
The game Monster Party was released by Bandai in 1989, and is a typical side-scroller with a surreal but enjoyable horror theme.

The game begins when our hero, a child named Mark, is walking home from a baseball game. He looks up to see a large star in the sky, but realizes that it isn't a star at all when it lands in front of him and turns into a winged monster named Bert.


Bert tries to talk Mark into coming to his world to help him fight monsters, which is strange considering that Bert himself is a monster. Mark resists at first, but Bert pretty much kidnaps him, and they fly off to "Dark World" where Mark is forced to fight for his life with a bat.

I've owned Monster Party for ages, but haven't bothered to give it any real play time. Before this week it never occurred to me just how weird this game was.
Mark is occasionally able to transform into Bert after killing a monster and eating a pill that appears. Bert can fly and shoots beams of sort, which makes for a nice alternative to Mark's baseball bat rampage.


Until you reach the big weird cactus thing on level one, everything is all smiles and cute stuff, but after the cactus the game gets creepy. There's blood, skulls, more monsters... and all the while Mark is swinging the bat.
Of coarse, what game would be complete without the occasional boss battle? Each of the eight levels has a few, and they're all equally bizarre.
On the whole Monster Party is a fun game. There are some tedious and repetitive elements, but with a different theme for every level, there's more than enough going on visually to keep you interested. I'm not sure yet where the "party" idea comes in, but I'll be playing the game for a little while longer until I find out.


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