Monster Party (Unreleased NES Prototype)

Monster Party is a NES platform action game setting a kid named Mark in an alternate world, populated with monsters and supernatural creatures, lots of them based on popular culture horror icons or Japanese ghost mythology.

However, several evidence abides that the original cut of the game was darker, gorier and contained more recognizable characters.

In an old gaming magazine, two preview screenshots of the game were different from the final product:

- One showed the title screen being covered with red blood instead of green slime in the released game, and the selected cursor being a skull instead of a pumpkin; the spider on the left side of the screen also looked more like a humanoid face on legs.

- The other shows the Man-Eating Plant boss being different than in the final product: its head is more rounded, looking more like a Piranha plant/Audrey II, and there is a stilted microphone and a speaker around it. In the released gameplay, the player character can stand on the area where the speaker originally was, despite being empty background.

According to other sources, two of the bosses had to have their sprites changed because they were too similar to licensed characters: a boss looking like a Mogwai in a box from Gremlins has been changed into a cat and an Ape from Planet of the Apes has been changed into a Pumpkin-headed ghost.

If there is a prototype cartridge or ROM, it certainly hasn't been found or been made public for the moment.