Monster PartyFor this month's "Maps of the Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Chiasm's Monster Party (NES) maps.
In Bandai's Monster Party, you play a baseball player named Mark. One evening, walking home after a baseball game, a star falls out of the sky and lands in front of him...except it's not a star, it's a gargoyle (or something) named Bert. Apparently Bert's world is overrun by evil monsters, and he believes Mark's baseball bat is an effective weapon against such creatures. They fly to Bert's world, and then they fuse their bodies to tackle some monster baddies together. A very strange story indeed.
The game is no less wacky, in fact, it's more so. The game starts off like a typical happy platforming game. But soon you'll walk past a smiling tree (or a large bush...well, it's a big green thing) and the next thing you know, the world's transformed into a hellish landscape. The grass beneath your feet becomes slime. The hills in the background suddenly look like grotesque faces vomiting blood. The happy blocks that were smiling at you a second ago are now bloody skulls. Bert's world is seriously messed up. You just have to wonder how this got past Nintendo's censors! You'll travel through eight monster-infested areas, but none are as bizarre as the first. But the craziness doesn't stop, as there are numerous bosses and sub-bosses (which include a caterpillar in a bed who calls himself Royce, some fried food, the Sphinx, a wooden Transformer-like robot, and the Grim Reaper) with some strange one-liner introductions (including "I...am a slowpoke", "My legs are asleep!", and "Oh boy! Mark soup!", among others).
Would you want to face a world like this? Probably not, but if you did, you'd want some help. Chiasm has mapped out the whole game to assist you. It will certainly help you locate the bosses in the games' numerous doors, and it'll be especially helpful for the maze in Round 6. If you just want to see how messed up a game can be, these maps are worth a look. Check out how Chiasm handled the transition in Round 1!
So to recognize the effort put into making these quirky Hallowe'enish maps, Chiasm's Monster Party maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps of the Month for October 2006.
