying a lot when you look at titles such as Zombie Nation, Kabuki Quantum Fighter and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom.  But when you get right down too it, everything about this game is simply bizarre.  Where else can you fight a giant cat in a crate?  The damn thing actually chucks kittens at you and you have to whack them back at it to damage it!  That's demented!  Or how about the Cow Man/Minotaur that attacks you by firing little cows at you?  Or the best yet.....when you are confronted by a triple threat boss that consistes of a giant piece of fried shrimp, and onion ring and some other piece of fried food on a toothpick (!?) that bounce around the room and you must destroy them.  There is an evil looking machine that sorta kinda looks like the teleporters from David Cronenberg's 1986 redux of The Fly in the background.  This is truly whacked!

So......much.....blood!

Something that is also really interesting to note, is the fact that there is alot of 8-bit blood on display in this game.  This is pretty interesting considering Nintendo's stance on video game cencorship in the late 1980's.  You can quite easily find this cartridge on E-bay, Amazon and probably at any local video game store that deals in retro games.  Or even easier, you can play it on an emulator or at Retro Uprising. 

You've really gotta play this game to believe all the weirdness that abounds in it.