Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

The Game

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a licensed action platformer based on the Nickelodeon animated series of the same name. So you can expect gross out humour, bright colours, and lively animations. Question is, does it live up to those expectations?

Developed by Realtime Associates Inc. Who were founded in 1986 and still going in some capacity to this day. They're notable for developing Bug! On the Sega Saturn which was originally intended to be an American developed 3D sonic game, until Sega of Japan pulled the plug.

Published by Viacom New Media, a game development arm of the American corporation Viacom. They were involved in publishing a lot of licensed games, mostly from Nickelodeon and MTV throughout the 90s.

Gameplay

In this game you play one of three monsters, Ickis, Oblina, or Krum who are enrolled in a "How to be a Monster" High School thing, very similar to Monster's Inc/Monster's University but well before that time. It follows a similar story to the animated show it's based on. The headmaster of the school will send you out to find an object and you have to scare people along the way over the course of 25 very varied levels. A trash dump acts as a kind of hub world, then there are levels representing a school, a paper factory, a cinema, a museum, a science lab, so with all that variety the game doesn't ever really get too repetitive or stale. The trash dump always acts as the first level of a new world with that being the Monster's home and base of operations, so it's the only one that could maybe get a touch repetitive.

Levels are fairly long, but with well placed checkpoints, so a death is never too frustrating and in the levels you're tasked with finding a certain item before leaving, while this idea could have been interesting it fell apart for a couple of reasons, one being the item didn't ever seem relevant, it was just a random item, and you had to find the same item in all the levels of a world, but the worst part of it was almost all the time the item was just sat next to the exit of the level, meaning it was essentially pointless. If you had to explore the level for it that could've been fun, but possibly frustrating, so I get why they made it simple, but at this point you may as well have done away with it entirely.

The main method of attack in the game is throwing trash, 3 to 4 pieces for most enemies before they run away, and running away is all they do, you don't kill anyone in this game, that would maybe be a bit much even for 90s Nickelodeon! You can also pick up some fish bones that are more powerful that will finish an enemy in 1 or 2 hits.

The levels are designed nicely, they're fairly open with multiple secret areas to find, with pipes to slide down, rails you can monkey bar across, but they never feel like a labyrinth where you're getting lost all the time. The exit was always easy enough to find but a bit of exploration was often rewarded.

Health is generous too, which for games of this era was a pleasant surprise, often one or two hits is enough to end your run but even though I did die a few times it does take a lot of hits to get you there and health can be found in the levels as well which usually meant you were pretty well stocked up for the boss fights, and the boss fights in the game are great! They all use different mechanics, one needs you to change the direction of a conveyor belt to drop boxes on their head, one wears goggles and you have to switch lights off, then on again to blind them, one of them you can only scare if you're stood in the light of a street light, but the street lights keep getting switched off so you have to make sure you're in the right place, they all work well and never made you feel frustrated, even when mistakes were made it always felt like my fault.

The three monsters you can choose from are all playable, and they're playable simultaneously, all on screen at the same time and you can switch between them with a button press. Each monster has a unique triple team ability that is genuinely useful as well. One stacks all 3 monsters on top of each other to reach higher places, one is a slingshot to give you a longer jump, and one places its eye on the floor, and another monster uses the third monster as a golf club and launches it, giving you a way of looking further along the level to check for traps and enemies.

So far everything sounds hunky dory right? Well there were some frustrations. The first of which was a repeated mini boss, a dog, and each time you encounter it it gets a bit harder, and by the last encounter it was infuriating, a cramped environment, no room to manoeuvre, and when the dog bites you, you get stuck in an animation loop of being bitten, dragged across the screen, dropped and entering the recovery animation, then the dog grabs you again because the space is so small. That and a fly mini boss that takes forever to kill and is really hard to hit.

All this was enough, but later in the game they add instant death traps that are just pools of water that kill you instantly, whether you fall in or you're on a moving platform that lowers onto it, it just felt like they ramped up the difficulty in the last few levels, but in an artificial way that seemed tacked on after some play tests where people were completing it too quickly.

Graphics

As you'd expect from a Nickelodeon based game, it looks fantastic. The animations are equal parts great and gross, the monsters look just like they do in the show and if you bought this in 1995 you'd feel like you were just playing an episode of the show.

The levels all look fantastic and distinct from each other, and the sprites and animations of the enemies are really well done too. You have kids firing spitballs at you, and after 2 or 3 shots they pause, which lets you get an attack in, but rather than just having them stand there they made the effort to animate them chewing up some more paper for their next attack. Kids throwing paper aeroplanes, cats, rats, dogs, all the bosses, they all look really good. The only negative I'd give on this side of things is the enemy variety, I pretty much just listed all of them there, there's a kid that drives an RC car at you as well, and it just seemed a shame there wasn't a bit more variety with things that related to the levels you were playing. The levels look great, so why not just go the extra mile and have enemies that directly relate to where you are. It's a small enough gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.

Sound and Music

Again, as you'd expect from a Nickelodeon cartoon sound and music are brilliant as well, the sound effects sound straight out of an episode of the cartoon, as does the music, some slow and creepy tracks, some upbeat funky numbers, and some of the tracks are like remixes of earlier tracks but changed enough to make you not realise unless you listened back to them. Really well put together and another one you could listen to outside of the game, so I'll link it here.

The People

There are a few really good selling points for this game, graphics, sound and music, and level design, so let's see who provided us with them. Background artists were Ellen Kirk and Doran Fish and neither really did anything of note after this, Ellen worked on a lot of games, but a lot of them were educational games for Windows, and Doran had a smaller back catalogue and was one of the Realtime Associates developers to work on Bug!

Level design was done by Kevin Chan who worked on this and 2 other games, Warlock, and Iron Man/X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal so a very short career for someone with a fairly promising start.

The music was composed for the game by Greg Turner who had a strong career of over 60 game credits including the port of Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi on Game Gear and Game Boy, Bug! and Bug Too!, and the port of Heroes of Might and Magic for the Game Boy Colour, so it seems he was very good at taking music from one medium and putting it into a less powerful medium and still making it sound good.

Box art

Can't complain at all with the front of the box. Beautiful 90s gross Nickelodeon art, it would attract fans of the show, or gross little kids who are looking for something they can pretend to Mum and Dad that it's a cute platformer, then laugh at the bogey and toilet jokes. If I saw this cover in the shop I would easily be drawn to it even though the show was something I completely missed in my childhood.

Looking at the back and it's another well laid out, clean box. That's 2 games in a row with impressive looking boxes, can this game fulfil all the promises made like A.S.P managed to? Well, the screenshots are all explained accurately, and they've picked some good screens to sell the game with so good start there, then we have my favourite, the bullet points!

• Explore over 25 different levels, including 5 bonus levels - I don't know about this one, I didn't count as I played, and I played this some time ago now, but from all the research I can find there looks to be 18 levels, so unless they include the boss fights as levels, I think they might be over selling it a bit here.
• Team up the threesome to perform triple monster moves - This is true, and fun!
• Switch the lead monster with 3-way character control - Again, true, but I love that this was a selling point in 1995.
• Chase away enemies with unique monster scare moves - You certainly do this as part of the game yes.

Overall I give this box a rating of - Mostly accurate. I think they went a bit over with the promised amount of levels, but everything else was spot on.

The Press

Digitiser:

The graphics are fair enough and faithful to the show, but the gameplay isn't worth commenting on.

69/100

GamePro:

Beginners will appreciate the game's simplicity and the easy-to-find hidden areas, but the stiff controls may frustrate some. If you enjoy the cartoon, these Monsters may pass as a rental.

2/5

Game Informer:

Based upon Nickelodeon's hit show of the same name Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a zany and crazy quest of 3 strange creatures. You must manoeuvre Ikis, Krum and Oblina through this game's 25 levels in a quest to perfect their scaring technique. The quest is simple at first but offers increasing challenge and a number of puzzles to solve. A load of non-violent fun.

7.5/10

Video Games:

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is a fine game, but devoid of anything spicy. Once you cut away the interesting music and colourful graphics you're left with nothing more than your average platform game. Kiddies might enjoy it nonetheless.

6/10

Super Play:

It's a tad more fun than the text above makes out but not by much, buy Mario, Lost Vikings or Pitfall 2 instead.

65/100

Nintendo Magazine System:

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters starts out as a really fun game, it's hilarious to watch the monsters scaring the crap out of every creature that dares to go near them, but after a while that novelty wears off. You tend forget you have to scare the monsters and end up just jumping on their heads in an instinctive platform fashion. Also working out which monster you need for each particular circumstance rapidly gets on your nerves. It's bright and colourful, and the control is good, but I'd only really recommend this to dedicated fans of the cartoon.

82/100