Monster Party (1989)

MP is a somewhat generic feeling action platforming game. IT plays like a mix between a 2D Brawler and a platform shooting game. This is due to the fact you have a base ball bat where you can hit bullets and thrown missiles and shoot them back at enemies. I found this mechanic actually pretty cool because you can get angled shots in the timing. It seems like a Japanese Concept... Baseball + batting cage-like boss fights???

For the most part enemies aren't that interesting but there is variety. Boss Concepts are wacky ranging from what looked like Seymour for Little Shop of Horrors to Rock musician of some kind.. Normal enemies are all relatively easy to pick off. Reflecting missiles kills almost anything in one shot. you also transform into this weird Guyver-like Sentai-something or other that can fly and spit fireballs, this thing is awesome. You get it from eating power ups and you get it often.

Level design is overall bad. While levels look different they are all boring left to right scrolling that lack variation or much to look at Your goal is to find the boss that has the key to the door to the end of the level. Some rooms have bosses and some are empty, this gives it the feeling of a super casual action-adventure game or action-rpg.

Overall the game is a bit hard, but you can game it in different ways (you can farm enemies for health, and certain types of enemies DO drop certain kinds of items, you can also trade hits with bosses hitting them 3 times for every one time they hit you) I would not be able to complete it without cheating. But, I also wouldnt want to. The boss Fights are amusing but the overall game world is kind of stale and the gameplay isnt really there beyond the chief mechanic (which was cool) It does manage to make some of the boss fights cool, and some of them were terrible I thought. Ultimately a short one to complete in around 40 mins using save states

I didnt particularly love the way the game looks