Ain't nothin but a Monster Party

If you're like me, you like to play 'spooky' games all year. However, if you're also like me you celebrate Halloween all year. So basically, we're cooler than everyone else. Though Halloween time sure is a great time to enjoy some 'spooky' games and there's one slightly obscure game for the NES that's practically made for the season. Monster Party was released by Bandai 30 years ago this year and it's a damn shame it doesn't have a bigger legacy than it does. If you watch the video above you'll see not just the attract screen, but also the intro. Mark is recruited by Bert to help him save his world from evil monsters. Fortunately Mark was on his way home from a baseball game and was carrying his trusty baseball bat. Monster Party is a platform game (my favorite type) where Mark must save Bert's world from those evil monsters with additional aide from Bert by means of changing from one to the other. What's so Halloween about that? Well...

As you can see, it's a scary place. It's all sorts of nightmarish and gory. This would make the average person wonder how it got by Nintendo during a time when they censored such content. If you've ever played this game, you know that the first level is pretty tame until halfway through when suddenly all hell breaks loose. According the urban legend, the developers were banking on whomever at Nintendo was checking these games only looked at the game for a minute or two before approving it. Which pretty much lines up to the game play. One minute it's all happy and cheerful, then lightening flashes and the game just goes straight to hell.

The Japanese version of the game was called Parody World: Monster Party and featured more direct references to classic monsters. For whatever reason that was canceled and what we have as Monster Party was released in North America. Thanks to some crafty types out there, reconstructions of that original game are floating around the emulation scene. Believe it or not, it's even more gory. For awhile there was rumors of an unreleased sequel, but it looks like that was a prank unfortunately. I could really see a Monster Party sequel on the SEGA Genesis. They always played loose with gory stuff, I mean the system originally came with Altered Beast with bad guys exploding into chunks. Just for the record, Monster Party even ended pretty screwed up.