Elvira's Monster Party

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the horror hostess played by Cassandra Peterson, stars in this hack of Bandai's Monster Party for the NES / Famicom.

With a flaming sword to deflect attacks (like a baseball bat), and the ability to transform into a bat-winged (and bat-throwing) monster, Elvira "the Queen of Halloween" is ready for action! So batter up and fight through eight stages in a parody world filled with familiar movie monsters.

The player character has been replaced with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who also appears in the intro and outro cutscenes with new text. Boss text has also been altered.

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This is based on the uncensored restoration and translation of Parody World Monster Party, released by Stardust Crusaders.
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/3115/

This is a patch for Monster_Party_(J)_(Prototype).zip (256 KB)
https://tcrf.net/Proto:Monster_Party

Monster Party by Human Entertainment, published by Bandai, June 1989.

Uncensored prototype leaked in 2014.

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Various graphics, text and Romhacking by Garrett Gilchrist (tygerbug).
http://orangecow.org
https://twitter.com/TygerbugGarrett/

Concept and Elvira player and title graphics were created by Sil3nt_J.

Bigfixes in V12 by Proveaux (Issues in Round 3, Round 7, cutscene pointers).

Cheat codes are not included, as the common Game Genie and RAM cheats don't seem to work on this version of the game. Level passwords do still work as intended.

Feel free to help fix any bugs, or send in corrected cheat codes.

Originally released October 2020.

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She's ghoulish. She's glamorous. She's Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. And she needs your help! So batter up and battle through eight challenging stages in a parody world filled with familiar movie monsters. With a flaming sword to deflect attacks, and the ability to transform into a bat-winged (and bat-throwing) monster, she'll drive you batty. The horror hostess with the mostest is ready for action! We hope you are too! It's an adventure that's so funny it's scary. Only from Bandai on your Nintendo Entertainment System.

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"People ask me - Elvira Mistress of the Dark - What would you know about video games? Grabbing a joystick? Running around mazes popping pills as you swat at ghosts? That was West Hollywood in the 1980s! Bandai wanted me to help code this game, but I'm no good at math. I can't even count Dracula! Our feature tonight is Monster Party, where a baseball player and a dragon from space combine into one. Sounds like my kind of party! Also they hafta save the world or whatever, and by that I mean you and I have to save the world! And now every movie monster wants to come after me but there's only so much of me to go around! I'd tell them NO!! I'm not that kind of ghoul-but I care too much about my bad reputation! Luckily I've got a flaming sword to knock their attacks right back at them. They might have claws and fangs and tentacles but I'll pretend I'm not into that! Let's get that straight! Or as straight as it gets around here. Also I have real firepower under there! Under where you ask? I can grab magic pills to turn into a monster. Reminds me of some of my exes. Where are they now, I ask? I should remember to feed them. This will be long and hard-the battle I mean- but I believe in you! Also I believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves and other creatures. I've dated all of em and worse! It can be a real pain in the neck. Now get your fingers moving and I hope you can push the right buttons. It's Monster Party time!"

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Version 14 (7/21/2022): The intro cutscenes now feature entirely new graphics of Elvira, based on four photos. The intro monologue has also been rewritten. A few jokes have changed and she stays on topic more.

The ending cutscenes are basically the same but modified slightly where some graphics tiles are no longer available, and with some changes of palette. (The ending uses cartoonier graphics of Elvira, as the opening originally did, which helps her interact with Mark/Hiroshi better.)

Garrett Gilchrist was new to NES romhacking when originally releasing this hack in October 2020. Overhauling the cutscenes to this degree wasn't something he could pull off then, but it's easy enough now.

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Cover art is either included or available on request. For the cover I used a painting by Devon Whitehead, and a photo by Harry Langdon (where she doesn't quite have her full hairstyle).

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Notes: There were some palette issues. I'd intended a subtler look for the Elvira photos, but the theater background requires a full dark red, rather than a lighter pink, so the shading is very - let's say - unsubtle, and not quite what I intended. The last two images in the intro also use the same color attributes table, so I had to put Elvira in roughly the same place and fudge it a bit.

This background (and Elvira) is reused at the beginning of the ending cutscenes, which have an entirely different palette, and I just had to accept that this was going to look messier than intended. The game cuts away from this Elvira image quickly anyway.

I originally was only going to have one or two realistic Elviras in the intro, and leave in the cartoony Elvira with extra shading, but that really didn't work with the dark red palette. So I overhauled everything and used as much graphics space as I could.

Reworking the ending was an afterthought, otherwise I could have made changes early on and avoided things like the dark blue trees outside his window. The palette choices are very different between the intro and outro but the same layout is used for the theater backdrop, and I couldn't let that be bright green. I would have had to shuffle the colors around in the intro first.

The cutscene of the dragon talking to the baseball player (Varyū and Mark/Hiroshi) seems to go on forever, as it did in the previous version. This was originally a dialogue scene in short phrases. For Elvira's monologue, it's more natural to change the scene every four lines, once the text box fills up. And every bit of dialogue was a different scene here. So it takes awhile to get through, as Elvira ignores and talks over it.

By comparison, some of Elvira's appearances here only last for one screen.

For the fifth cutscene screen, I left in the dragon (Varyū) and Mark/Hiroshi flying but added Elvira in the background. I'd considered changing the sprites to something of Elvira, but couldn't find the code to stop the sprites from moving here. Instead I freed up some more background tiles for Elvira, creating four screens for her in total. I think the result is effective.

The game itself is largely unchanged from the original Monster Party game, apart from what the bosses say in text. This is also an uncensored version of Monster Party, based on the leaked (unreleased) Japanese prototype and its translation and restoration by Stardust Crusaders. In the 1989 US release, many of the bosses were changed to remove the obvious movie parodies, such as the Planet of the Apes and Gremlins bosses.

A prototype leaked in 2014 and its contents are detailed here.
https://tcrf.net/Monster_Party

The restoration by Stardust Crusaders restores some aspects present in the code or in the US version but not yet implemented in the prototype.
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Lookup tables (LUT) are included in this ZIP which were used in the FCEUX emulator to alter the in-game text. An OpenOffice spreadsheet by Proveaux is also included which specifies the pointer format for programming scene breaks during the intro and outro cutscenes. There is one lookup table for cutscene text (which uses a full upper and lower case alphabet), and seven for boss text. The boss fights do not use a full alphabet in any version of this game. They use only the letters spoken by the boss, to save space. Typically about 48 characters are included, including 9 to draw the text box. While there is still room for more letters with most of these bosses, the final boss uses all available space (apart from four colors of blank tiles being repeated once). This made writing for that boss (and its level) a little tricky.
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Japanese vs US credits:

When possible, a translation of the Japanese credits is used here.

    "Undead Haruna" was changed to "Cream Haruna". This is an alias for Hiroshi Haruna.
    "George A. Kamiya" was changed to "Kamiyankee". The original is a reference to George A. Romero, the director of Night of the Living Dead.
    "Luchio Kobayashi" was changed to "Dandy Kobayashi". The original is a reference to Lucio Fulci, a famous Italian director known for his gory zombie movies.
    "Baki Carpenter" was changed to "Sokiosk". The original is a reference to John Carpenter, director of horror movies like Halloween, The Fog, Christine, and The Thing.
    "Demons Tohru" was changed to "Jazzy Tohru". This is an alias for Tohru Hayashi.
    "Nurikabe Taro" was changed to "Desire Taro". A nurikabe is a Japanese yokai that appears most often in media as a giant walking wall.
    "Pazuzu Saitoh" was changed to "Wolf Saitoh". Pazuzu is the main antagonist of The Exorcist and is the demon who possesses Regan.
    "Freddie Mikumo" was changed to "Mikumonky". The original is a reference to Freddy Krueger, the main antagonist of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. It is only known that this developer's real first name begins with a "T", and their last name is Mikumo, based on several game credits.
    "Misukamakasu Hashimoto" was changed to "Hashimotoravolta". This is an alias for Masaki Hashimoto, and the original is also a reference to Misquamacus, the antagonist of the 1978 horror movie The Manitou.


