Well it’s that time of year again, a magical time when the minds of children and adults alike turn to thoughts of monsters, demons, and teeny tiny candy bars. Since Halloween is possibly my favorite holiday I figured I’d get the Halloween spirit by posting about a game that exemplifies all these things, 1993’s Monster Bash.
You play as Johnny Dash a strapping young lad with a backwards baseball cap and a pocket full of rocks. One night Johnny’s dog disappears, at first he simply believes that he ran away. One night while laying in his bed the friendly monster that happens to live under Johnny’s mattress let him know what is really going on. Pets all over are being kidnapped by Count Chuck and turned into monsters, and Johnny is the only one who can stop him.
Lock and Load
So Johnny takes his trusty slingshot and enters the monster world to rescue all the pets from the clutches of the evil Count Chuck. During this rescue mission he must battle zombies and floating skulls, all while avoiding clever traps like spears stuck in the floor, spears stuck in the wall, and the ever deadly spears stuck in the ceiling. Johnny faces all these obstacles and risks his life all for a creature that will thank him by chewing up his furniture and crapping on his carpet.
This is how I look when I stub my toe.
Even though I only had the shareware version I still managed to develop quite an obsession with this game, even going as far as to write a short story based on it in the second grade. Want to give it a try for yourself? Of course you do, you can download the shareware version here. You’re going to want some kind of emulation to play this game on any modern machine, may I suggest DOSBox?
If downloading is too much work for you simple watch this video to get an idea of what this game was about:
Hey, you still there? If you are I want to tell you about a little contest I’m running as thanks to those who take the time to read my little slice of nostalgia. I have is my possession a gift voucher for both Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1 as well as some Halo 3 swag I got from a pre-release event I attended as part of the Visual Studio Developers Group. This includes a t-shirt (XL), a poster, a 1 gig flash drive, and a limited edition watch. What do you have to do to win? Just post a comment telling me what you want, the vouchers, the swag, or hell even both. First come, first served.
Holy crap. I had this on a shareware CD that I got with my first non-Commodore 64 computer. I would get up even earlier on school days to play it before I had to leave.
Ohhhh, this game rocked. I got it soon after it came out - I bought the full version.
Yes it was REAL HARD. I remember an absurd stage in the 2nd or 3rd game where you had to between platforms of revolving ceiling fan blades.
I asked Apogee why they didn't make more games like this. They told me the the sales weren't so good - there was a lot of feedback that the game was too hard.
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Also, nice trip down memory lane column.
Yes it was REAL HARD. I remember an absurd stage in the 2nd or 3rd game where you had to between platforms of revolving ceiling fan blades.
I asked Apogee why they didn't make more games like this. They told me the the sales weren't so good - there was a lot of feedback that the game was too hard.