Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 73: Monster Party

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

It might not have been a smash-hit back when it released in 1989, but Monster Party went on to be remembered by NES kids as one of the more memorableif inexplicable8-bit games. Though the (unreleased) Japanese version set out to be a much more direct parody of horror hits, the extant experience skirts close enough to breaking copyright law to make the whole thing worthwhile. On this episode of Retronauts Micro, join host Bob Mackey and guest Henry Gilbert as the two dig into one of the spookiest games in the NES library.

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I am your host for this one, Bob Mackey, and who else is here with me today? Every bloodies infighted Henry Gilbert. Do they really make that same joke twice in that month? I'm pretty sure. The joke is that it's that bad. They're very bad. We're referencing the Mr. Show sketch monster

parties, which is unrelated to the NAS game, but still funny. And I must recommend a Lasertime episode that I think is called Monster Parties. It is a bunch. You thought Monster Mash is the only song about Monsters Mashing? Oh, no, sir. There are dozens of them. Yes. Yeah. And they're much worse. I mean, Monster Mash is like,

let it be compared to all those other songs, I think. Yeah, I love the Halloween Shindig song from the, from that Mr. show scene. It's just the, though I saw somebody on the internet saying, like, no, the Monster Mash is a song about the song, Monster Mash, and you never get to hear that song. Like, no, the Monster Mash is the dance they're doing. Yeah. It's a song about, it's just like this Splish Splash song. It's just a song about the dance craze that kids love.

Like, they were mashed potatoing. They're doing the monster mash. Now they don't tell you how to do that dance in the song. So it fails in that way as a dance song. Now all the monsters are twerking and frankly, they just can't handle it. It's too much. But yes, today's episode is about Monster Party. A quote-unquote classic NES game.

I feel like it's not a super great game, but it is just so weird and inventive that I have to talk about it. And I like to do a mini Halloween episode every year. this is our Halloween episode. If you're not a Patreon patron, it will get to you after Halloween. So in that case, happy belated All Saints Day. But yeah, so let's get into it. Before we get into the actual game, Monster

Party, I wanted to ask Henry if you have any experience with this game, and I'll talk about my experience. It was a rental for me, but an unhappy rental as I recall, because to me, I saw it as, this cover is a lie. I thought this was a game where I'll be fighting the Universal Monsters

and I'll get to see all of them. just from the first moment I was like oh this is like gross 80s monster stuff like it's more my pet monster than universal monsters and and also it was just like too punishing it was pretty tough in my mind then I was like this is like the turtles game like that's how I recall it so I was not a fan of monster party it was a rental and then it went back to let's say pick and save I see there were no parties to be had in this game I as a kid growing up I was a huge mega coward when it came to horror and I avoided this game because Because the premise of a monster party was too much for me to handle. Like, there's too many. The cover is kind of scary, too. It's just like a bunch of menacing monsters looking at the consumer saying, buy me. There's a prospect of a monster party inside.

But they front-loaded with the universal monsters. When I look closer at the, in my memory, I was like, oh, it's only the universal monsters. But on the cover farther back, it's like, okay, there's some of the weird, weirdos you're going to see in this game. But much more of the monsters, like, I saw the Bella Lagosia, or the, closest to Bella Legosi they legally could. They go to great lengths within the game itself to disguise everything in the reference saying. We'll get into that later, but yeah, I was a huge

mega-coward. Even something as goofy as Monster Party was too much for me to handle. I would get spooked by so many things in video games. I have a much higher tolerance for this now. I don't think it was until my mid-20s that I actually started liking horror movies and started seeking out horror. So I got over that and I eventually play Monster Party. Probably

like in the emulation days for the first time and only revisited it recently for this episode. But we'll talk more about that later. So let's get into some details about this game. It was released in June 1989 in the USA and never in Japan. We'll talk about that later, but it was planned for a Japanese release. And Monster Party was developed by Human Entertainment and extremely quirky developer. They lasted from 1983 to the year 2000.

Their name might sound familiar to you if you're a Retronaut's listener. They created the Fire Pro Wrestling series and the Clock Tower series. So two, I think, semi-notable series came out of human and they did a lot of other stuff. Henry, you said, woo. tell me your experience with Fire Pro Wrestling. It's too. We did a whole episode on that. That's right.

Russell Nots. Yeah, but the... That was four years ago. That's true. Yeah, Fire Pro was until the A.K.I. In 64 games, my favorite wrestling series, but it was also one that Americans didn't really get to play. We only really got it in English from the GBA, though. It was started by the director of N.E.S. Pro Wrestling, who then just made his own one with

human entertainment and now it's uh it ended up getting bought up by spike and now uh you can play basically an hd remake in quotes of the 2009 ps2 fire pro but it's better than nothing on steam green light and they are they have been making major improvements to it over the months it's been available on steam and someday it'll be on ps4 but it was also known that quirkiness you talked about was totally there in the fire pro story oh for sure there's the famous one of in one of the campaigns, your character will commit suicide at the end of it. I think Suda 51 wrote that, right? Yes, he was, uh, Suda 51 got to play around with his darker instincts, which since we

mentioned Suda 51, I don't know if he worked on this game or not. I think this would probably be too early for him. I think it's before his time. But I will say when I rewatch the law, I didn't play it like you, but I watched a full play through of it before this. And I think this actually inspired a bit of, it is very similar to the Suda 51. game Shadows of the Dam I can see that because

especially in that you go on a tour of different weird places that are just like this is all just fucked up horror stuff here everywhere you go in just this like kind of slurry of horror references just like the game and then the ending ends with like oh it was all

a dream it wasn't and then being told you're going to do this again that's exactly in spoilers for Shazza of Dam that is exactly how Shazazade Am and he has a fucking bat in the game too A bad is a major weapon in that. I finished that game and I think I enjoyed it, but I have no memories of it. I enjoyed it.

I think it was... It was like kind of R.E.4 light almost. Yes. It was basically the best playing Suda game ever, I think. Because they had Shinji Makami's influence there, I think, and he was just like, no, this has to play better. The shooting needs to be better. So like I said before, I think this is one of those games that was rediscovered via emulation in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I feel like this is along with like River City Ransom where, like, we would just have these discussions.

Remember that game that had like, you know, this in it and that in it? And then when we had access to all the games ever, we rediscovered them. So I feel like this was talked about a lot in that era of the internet where it was like, OMG, Japan is so crazy. Look at all this crazy Japanese stuff. And this is always one of the games featured because there's a lot of fun, quote unquote, ingrish in this game. There's a lot of poorly translated things, a lot of inexplicable, just dialogue. Hello, baby.

Sorry, I'm dead. Don't hit me. Please don't pick on me as one of them I think So yeah I think I don't I want to look more into this But I think the universal monster craze Had a huge effect on Japan as well as America It filtered through both cultures

Because Universal Monsters were huge For the kids of the 50s and 60 Just because it was like cheap TV fodder If you if you listen to like Gilbert Gottfried's podcast And Dana Gould's podcast Those are two men both obsessed with monster movies Because it was just TV filler For them growing up

The 70s in America had a real boom of like monster serials, monster had like this rediscovering of it too. I could see in post-war Japan when they were importing more and more American content than ever. I could see the Universal Monster Films being a big part of that, like that they'd, that they would be showing in cinemas and whatnot. There's a lot of Japanese stuff in this game as well, a lot of Japanese. Oh, yeah.

Yo-Kai. Re-watching this, I was like, whoa, this is so nice. I know things about Japanese culture more than I did as a 10-year-old, this is really impressive to be. Yes, those sentient umbrellas that bounce around. Those are Japanese yokey. So, yeah. So the story of this game is really great. I love the intro cutscene. So Mark, as a small boy, a very Japanese-looking boy, he's walking home from a baseball game, and he sees a star in the sky, and his eyes get moist. And the gargle hill slash alien Bert appears. And it recruits Mark to help him. fight monsters in his world. And the way Bert sells this to Mark is not very convincing.

He's like, listen, you've got to come with me now. I need your bat. It's as good as any weapon. And oh, by the way, I'm going to like fuse with your body without telling you. Let's go. Like, no, I don't want to. I'm picking up. Like, he's like, no, this is just a bat.

Batter. It doesn't matter. I don't know what that joke is, but sure. Why not? Well, it's hard to keep track a little bit of who's saying everything to. Yeah. Because the quotes, look, it's not described to anyone. Yeah.

It's still fun, though. And this is like a platformer, and the entire game is based around a mechanic. I don't think I've seen before or since. I've seen it use selectively like in boss battles, like in Legend of Zelda, Link to the past. But most of the game is based around hitting enemy projectiles back to the enemy that shot them at you. And the major issue with that is you don't know which direction they're going to travel after you hit them back. And a lot of boss fights revolve around hitting back the projectiles. So it's always a crapshoot, like, do you have to be standing here to hit it at a 45 degree angle or there?

It seems very, very random. At least there's a password system to get you back. Like, there's no saves, but at least it's not ghost and goblining you back to the beginning of the stage. Mercifully, there is a password after every stage. So you can make progress in this game, which is not true of ghost and goblins. I refuse to believe that game has an ending. The other mechanic is when you pick up a pill in the game world, which is telling kids at home, you know, pills are great. Eat them.

And you'll turn into a fun monster. So you pick up a pill in the game world, you turn into Burt's. temporarily who is like super powered he can fly and shoot like infinite projectiles so ultimately this game is all based around fighting three bosses in every stage and these buses are very hard

to fight as Mark so the kind of secret goal of this game is to get a pill and immediately run into the boss door that you find in the stage and fight the boss because otherwise it is a hard ass slog through some of these bosses you're in for a hard time especially like the hit boxes are not easy to tell no no

sometimes having a objectile as opposed to a bath that cannot It's also like you can It reminded me of the TM&T games again of like You've got three pixels in front of you You're gonna hit something otherwise Yeah It's especially cruel like enemies like the reverse mermaid

Who it just keeps walking at you It has no knockback It's like I swung my bat as fast as I could This should be dead and I still take a hit I mean they're like looking at this and playing this There are some unavoidable hits Which I always hate in games Like there should be a way to potentially avoid

every attack or every hit. But there are two kinds of bosses in this game. This game, the biggest feature for 1989 was just the sheer amount of bosses. There were like three per stage and there are eight stages. So that's a lot of bosses for an NES game. And they're all distinct, at least in appearance, but they really filed down into two forms of bosses. There's the one type of boss who will just stand at one side of the screen and fire things at you that you hit back. And another kind of boss that sort of just marches back and forth occasionally jumping and you have to either hit their projectiles back or attack them. And there is no way to avoid getting hit. Maybe there are frame perfect playthroughs of this where Mark does not get hit, but man, it is hard to avoid getting hit.

I don't see how you actually, without a tool-assisted thing, like there's no, it's too, it's too vague. And some of the bosses, some of the bosses are so tall that I believe it's just, it's the game telling you, no, you need Burt for this. Like, Bert can fly over these bosses when they're marching back and forth. You should have hoped to get somebody to drop that pill for you. Otherwise, you have no hope against this guy. That pill, by the way, I think is designed intentionally to look like the, the Akira patch that also has the pill on it. It's at the same angle as the famous one, Canato, wears. Was the Akira movie 88 in Japan?

It was 88. The comic was already quite popular before the movie came out. I can see that. I would totally see that the game developers would know the manga. Yeah, I think Mark needed a cool motorcycle or something like that. So, yeah, this game is definitely gorier than your standard NES game. Even Castlevania. They got around, like, I'm watching that, I was like, this breaks every rule I've known Nintendo

has. Was Howard Phillips asleep at the switch or something when he was testing this game? He was drunk. No, well, I don't know. By 89 he might have left. He wasn't there through the all the way through N. He partially because he was getting mistreated. Yeah, he left for Lucas film games. And I forget what he did after that.

But yeah, like this is definitely gory or explicitly. Even though it's a very silly, playful game, when you start a stage, the password screen and the stage start screen, it's just a river of blood with corpses in it and blood dripping down the screen. Like, I'm glad I did not rent this game. that would have freaked the hell out of me as a kid. Same too with that.

I wish they did this trick more. I think they only do it in the first stage of pass that cactus. And then it transforms. They're like, oh, those smiley faces, they're all rotting heads. Yeah, like rotting skulls and bleeding skulls. So there's a certain point in the first stage where when the game starts, it's a little too happy. Like all the little blocks are smiling, the hills are smiling.

And then once you pass a point in the stage, everything flashes and all the tiles change to be horror theme. That is a really cool surprise in a game. It only happens once, but it's a cool kind of pull the rug out from under you, uh, effects. I think it's one of those things like they, the, maybe the developers had more energy for something that creative in the first level and then after that, like, we got, like, or maybe they're like, if we're going to do this trick, it's got to be the first level because no kid's going to get to the fifth.

Like, we can't count on a player getting to the fifth. There are other cool ideas that I did not see in any other game at the time. Like, we talked about the bosses. There are at least two bosses with very unique mechanics. One of them is just a dead crab who, when you walk into the room, He just says, sorry, I'm dead. And you automatically win the boss fight. I think it's in the first stage.

Yeah, that's true. I forgot that one. I wish they didn't. How hard would it be to make a key icon? Why does it have to be a question? Yeah, it's like, well, I guess there's a, there's a degree. You have to hope you get the key in the first time. And I go, oh, no, just tell.

Sometimes it's a point. Sometimes it's life. And sometimes it's actually the key you need to pass the stage. But yeah, the deceased crab is one of them. The other one is a zombie boss. And they basically say, so you go into the boss arena, all of the boss fights take place in these square rooms. You go into the boss arena with the zombies and they're like, watch us dance.

You have to not touch anything and watch them dance to win the boss fight. Yeah. And again, the hyper-Japaneseness of it, I did not. I notice now, isn't it all like, well, that's the the tycho drum or whatever. Yeah. This is a specifically Japanese-style party here, which again, this was not released in Japan even. Yeah, I mean, there are very Japanese bosses

in the game, Japanese cultural bosses in the game, like the well, you fight like an evil well but like that's something you know in the 2000s people would see that as the invented boss fight up well you don't fight just watch this thing no listen to them don't fight but to do that in 89 like that is some wild creative

stuff ahead of the game and in fact you can attack the dancing zombies and when you attack them it resets the time you have to wait so they disintegrate and then they reform and then you have to wait longer so it's a cool way to troll the player I think dancing zombies is a thriller reference so they're not drawn to look like Michael Jackson it's true

It's a very Japanese thing. I don't know if it's referencing a specific ghost story or something in Japan, but yeah. So what's interesting about this game is that there was never a Japanese release, but it was planned to be released under the title of Parody World Monster Party. And it's funny to see how

in Japan, the intention was like, yes, these are all direct parodies of monster things you've seen before. But in America, somebody at Bandai was very savvy because the amount of rip-off crap that came out in America I'm being nice by saying crap, but it's just like Metal Gear.

Everything in that game is stolen from American movies and no one cared. Somebody at Bandai was savvy and you have to be like, we could get our asses sued. Contra, too, was just like, Konami was especially guilty. But I think maybe it was that somebody in Bandai had been through copyright law or Bandai is, you know, they make toys. So maybe they understood likeness rights a little better than they do in Japan. But also it's like copyright laws in Japan and America are just different. So their ideas of it might be, they're like, no, it's a reference to Jason. Who cares?

Yeah, it's like, this is a fun idea I can play with. Why shouldn't I? It's not a Jason game. And actually, I appreciate that more than just like, no, that's mine. You could never even reference it. I get every dollar. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's why, like, in the recent South Park games, it's a shock because they just straight up say, oh, they name Marvel movies by name.

They name all these things by name that in video games, they never do that. They always want to be like, well, what if we're going to shoot? or other people licensing this in another game sue us for putting them in this game. I get that a lot in Japanese games too. Still, like, I'm playing Dangan Rompah V3. And they, like, march up to the line of the reference without saying the reference.

So it's like, I hate, like, that spiky hedgehog, I hate him and things like that. And I remember I was playing the game 999. And a lot of it is based on the Kurt Vonnegut story, Cat's Cradle. It references it heavily. But it's like, you know that book with that chemical.

nine by that one author. Like, they can never say the name of the book. I'm just like, just say it. He's dead. It's fine. He can't sue you. I let you know, hey guys, if you want to read a Kurt Vonnegut book, that one's like 110 pages or something.

You'll go fast. And it is great. So funny. End of the world stuff. Maybe it's more anxiety ridden now that it is. Like the context is different now. Yeah, context is different than when I read it in the Clinton administration. So I want to go over a few of the changes that were in this unreleased version.

So like I said, the Japanese version was an. explicit parody of horror things, popular horror things. So there are many changes made to the American version. The hockey mask creatures are now Catchers Masked creatures. And I got to say, in the NES era, there are so many Jason characters in games that are just enemies, just like an enemy in a hockey mask. In the Ninja Turtles game, Jason has a chainsaw and you fight him. Japan loved Jason.

I mean, the entire Splatterhouse series is just Jason. And I was thinking of the anime series, Irresponsible Captain. and Taylor. Is it Taylor or Tyler? Tyler? There is a character on the ship just named Jason and it's Jason. It is just Jason. He's a guy with a mask and a chainsaw who can't talk. God, that 90s Tyler show. I love that. It's so great. Yeah. It's beautiful. For my birthday, I got the, my birthday, 16th birthday, I got the right stuff subtitled box set and I just watched. I binge watched it all as I did. That's how you did it back then, kids. You just put 26 episodes. on eight VHS is than a ninth VHS for the bonuses. So maybe better than Star Trek, in my opinion. Don't tell the Cat Bailey, though. So here are more changes from the game. Audrey II is in this game.

That's the first boss you fight. In the American version, it's sort of a generic, more generic plant without a mic and an amp in the room. It looks like an eggplant. I think it's like a pitcher plant. I think it's a real plant, yeah. But it even in the America version, it's singing the way that Audrey II does

in Little Shop of Horrors. Yes, but the boss in the American version shoots bubbles while the Japanese version boss shoots musical notes. And in fact, they have like a little amp next to Audrey 2 in the Japanese version. In the American version, they just sort of painted over it. You can still jump on it

in the American version. Yeah, it's crazy. So, uh, even crazier. So one of the second boss you fight is this pumpkin headed ghost. He's a ghost with a pumpkin for a head. Uh, the boss in the Japanese version is an ape on horseback from planet of the apes. And behind the ape is the

Statue of Liberty. It's crazy. I looked at that one. I was like, you you guys went way too far with this one. I personally love it. I love the anime statue of liberty sticking out to the sand in the background. It's like a foot sticking out too. It's great. They did the best they could and just like, this is white. The only color they have for the Statue of Liberty was white

on a black background. But it's also not even like it's not a naked gorilla. It is dressed as a Plan the Apes character too. And he fires bullets at you on the course. Other things. So there's a giant spider in the American version. In the Japanese version, it's a head with legs out of the things. So

deeper references. There's a cat in a box boss in the American version. In the Japanese version, it's a Magwai who changes into a gremlin. It's so great. When I was re-watching the long play, I thought that was maybe a reference to the, at least in America, Japanese called classic

hausu, which a cat is a very scary thing in that. But it's throwing at you Japanese like ghost flames stuff too. That's right. And there's even very, very, what I think is maybe going too far in terms of masking this intellectual property theft

where even Dracula and the mummy can't be portrayed as they look in universal monsters. So in the Japanese version, there's a very bella-legoose-looking Dracula ghost. It's not a boss, it's an enemy. In the American version, they just make it into a bat like creature. And there's a

mummy boss that is just like, oh, it's a mummy wrapped in bandages like any mummy. In the American version, he is sort of translucent. So it's like, you couldn't, you couldn't portray a mummy wrapped in bandages. Somebody was very worried about this game. I know in America in the 70s and 80s in Hollywood, Universal was more protective than ever for their likenesses. So I could see them just going like, nah, I can't even like. But yeah, any mummy is a mummy. Like, it doesn't matter. I think the Egyptians trademarked that. But you're right, Henry.

Actually, the whole Donkey Kong thing, Nintendo went through with Universal. Even though Nintendo won, that probably taught gaming companies in Japan, Universal is very litigious. Yeah, especially universal. Yeah. And if you're not like, if you're not as big as Nintendo and can't risk, you can't gamble millions of dollars on a lawsuit you might lose, which is Universal counted on Nintendo like, well, they're just some pittling video game company. We're universal. If we threaten a lawsuit, they'll sell us their company. We'll scare the hell out of them.

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It was given to someone by someone who used to work in the game industry. And if you go back to all of these pre-2011 Monster Party videos, you'll see see people saying, you know, why didn't this come out in Japan? They had no idea these plans were in effect for the game and that there was this Japanese prototype that was way different. So it was sold for the equivalent of $6,000 U.S. dollars. And eventually it was the ROM was dumped. And in July of 2014, we all knew the secret of the Japanese monster party.

I'm surprised it took three whole years for that ROM. People in the collector's market, some people are benevolent. They want the information to be free and people to see these games. Some people are like, this is mine. And I will be the only person who sees it. Yeah, well, I mean, if you dump the ROM, you are making your thing worth a lot less. It's true. It's very complicated, you know.

I hate to throw all collectors under the bus. Yeah. I forgot there was one other big change in there, too, that the Grim Reaper was a xenomorph alien. That's right. Which is also why, like, the facehugger eggs are still in there. They didn't change that one, but they spit out bubbles. Yeah, and there are so many, again, like Jason, there are so many NES games and S-NES games and Genesis games. All games from that era, there are.

so many enemies that are just xenomorphs and no one cared. But somebody at Bandai was like, I refuse to have us get sued over this. Nobody owns a Grim Reaper, yeah, baby. But on the cover of Monster Party, you see things that would never be in the game like the Bella Lagosie vampire. I believe

the swamp creature is in there. The creature in the block. Yeah, sorry, I couldn't think of the name. Yeah, it's a real lie. Like anything, if they were worried about lawsuits, it's like, well, you should have been worried about a consumer lawsuit suing you for false advertising. promised a monster party

good sir So I asked people To send me in some tweets About this game I didn't really want to Go on for that much longer In this micro episode So I will read some of these tweets

About Monster Party Thank you if you send in a tweet I'm sorry if I can't read it This is just kind of a short burst Rap session about Monster Party A lot of people confuse this With Monster in my pocket Which is a much better game

Not nearly as inventive It's a good kind of fun Konami late NES era So our first tweet is from Ethan Chang who says This was not as good as Monster in my pocket, which is true. My brother and I rented it from Farmore,

a store that died due to an embezzlement scandal. Totally. That's where I rented a lot of games, too. Farmore, I can tell you the headquarters of Farmore, Youngstown, Ohio, where everyone is crooked. That embezzlement hurt your town. Yes. There is no honest businessman in Youngstown, Ohio.

And yes, it really did hurt Youngstown. It was a great business. So, Ectober says, best non-first-party NES game for me. Wow. It was just so bonkers, the enemies, the irreverence, Alice in Wonderland nonsense, and he replies, after that was, sorry, I'm dead. Which is probably the best quote in the game. I want that to be on my tombstone, actually.

That's a good one. Digital Drought says it wasn't the monsters or the surreal imagery that made this game temporarily blacklisted in my house. It was the use of the word hell. And attached to that is a screenshot of the Grim Reaper boss you just mentioned, which says, welcome entrance to hell. Wow. So that's a no-no, almost like Hitler saying damned. I'm sorry, Colonel Bad or whatever, saying damned in Bionicamando. There's also a church with a cross on it in the game, which again, like, that was a Nintendo no-no.

Yeah, no religions get referenced. Also, I want to mention World Five, I never saw it in playing it as a kid at the, until I watched the long play today, but I was like, this one, the May's house would have driven me crazy and I would have just put the game as a kid. But second, that the chairs flying around and just all like, it's the creepiest stage. I think it's very, if I have to say what they're ripping off for that, I would say poltergeist, especially with the chairs. Oh, definitely. I mean, uh, Splatterhouse rips up poltergeistice a lot with like just chairs flying at you. Dead Tom says, I'm glad the game contains terrifying battles because the idea of monsters getting together for some kind of bash is preposterous. Yes, that's the Mr. Show sketch.

I think I'll link to it or just look up Monster Party's Mr. Show. Every Mr. Sch goes, every Mr. Show sketch is on YouTube because HBO doesn't care. I, oh, you know what? Also, if you love the Monster Match, listen to. to Nick Weiger's parody of it, the Monster Fuck. Yes, it is quite R-rated, but I love how just stupid it is. And vulgar, in vulgar. I love Nick Weiger. He's the greatest. He should be on a retronaut someday. He knows his retro games. I'm trying to make it happen. So, Funky T.I. says,

who will you guys cosplay from this game? I'm going to say the Pumpkin Ghost who says, don't pick on me. I like that one. I wouldn't want to move around too much. So I'm going to go with that dead spider. Yes. Sorry, I'm dead. Brian Kent says, No game has a more beautiful password screen

and attaches an image of the river of blood with corpses in it. Dripping blood from the ceiling. What an amazing iconic image. Again, did Nintendo even touch this? I have to wonder. Especially, like, if they were shown the ending cutscene of your main character melting, like the flesh rotting off his body, it is immediately revealed to be a dream.

So maybe that was their workaround. But like that, if you were a seven-year-old who has played as marked for probably like dozens of hours to see that end screen. It's like three frames, but it's his flesh melting from his bones. It's really, it's really graphic. That's a real, again, I want to credit suit of 51 for this because I don't know. I doubt he was involved. He's not old enough, I would say. But that was a very, you know, grasshoppery kind of twist, too, of like, you got the princess, but she melts into a corpse and then you do too.

Everyone's a corpse. So B.B.Ber says, as a kid, I always assumed Monster Party was somehow a tie-in slash pseudo-sequel to the movie Monster Squad. Was Monster Squad a universal movie? Yes, it was. That was them trying to 80s up, the Universal Monsters. It's not quite working for the teens, are we in? Yeah. They hoped to, shockingly, the best thing about the mummy is the mummy demastered, apparently.

Yeah, when I was in Portland, I was walking around at like a 7-Eleven or whatever. and I saw the mummy on the soda, Fanta. And for a second, I'm like, oh, that happened. Oh, my God, that actually happened. There was a movie. What's that the universal dark universe? It's supposed to be the dark universe. We shall see if any other film gets made from that.

I doubt it. It won't happen. John Boris says that this excellent game have a legacy. Is Eversion a Monster Party like? I have played Eversion, and I will say it is probably the closest thing to Monster Party. In fact, Eversion is an indie platformer. I think it's like four or five years old, but it does the monster party shift to like hellworld kind of thing,

like from happy go lucky platformer to like dripping blood and skulls and death. So I think a version is pretty close. I'd be interested in knowing if the creator of that played Monster Party. So these are a Halloween Twitter name, so I assume these will all be different by the time this episode goes live. So Santa Claus says, My mom bought me this game for my NES when I was like five. She just brought it home one day like,

I knew you would love this, which was odd because I wasn't an easily scared kid. Regardless, she was right and it became one of my faves, even if I never made it past the first 20 minutes. Wow. Yeah, it's a pretty tough game. Not quite as bad as Ghost and Goblins, but at least it gives you the mercy of a password. Stevel Dead 2 says, this started my fascination with horror. It would be years before I was brave enough to watch horror movies, but this is the first image I associate with the idea that monsters are cool. Of course, they're cool.

They want to have a party, right? Parties are cool. Larry White says, the box art sold this bad boy. the lie of the box art I remember my cousins and I renting this game all the time this game was great nostalgia I'm sure it's it like I said earlier it doesn't play as well as a 1989

NES game should but the the zaniness of it really I think makes it worse I appreciate it work not makes it worse I appreciate what they were trying to I they there's a lot of they could have phoned this in a lot more than they did that is for sure

uh Jeremy Signore says such a weird and wonderful game the only one I can think of that has you fighting against tempera. That's right. You fight an onion ring, a shrimp and something else. Like the chicken maybe on a skewer? Yeah, it's something skewer. Yeah, it's so weird to face tempura. I forgot about that. Again, as a kid, I wouldn't know what the hell that was. I don't think I knew what that was until I was like in my 20s. I would think in general, most Americans outside of New York and L.A. perhaps had no clue what tempura was and did not like Japanese food was not a regular thing

for people to eat in the 80s. That's why the Simpsons episode, the Blowfish episode, is a good crystallization of the time where he was like, sushi, hmm, I don't know. Isn't that raw food, who would eat that? So Tyler Myers says, the moment I passed that green giant tree thing changed my six-year-old mine forever. And at the age of six, this is Bob speaking. I didn't know that was a Honeywaugh statue, which are the same as the cactors in Final Fantasy and those weird statues you get in Animal Crossing. Yeah, those are great. Those are made by, like, a civilization in Japan.

That's, like, pre-history, I think. Oh, yeah. It's like, yeah. That's why you dig them up in, uh, in, in Animal Crossing. Mark Evans says another one of those games where strange pills turn you into something way cooler and powerful than you were originally. Just say no kids. Yes, Mark, I got to say, like, every, uh, cartoon about drugs could never portray drugs. So it was just a, a bag of random pills, like randomly.

colored pills. So, yeah. I would say the Saturday morning All-Stars thing, at the very least is like, this is crack, this is marijuana. I think Bugs Bunny holds a joint in that. Yeah, yeah. Which like, come on, bugs, you were smoking those jazz cigarettes back in the 40s. He's so judgmental

on that special, too. I know. Everyone is. They're such jerks. You're actually going to be a corpse if you keep smoking weed. You're going to be it. Al, you eat cats. Don't judge me. Quack attack says, more like monster farty. Stick that in your podcast and read it. I did quack attack. Now you're on the internet forever.

Let's see. Let's do one more. It's official says in all caps. It's official. One of the best NES games ever. I still remember the kid who recommended it to me said used a sword instead of a bat, which has confused me for years. Swords and bats aren't the same thing.

It's much cooler to use a sword, but they make it very clear from the very start of the game like this is a bat. It's a baseball bat. It's a weapon. That's why I loved Earthbound. They could use modern day weapons in this game. That's so cool even though it's a piece of tech that says bat instead of sword. It's not actually a bat that you see on the screen.

I think maybe, actually I'm kind of surprised they'd put that in there too because another thing they were worried about was like imitatable acts of just like no kid will get their hands on a sword but if you show a game with a kid like bashing things with a baseball bat they're like oh yeah, I can do that. I have a bat.

I bet this actually encourage a lot of kids to run around in their backyards with bats like swinging in invisible monsters. Hopefully not any animals they found along the way. That's true horror. everybody. So, yeah, thank you for listening to our episode about Monster Party. I hope I did it justice. It's a slight little game that stuck with us mostly because of just how

weird it is for the era. And I would love to see like a modern day version of this. The Indie Game E version is sort of similar, but I like to see a remake of this. Actually, like, what was that Monster World game they remade recently on Switch? Oh, it was... Dragon's Trap, right? Yeah, yeah. If they

remade this that looked like that, I would play through it, I think. And make the game a lot better, too, along the way. So yeah, that's been Retronauts Micro. I've been your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast, of course, is Talking Simpsons. I'm sure you know about it, but if not, is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons on the Lasertime podcast network. Every Wednesday, we are going in order through the entire Simpsons. We've been doing it for almost two and a half years now. We are midway through season six. It's been so much fun.

One of my favorite things to do alongside this. And I think Henry can tell you our Patreon has some stuff going for it too. Yes. Hey, I'm H-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for all the updates on Talking Simpsons. But yes, if you enjoy the show but wanted a week early, we stole the retronauts model of a week early and ad free. Wait a minute. It's a week early and ad free on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Again, the money goes to support me and Bob doing that Simpson stuff full time.

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as we go through the Simpsons' sister show, the critic, well, episode by episode. I can't believe we've done 17 of those so far. I know. The end is in sight. We're six episodes away, help. And we also do a monthly community podcast. We have exclusive videos there.

We have exclusive. interviews there. We just interviewed, especially, hey, Retronauts fans, if you like hearing us talk about old games, we did that a bit with the Ian Jones Quarty, creator of OkKO, who worked on Stephen Universe, Adventure Time, Venture Brothers, an animator on the Sonic Mania opening. Oh, so good. We talk so much about old games on there with him that I think you'll really enjoy it. There's a free version that you'll find on Talking Simpsons.com on the traditional Talking Simpsons feed, but the extended version is only on patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons. And speaking of Patrions, an equally important Patreon that's still very important is the Retronauts Patreon, of course. It funds most of what we do here because people give us money. You're able to hear podcasts like this. These micros were unlocked. They were a tier on our Patreon, and that's how you're getting extra episodes.

So if you want to support the show, go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. And for $3 a month, you can give any amount you want, but for $3 a month, you get every episode a week ahead of time, add free, and add a higher bit rate, and I find people really enjoy the show without ads. That's a very, very easy way to do it, and help us live

our lives. So yeah, thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you Monday with a brand new full-length episode. We'll see you then. Bye. And Caller Number 9 for one million dollars. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out.

We need your end. answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House

if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week. when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall,

becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral.

It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.