Howdy all, here's a run of one of my childhood favorites, Monster Party. This 1989 game is somewhat unique in that it was never released in Japan; this is made even more bizarre once you see all the wacky Japanity involved here.
This is what I think will be the main draw of this movie, to those who haven't played this game: Its sheer weirdness, especially in boss design. The first boss you can fight, for example, is a giant purple potted plant who spits bubbles at you. And that's one of the SANEST ones, mind you.
The plot of this thing is that you're a baseball-playing kid named Mark who gets recruited by an alien named "Bert" (yes, "Bert") to save his planet from monsters. Your only weapon is your baseball bat, which can be used to hit enemies or reflect their projectiles back at them. However, if you grab a pill dropped by certain enemies, you have a particularly bad trip and transform into Bert...well, I'm kidding about the trip part, but not anything else here. Anyway, Bert can shoot laser beams and fly. The transformation only lasts awhile, unless you grab another pill while transformed (in which case your timer is reset).
Your goal in each level is to kill all of the bosses. This gives you a key, which is needed to reach the exit. The only exception to this is level 7, where you only need to kill 2 of the 3 bosses. All of the bosses are behind doors, but there are also some useless doors.
There was a timeattack of this up at speedruns.org, done by Evilheart. This movie is 2:20 faster than his...here are the non-obvious tricks I used to accomplish this:
- Better luck manipulation vs. bosses. Any seemingly unnecessary actions I take serve this purpose (yes, even those ugly missed shots in the final battle).
- Intentionally taking damage, and lots of it. This game is similar to Castlevania IV in that being hit briefly launches you at a higher-than-normal speed. In this game, though, all you have to do to get launched forward is to face backwards. Levels 2 and 4, as you'll see, require taking tons of damage to get a good time; this is why I don't get hit as much as I could have in the first three levels.
- Intentional slowdown. While in midair, pressing A and B reduces your vertical and horizontal speed. This is useful when you need to make a slight delay, or when fighting bosses (reduced vertical speed means more hits per jump).
- Fast falling. Pressing Down while in midair makes you fall quickly. This is useful for falling down from high places, obviously (not always as it reduces your horizontal speed a bit), but it also comes into play against some bosses. Generally speaking, this is because once your jump reaches a certain point you won't hit the boss; hence, this tactic allows you to quickly hit him again on the way down and begin another attack. It looks pretty cool fighting them this way, too. =)
- Jumping bat swings. For some reason, jumping swings damage normal enemies more than standing swings (it doesn't work this way for bosses). In a lot of places where Evilheart paused, you can do this to kill enemies while losing hardly any speed; I say "hardly" because you pause very briefly before a jump and again upon landing from a jump.
- Never, ever using Bert until level 7. The transformation sequence after grabbing a pill, and the similar one that occurs when your transformation time runs out, each take 3 seconds. In the first 6 levels Bert only has a single laser which is exactly as powerful as the bat; while he does save some time vs. bosses due to his range advantage over Mark, it never makes up for those lost 6 seconds of "tripping". =P In addition to this, it can take a long time killing the enemy and waiting for him to drop the pill.
When you reach level 7, though, Bert's laser becomes a dual-firing one that is WAY more powerful than anything else in the game; it kills bosses in 7 hits. You can only have one on the screen at a time, and it takes awhile to kill the enemy with the pill in this level, but that's all a tiny price to pay for what you get. Another plus in getting Bert here is that you can stay transformed for the rest of the game and thus not have to worry about the latter 3-second animation.
- Crouching laser shots. If you crouch and fire a laser, it disappears more quickly and thus allows you to fire more rapidly. Evilheart used this on the second boss of level 8, but not the third as I did. It isn't worth using on the other bosses for a variety of reasons.
I think that's about it. If you've got any questions, post 'em!
-Uses FCE Ultra
-Does not use warps or passwords
-Takes damage to save time
-As fast as possible
EDIT: Cancelled, because part of the ending requires user input and I didn't include that. A proper submission is already up now.
Later everyone,
Josh.