Nes / Famicom

Cubivore10 has sent to us lots of informations and screens about Monster Party, an old game for the NES. In these beta screens we can see some unused sprites of a monkey, a key, 1-up, a race-car thing and a different version of one of the bosses. Some of the screens are a remake of the original beta scans with home-made tiles, to have a better version of the scenes. In the title screen, there was blood on the menù, while in the final version it was just a green slime, the text and the icon were changed and the spider-thing has a different head. The hero of the game was pink and white in the beta version, instead of the green / black colors of the complete game. Even the HUD is different.

In the screen with the “eggplant monster” we can see the first boss of Monster Party, with a different design that seems a citation from the movie “The Little Shop of Horrors”, hence the karaoke machine and the microphone (the film was a musical). The karaoke and the microphone are not seen in the final version, but they are still in there: they blacked out the graphic in the boss room, so they blend in with the background. You can even stand on the karaoke, if you go around the monster and jump.

Also, in January 2010, Cubivore10 found some more unused sprites in the game’s code:

You’ll see in the row of graphics I numbered as 1. you will see some odd faces and unused items. The faces where most likely background tiles, but they where found near a boss, so this COULD be leftover from a removed boss, but probably not. The unused items are very interesting also. There is some weird…diamond thing which I could only assume was a beta version of the dragon capsule or more commonly referred to as the “pill” that transforms the main hero Mark into his Dragon-like friend.

There also appears to be some object which sort of reminds me of a piece of candy. My only guess is that its another design for the pill. I’m not sure what the ball object is, your guess is as good as mine. The shield shaped thing that says “up” is probably a 1-up of some sort, which would make sense that they took it out since the game doesn’t have lives, just an unlimited amount of continues. Last of the supposed items is a key.

Now after defeated the necessary amount of bosses per stage you are awarded a key that grants you access to the next stage. Now you are also given a “?” item after defeating each boss which appears in the middle of the room. It could be that a key would appear instead after beating the last boss of that stage instead of you getting the “?” and the key.

Now for row 2…A monkey. I could only assume that this is an enemy, I tried to assemble the graphics a little bit. He’s with the first level enemies if I remember right and seems to be near two sprites of a bone. I’d bet that the monkey threw the bones at you.

Row 3 is are the monkey graphics as I found them so if you wanna try to put them together.

Row 4 is pretty neat. I’m nor POSITIVE that these are unused but they probably are.( I should know, I just beat the game a couple days ago!) They are found with the enemies of the last stage, and is clearly a chicken…really. They might have scrapped this enemy in favor of the flying sticks of TNT, the graphics are right next to each other. Next in that row is the race car-driving-werewolf. He is found in the first level’s graphics too. Last is a silhouette of a fish. This MIGHT be used, I don’t know for sure though, it matches with the big-finned fish of stage 5, this could have (or might still be) used for when it goes into the water.

On to row 5…I’m…really not sure here. These are kept near the boss of stage 5 that throws javelins, but they don’t look like anything I remember seeing in the game. Most likely tiles.

Row 6. Some projectile I think. This is kept by Chameleon Man, the only boss of stage 6. The boss is hidden amongst a mess of graphics that look like him as well as three other look-alikes. He doesn’t throws things at you and the real one is the only on that will damage you if you touch him. He might have shot these at you at some point.

The last row is row 7. Not much but kinds neat. This was found neat the first boss of the game, the man-eating eggplant. Now he actually appears in a beta shot of the game, but wasn’t an eggplant. His (Her?) head was more like a flytrap and was seen with an amp and microphone and over-head lights (which are still in the final version) This was clearly a parody of the Audrey II, the man-eating singing plant from the movie Little Shop of Horrors (GREAT movie BTW)

That said this kinds musical note thingy may have been its original projectile instead of the bubbles is uses now.

It looks like some unused enemies, who look like they’d fit in with level one. Also I noticed that the musical note graphic I found seems to be the SAME graphic that the punk rocker boss uses so I was either wrong about the plant spitting them at one point or they would have used the same graphics. Speaking of the punk rocker boss while looking around his graphics I saw yet another unused projectile: Another musical note (the double one) So he probably shot out both at some point in the game’s life.

Thanks a lot to Cubivore10 for the contribution & Silenceofthehills for the comparison video (keep in mind that the screens from the MP sequel were just a mistake, later corrected in the comments)!

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