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Monster Party
Publisher: Bandai
Developer: Human Entertainment
Genre: Platformer
Release: June 1989
Platform: NES
Reviewer: Eric
 Few Nintendo games had blood back in the NES days. One of the few games that had the guts to show blood was Monster Party. This game is one of the most
bizarre platform games on the NES. The game is obscure and disturbing, which is
why Monster Party is one of those games you have to play.
The story is about a boy named Mark who is on his way home from a baseball game.
On his way home a gargoyle named Bert asks for your help. It turns out Bert’s
home planet is infested with evil monsters, meaner than him. Mark really doesn’t
want him help since he only has a bat, but Bert could careless. Out of no where
Bert quickly takes Mark and takes him up into the sky, off to his home planet.
For somebody that wants help why would they just grab you and leave? Bert is
pretty much kidnapping Mark and forces him to help. Bert could get thrown into
jail for a very long time, but hey at least Mark has a baseball bat. He can beat
the living crap out of all of these evil monsters.
The games plot isn’t the only weird part. Monster Part looks like it might be a
game about classic horror monsters, I mean look at the cover of the game. Mark
does fight some of these monsters, but he also has to fight a pairs of legs,
dancing zombies, giant shrimp and a whole lot more.
 Monster Party is just like every other platform game and I know I’ve said this
before. One of the differences here is Monster Party is completely random and
Mark moves a little weird. When you first play Monster Party the controls feel
sluggish and don’t seem to respond too well. For a little kid Mark seems to jump
pretty far, which can hurt you sometimes if you are trying to jump on a small
block. If you jump right on a monster you better deal with it because you will
fall back and most likely the monster will hit you again.
You can also play as Bert in this game too. It makes perfect sense since the
bastard did kidnap you, at least he can help you out when needed. In order to
play as Bert you need to find these pills, which enemies drop every so often.
When you are playing as Bert the game is a whole lot easier. He can fly and
shoot mini lasers. This gargoyle is a badass!
It isn’t that hard to turn into Bert in this game. If you want to make things
easier on yourself try and kill all of the enemies in the stage. Whenever a
monster drops an item you can get that same item again if you kill the creature
again. All you need to do is walk off of the screen and walk back. This is a
cheap way to build up your health meter early on in the game; some of the boss
battles can be a little tricky.
Bosses battles in Monster Party are interesting. Before you begin a battle the
monster will give you a cheap one liner. Some of these one liners are not funny
or extremely random. The developers of this game did go on to make the Clock
Tower series so this might explain some of their randomness. Wait a second all
of the Clock Tower games were violent. There were no one liners or random jokes
in those games. Were these developers on something when they created this game?
Let’s get back to the blood in Monster Party. This was one of the few NES games
to show red blood. The only times you would see blood is in the background. Not
all of the stages had red blood, originally the title screen was supposed to
have red blood, but it was changed for the American release. The best part is
this game was only released in the United States.
Monster Party is a hard game, but everything in the game has a set pattern.
There are a total of eight stages and only one of them is a real challenge.
After you beat a stage you will be given a password so there is no need to beat
this game in one sitting. One bad thing about this game though is if you die you
have to start all over from that stage. This is a problem since monsters keep
coming after you, even at the end of levels. I died a few times at the very end
and it sucks.
Final Verdict
If you still have an old Nintendo and you don’t have Monster Party then go buy a
copy right now. The game shouldn’t cost too much, I’ve seen it at used game
stores before for less than $5. There isn’t a release date for this game on the
Virtual Console, but who knows that might change.
Rating
7.50 out of 10
Monster Party Footage
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