Monster Party - The Lost Version

Monster Party - The Lost Japanese Version

Gaze longingly at the three blurry screenshots of Monster Party below, scanned from a preview in an old Japanese gaming magazine. They are probably the closest you will ever come to playing the very blood and very unreleased Shinsei version of the game. Since a prototype ROM hasn't leaked onto the internet yet, it is very unlikely that one ever will. Instead, it would seem that no prototype cartridges were ever made, or if they were, they were destroyed. That, or the people who have acquired them aren't sharing. In any case, right now, these screenshots are the only hint we have as to how the game was before it was sanitized to conform to Nintendo of America's strict content policies. Have a look...

As you can see, the original title screen was much, much cooler. That green slime that we ended up with? That was originally blood. Our pumpkin cursor? That was originally a skull. But more importantly, look at the original version of what became our Giant Spider boss. It's kind of hard to tell for sure, but the Japanese incarnation of the spider appears to be a giant rotting face with blood dripping from its mouth, propped up by six insect-like legs. That's completely fucking badass, and knowing that I'll never get to play this version makes me want to cry.

The original concept for the Man-Eating Plant was a lot cooler too, and I'm not sure why they changed it. It looks more like what you'd expect a carnivorous plant to look like, and less like a dildo on a stem. It is also much more clear that the boss is an homage to the musical Little Shop of Horrors; the plant now has a microphone and a speaker accompanying it. Although the sprites for those accessories were removed from the American version, the programmers never removed the object detection for the speaker. Why does that matter, you ask? Because you can stand on it:

I assure you that Bert is standing on an invisible platform and not flying. You can tell by the position of his legs. Don't believe me? Try it out yourself.

This last screenshot doesn't show you anything you haven't already seen if you've played Monster Party, but it's one of only three known Japanese screenshots, so I've included it for completion's sake. I make absolutely no guarantees that the text is at all similar in the two screenshots; I can't read Japanese.