Grand Monster Slam
| Developer: Golden Goblins | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Rainbow Arts | Sound: |
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| Year: 1989 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Sport-arcade | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
5/10 | |
This is a variant of dodgeball, transposed into a fantasy universe (elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons…), inspired by the game Penguin-kun Wars (arcade, 1985), which you might know under the title King of the Zoo (Game Boy, 1990).
Grab a coffee, because I’m about to explain the rules. You clicked—this is on you.
The game is played on a rectangular pitch, similar to a tennis court, minus the net. It pits two players against each other, moving in a narrow band on either side of the pitch, occupying its entire width. At kick-off, six “beloms” (round creatures resembling tinies, which we shall call balls) are lined up along the edges of both areas.
The objective is to rid oneself of all balls by kicking them to propel them into the opponent’s court, whilst the opponent does the same in the opposite direction. To gain the upper hand, you must aim at your adversary, unbalance them, and thus prevent them from returning balls to you for a few seconds.
If you send a ball into the stands, you’ll be penalised. A bizarre kind of goose (called a pelvan) will descend from a rope and position itself in the opposing court’s zone (marked with a “P”), waiting for a good kick to its feathers. Unlike the balls, the goose must be caught, not dodged. If you fail, three balls will be moved from the opponent’s court to yours. If you succeed, only one ball will make the reverse journey.
Matches can drag on for a very long time if neither player manages to neutralise the other, and they continue to exchange balls like idiots. The game would have benefited (and it pains me to say this) from a time limit, after which the player with the fewer balls in their area would win the round. This was the case in the arcade version.
At other times, conversely, one of the players (often the computer, certainly not me) manages to hit their opponent several times in succession, preventing them from getting up. The latter watches, powerless, as all the balls return to their zone. Enough to make one lose their mind..
The rounds are interspersed with two mini-games, relatively simple but requiring practice. The first asks you to keep a group of angry beloms, arranged in a circle around your character, at bay using a long stick, before they leap at your face. In the second, the aim is to send the beloms into the mouths of frog-like creatures (called faultons, if you’re interested…), perched on totems of varying heights, which requires you to correctly gauge the force of your shots.
The humour and whimsical dressing cannot long hide the cruel lack of variety (as well as the absence of a two-player mode).
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