Monster Bash from Apogee

A wonderfully gory and action packed EGA platformer from 1993 created from Frank Maddin, who would later go on to work at Nintendo on the Metroid Prime games

I grew up playing the shareware chapter on Compaq EGA 286 machine which although meets the system requirements, the game is almost unplayable on a later cave level with the FPS dropping to 1 frame every few seconds at some points…

Anyway, I’m going to install this on my newer ICL 386 VGA machine with the added bonus of an Adlib card for music!

I do miss those old ASCII based installers and watching the decompression happen. Plus check out that beautiful ASCII Apogee logic, fantastic work there!

So what’s the game actually like to play?

Your character must free all of the trapped animals before you can exit the level by firing your catapult at the cages to break the locks.

By default you’ve got unlimited ammo, but you can also upgrade to bigger & multi-shot along with homing sticks.

Thankfully it’s not a one hit kill like Keen, so you can take a few knocks before you lose a life.

All the sound effects play through the PC Speaker, which I remember from playing it as a kid. Which leaves the Adlib for playing music at certain points, which I always find a bit strange as it means I’ve got sounds coming out of two separate speakers on my PC.

Each level is also littered with these funny little skulls. If you hit one you’ll be treated to an animation of their eyeballs popping out their sockets as they fly off the screen! Wonderful!

I spent a lot of time with this one as a kid and I’m looking forward to enjoying another play through again now. Thanks Frank