DANCING MONSTER Some of the weirdest games ever made came out\h\h
of a time when the chance to be a game developer\h was arguably a little easier than it is today.\h
In the early to mid 80s when the ZX Spectrum and\h Commodore 64 were ruling the roost in the UK,\h\h
and the latter was doing very well in America\h thank you very much, there were plenty of\h\h
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids and young'uns\h keen to cut their teeth in the gaming industry by\h\h
making their own game. And they wouldn’t need to\h rock up at a gaming company with a portfolio and a\h\h
cover letter and fill out a form on a website that\h literally just asks everything that was already\h\h
answered in their uploaded CV – they’d just need\h to respond to a publishing company’s call for new\h\h
games by sending in their tapes. With a basic\h knowledge code the home computers required,\h\h
anyone could rustle up something great. Or\h awful. Or, as in the case of this game, both.\h
And with the then young gaming landscape\h being so varied from big-named developers\h\h
right down to some kid pissing about on his\h parent's computer, the world of early gaming\h\h
included a lot of bizarre games. Like\h Dancing Monster, for the Commodore 64.\h
The commodore 64 was released in 1982 and would\h go on to be one of the bestselling computers\h\h
ever. At a relatively affordable price point\h and an eventual enormous library of games and\h\h
software, this beige badlad was the darling of\h affordable home computing throughout the 80s.\h
Interestingly, the popularity of video games\h on the computer was so great that Commodore\h\h
went ahead and made their own games system out\h of the computer - the unimaginatively-named\h\h
commodore 64 games system. Or the\h C64GS. Rolls right off the tongue.\h
This console was released in 1990,\h trying to slip its way in between\h\h
the game giants Sega and Nintendo. Which is,\h retrospectively, adorable. And very stupid.\h
The main problem with the C64GS was that\h it had been designed without the pretty\h\h
key aspect of a commodore 64 - the\h keyboard. Games which were more than\h\h
playable on the system couldn't even be\h started if they required the player to\h\h
'press any key' or the like the get the\h game booted. Unsurprisingly, it flopped.\h
Wow, I really got sidetracked\h there. Where were we?\h
In any case, the fact the company would\h eventually release a gaming system version\h\h
of their successful product is proof of how\h popular gaming on the commodore 64 would\h\h
become. It's thus interesting to look back on\h the earlier titles in the Commodore 64 gaming\h\h
library - ones that make you surprised that\h gamers didn't just pack in gaming altogether\h\h
and go off and get into comics or films or\h cultivating a crippling sense of ennui instead.
Now this video is sponsored by\h Lost in Cult, which is great,\h\h
because I am a BIG fan of their work.\h This one is frickin’ amazing!...\h
…and they've got a new one\h up for pre-order right now.
THE CONSOLE CHRONICLES.
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grab yourself a copy as soon as you\h possibly can. You won’t regret it.
Now before I go into Dancing Monster for the\h commodore 64, I should say that the entire game\h\h
is shrouded in a cloud of mystery. Informational\h articles about the game are especially sparse\h\h
online. The writer of this script (Octavius)\h really had to do some digging to get even\h\h
the slightest sliver of info regarding where\h the bobbins a game like this would come from.\h
Dancing Monster was published by\h commodore business machines Ltd,\h\h
hereafter referred to with the initialism CBM, in\h 1983. Very early on in the 1982 computer's life.\h
Commodore published several games under this\h long-winded business title, both games developed\h\h
internally and ones from third party developers.\h Dancing Monster is sometimes credited as being\h\h
developed by CBM, but the title screen credits\h only Peter Dekany and Denes Baan. Two people\h\h
who apparently disappeared off the face of\h the earth after making this game. Were they\h\h
bedroom coders? Were they hired outright\h by Commodore? Stick around till the end,\h\h
because I might have the answers. We're getting ahead of ourselves\h\h
here. Let's take a quick look at the cover art\h and read the blurb so we know what to expect.\h
Doesn't that cover art look great? Classic\h design, interesting and foreboding and a bit\h\h
creepy. Some poor lass has got herself caught\h by a lad in a cape who is now lecturing her. No\h\h
wonder she looks so absolutely done. She’s\h shackled to the wall, so it's not like she\h\h
can move to another carriage like commuters\h on the Victoria line do when one of those\h\h
public preachers decide we need to hear about\h brimstone at quarter past eight in the morning.\h
The only way this situation could be worse is\h if he's reading her his self-insert Thundercats\h\h
fanfiction. Chaining people to the wall is\h the only way to get them to listen to that,\h\h
in my experience. It's bullshit the\h publishers of my retro tech books\h\h
weren't interested in my erotic He-Man crossover. As you might have guessed this game features that\h\h
persistent trope of a princess needing\h to be rescued. Yes, in fantasy fiction\h\h
princesses are useless at not getting nicked.\h Nice of the guy to let her keep her crown on,\h\h
it’s good to have a political prisoner\h display the pointless excess of her entitled\h\h
existence. But...where's the monster? Well, what we are seeing on the cover\h\h
art might be the scene just before this game\h all kicks off. According to the instructions,\h\h
this weirdo is an evil wizard who is about to\h change the princess into a hideous monster. Oh no.\h
Why is he doing that? No idea. For the lolz,\h presumably. A main hobby for a super evil wizard\h\h
is to evily turn attractive people ugly like a\h totally evil bastard. Presumably immediately after\h\h
evily setting default browsers to Microsoft\h Edge, and evily asking the IT department to\h\h
fix something without putting in a ticket first.\h What a terrible git this wizard is. So, so evil.\h
He's also going to have her dance forever to\h his, quote, 'evil music'. This is so incredibly\h\h
evil even the sound waves are nefarious. I'd\h never known of music being described as evil\h\h
before, but I do think I experience it when my\h children ask Alexa to play their Spotify playlist\h\h
before I can bundle out of the room in time. The aim of the game is to rescue this princess\h\h
from a terrible fate of dancing forever to the\h 1980s commodore 64 version of a kid rock track,\h\h
one would assume. We better go and help her out. What a lovely title screen. Unassuming,\h\h
simple. Our two developers get name checked right\h away. They must be proud of their work. I like how\h\h
the title lettering looks like it was scribbled\h on the back of a textbook by a 13-year-old girl.\h
To start I'm going to go with the\h slow setting. There's not a lot of\h\h
difference between the settings - slow,\h medium, fast and very fast, but I’ll get\h\h
to that in a moment. Let's help the princess. [CONTEXT: NERD LOOKING AT THE SCREEN IN HORROR,\h\h
NOT PLAYING IT YET. THERE WILL\h BE SOME ZOOM-INS ON THE MONSTER’S\h\h
FACE CUT IN WITH ZOOM INS ON NERD’S FACE.] The monster the super evil wizard turned this poor\h\h
girl into is indeed, unutterably horrifying. It's\h a Frankenstein’s mishmash of monster parts - two\h\h
black horns, a big pink trunk, flicky green\h tail and of course a pair of Levis. You know,\h\h
Levi jeans? A common part of any monster anatomy. Now that the princess has been turned into this\h\h
purple elephant monster, she's cursed to keep\h dancing to the evil music we were told about. And\h\h
she really does move. The girl could utterly cut\h up the dance floor on a Friday night, her talents\h\h
are being wasted here in this...very brown place.\h Where is she? Is she dancing in a field of mud?\h\h
You're going to ruin your Levis, mate. Poor thing has messed her lipstick,\h\h
look. To be fair to her, must have been hard\h to put on with that big trunk in the way,\h\h
but it’s nice even looking how she does she’s\h attempted to take some pride in her appearance.\h\h
She's got a blue tongue too. That means she's\h either got cyanosis, which is an illness from\h\h
lack of oxygen in the bloodstream, or she's\h just downed a bottle of WKD blue. Judging by\h\h
how she's dancing, I think it's the latter. By the way, no one tell YouTube that this\h\h
is a female character. She is topless\h and her nipples are showing and are,\h\h
according to terms of service, offensive\h and need blurring. Yes, even pixel nipples\h\h
have a double standard. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Where did those jeans come from? She's not wearing\h\h
them on the cover art. Did the evil wizard magic\h them onto her because they are a terrible fit,\h\h
just to add insult to injury? They look\h like the kind of jeans you see on white\h\h
middle-aged dads. She ought to have bright\h white trainers, reflective sunglasses and a\h\h
rolled-up leaflet in her hand to complete\h the 50-year-old-dad at Disneyland look.\h
So how are we going to help\h her? We're going to shoot her.\h
Yes, taking a leaf right out of certain law\h enforcement's book, we're going to diffuse\h\h
the situation by offloading bullets into it. On the Commodore 64, you wouldn’t be able to\h\h
play this without a joystick. You move this cursor\h around and try to shoot particular parts of the\h\h
princess' body - which is harder than it looks\h because she's clearly three WKD blues deep and\h\h
Grease Megamix has just come on in the club. (to the tune of ‘the one that I want’) “I’ve\h\h
got chiiiiillls. You’re terrifying.” On the top is an indicator which goes\h\h
down the longer you leave it between shots.\h Stop shooting and you lose the game. But\h\h
keep constantly shooting, and parts of her\h body that you shoot off will grow back. This\h\h
means you must be accurate - no frantic button\h mashing here. You need to be shooting the part\h\h
of the body indicated up here. So now I need to\h shoot the horns, now the trunk, now the ears.\h
The body parts always need to be shot off\h in an order, unless one of them grows back\h\h
seemingly at random. If you’re quick enough and\h none of the parts go back, the order is horns,\h\h
ears, trunk, tongue, tail, arms, then legs. If she wasn't horrifying enough, the nightmare\h\h
fuel that presents itself once you get that\h trunk off is truly something to behold. Yes,\h\h
this game was intended for children. What child\h would look at this joker-esque mouth and buggy\h\h
eyes and be able to sleep again? I'm in my forties\h and I'm deeply uncomfortable seeing this thing.\h
The little scream she does when a part of her\h gets shot off is not nice to hear. Thankfully\h\h
it’s drowned out by the 'evil' music. Namely,\h a modified version of Edvard Grieg's In the\h\h
Hall of the Mountain King. It's nice to hear\h the first time around and is certainly fitting\h\h
with the overall...er, experience. But it\h does get annoying after the millionth loop.\h
Look at this. I'm playing a kids' game in which\h I'm watching a terrified, armless torso of a girl\h\h
wobble and gyrate back and forth in jeans. This is\h straight out of a bestgore video. Look at this and\h\h
tell me there's a god. Go on. At this rate, I'm going to\h\h
have to down some WKD blue myself. Here's what happens if you don't manage to shoot\h\h
the princess to bits in time. Still in her monster\h form, she trudges dejectedly off the screen. Where\h\h
is she going? To attack the nearest village? To\h be chased by angry peasants wielding pitchforks?\h\h
Or maybe to lob herself into oncoming traffic. The difference between slow mode and very fast\h\h
mode isn't that great. The latter is certainly\h harder, but only because she moves around a lot\h\h
more rather than a huge amount quicker.\h That being said, it's still winnable in a\h\h
couple of minutes. It's not an especially\h difficult game. Once you know the order\h\h
and her little dance moves, you're good to go. While the dancing itself is randomised and you\h\h
can't necessarily tell what move she's going to\h throw out next, the moves she does tend to repeat\h\h
for a few bars. For example, when she wiggles\h her tail at you. Like this. The moves are short,\h\h
but more than long enough for you to position\h your cursor and shoot at the right moment.\h
And once you've shot off all the\h pieces, here you go - the win screen.\h
Our monster is engulfed in magic, and her true\h form is revealed. A purple woman. Who is not\h\h
wearing jeans. She doesn’t look hugely pleased\h at being saved, but she's probably very hungover.\h
And that’s it. No little message of\h congratulation, no update on what the evil\h\h
wizard is up to now. Just one purple princess,\h staring at you from a blue screen. Fantastic.\h
Is it a bad game? Yes. Is it an awful game? No.\h It's functional, it does what it sets out to\h\h
do. It's playable in every sense of the word.\h And the fact it’s so delightfully weird makes\h\h
it go right back around again to being sort\h of awesome. In a terrible, confounding way.\h
But despite it being so bizarre and\h remembered by many traumatised then-children,\h\h
getting information on it is not easy. Who were Peter Dekany and Denes Baan? Did they\h\h
work at Commodore? Did they make the game and send\h it in the be published by the computer company?\h\h
Were they even of this world at all? Did they both\h slip in through a dimensional rift, give us this\h\h
game, and then fold back into their own time? Well thanks to getting someone else to spend\h\h
precious days of their life to research and\h write this script for me, I may have the answer.\h
In the May 1984 commodore horizons\h magazine, there's an interview with\h\h
one Andromeda Software's David Bishop. He talks\h about the benefits of recruiting developers from\h\h
countries not entirely customised with arcade\h games. Namely, how specifically Hungarian\h\h
developers come up with original game content\h due to not having been widely exposed to games\h\h
such as Pacman, space invaders etc. Those names on the title screen for\h\h
Dancing Monster make more sense\h now. They must be Hungarian.\h
According to Bishop, in 1982 Andromeda Software\h put out feelers for developers in Hungary by\h\h
putting on competitions - inviting bedroom coders,\h storytellers and computer whizzes alike to submit\h\h
their games, or even just their game ideas. "We had about 1500 ideas submitted to us,\h\h
in all kinds of formats. Some came in as\h sketches, some as complete storyboards."\h
It's a little unclear whether Bishop took on\h developers from this competition, or they were\h\h
on his books from Hungarian connections he had\h already made thanks to Andromeda's parent company,\h\h
and connections from CBM itself. In any case, the\h plan was to develop software which would then be\h\h
licenced to external software houses. Andromeda\h would act as a sort of intermediary, if you will.\h
Parent company Vulcan Media's managing\h director Robert Stein, a Hungarian himself,\h\h
notes that some of the games Andromeda were\h working on had aspects of "Hungarian character"\h\h
in the concepts and characters. This is when he\h mentions Dancing Monster specifically, saying:\h
"In commodores dancing monster\h we have the ridiculous dancing\h\h
creature with the elephant's trunk." This is supposedly 'typical of Hungarian\h\h
sense of humour'. I did try to find out if\h terrifying elephant-nosed creatures have\h\h
some sort of satirical meaning in Hungary\h but was unsuccessful. Or maybe the wearing\h\h
of the jeans is a joke? According to some\h articles which I'll link in the description,\h\h
blue jeans first rocked up in Hungary in\h the 1960s and were super hard to get hold\h\h
of because of the lack of cheap production\h methods, and a bit of a crackdown on anything\h\h
indicative of western culture influences. By the time this game was released however,\h\h
jeans were so popular with the general public that\h local manufacturers made a point of getting hold\h\h
of the licence to make brand name products. if\h you're Hungarian and can enlighten us on what\h\h
in the utter bobbins the significance of jeans in\h dancing monster is please do so in the comments.
The story of a princess being cursed rather than\h a dancing monster is definitely more reminiscent\h\h
of a fairy tale. There is a fairy tale apparently\h popular in Hungary. Apparently originally told in\h\h
Denmark, the story, “The Princess in the Chest”\h has various versions across Europe. It is retold\h\h
in Hungary as a popular story for children, about\h a Princess who turns into a monster, every night.
A King and a Queen were desperate to have a child. So desperate that the Queen\h\h
went to a Witch for help. The Witch told her that if she\h\h
ate a bird from a special tree, then she would\h have a daughter. But if anyone set eyes on her\h\h
before her 14th birthday, the King would need\h to choose one of three things to bring her to\h\h
life again. A pestilence, a devastating war,\h or putting the girl’s dead body in a coffin,\h\h
that must be watched over each day, for a year. Just a day before her 14th birthday, the King\h\h
could not take it any longer. He glimpsed his\h daughter, and now she was cursed. Panicking,\h\h
he chose to lay her now dead body, into a wooden\h coffin. Setting a soldier to guard the crypt,\h\h
he retired to mourn. Every morning, all that\h was left of the sentinel, was a pile of bones.\h
One day a stranger came to town looking\h for work. The soldiers got him drunk,\h\h
and convinced him to take the King’s job, of\h guarding the princess’s coffin. He agreed,\h\h
but tried to flee when he sobered up in the\h darkness, only to be stopped by a strange man.\h
The man told him, that he must hide in the\h pulpit, and stay there until he heard the\h\h
coffin lid slam. In the crypt, the stranger hid\h in the pulpit. He heard the coffin lid smash\h\h
open. The princess, Skeletal and pale, lurched\h in the darkness, looking for the sentinel. But\h\h
when midnight struck, she returned to her coffin. The next night, the man told the stranger to stand\h\h
at the altar and hold a prayer book. Sure enough,\h the monstrous Princess couldn’t find the stranger,\h\h
and returned to her grave. On the third night, the\h man told the stranger to hide, in the monster’s\h\h
coffin. So he did. Slamming the lid closed,\h after her corpse began stalking the stones.\h
She screamed, begged, thumped on the\h coffin lid, but he did not open it.\h
When dawn came, the stranger opened the\h coffin lid to see the Princess human,\h\h
and very much alive, sleeping\h on the sun drenched stones.
There you go, a popular fairy tale, about\h a princess who turns into a monster.\h\h
Another popular Hungarian folk tale is the\h retelling of another popular European fairy\h\h
tale. The twelve dancing princesses. There once was a king who had twelve\h\h
daughters. All but one wore out many pairs of\h shoes each night, and the king had no idea why.\h
He promised the twelfth princess in marriage\h to the first man who could expose the secret.\h
One day a shepherd boy came to the court\h with secrets of his own. A pelt that could\h\h
turn invisible, and a bag that could never\h be filled. That night he donned the pelt\h\h
and sneaked into the princesses room. That’s\h when he saw a spirit fly into the window and\h\h
wake all but the twelfth princess. Excited they started to get ready.\h
The shepard awoke the final, now confused\h princess. The sisters were worried that\h\h
they would tell the King their secret.\h So, they invited her along for the night.\h
They first came to a copper forest, then\h to a silver forest, and finally a golden\h\h
forest. At each one they drank from\h copper, silver and finally gold cups.\h
Unseen, the shepard took a cup\h from each, into his bottomless bag.\h
They arrived at a great mountain. The\h spirit tapped the rocky face with a\h\h
want. It split open to reveal a\h lavish ballroom full of magical\h\h
creatures dancing. The princesses danced\h all night wearing out many pairs of shoes.\h
When the sun peeked through the clouds.\h The eleven princesses, and the confused,\h\h
twelfth princess, rushed back into their\h beds as if they had slept all night.\h
The shepherd went to the King and told him\h what he had seen, showing the cups as proof.\h
Satisfied, the King have him the\h twelfth princess in marriage.\h
The other princesses weren’t so\h lucky. The King had them burned alive.
That’s the only bit of Hungarian folklore\h concerning a Dancing Princess the writer\h\h
of this script could find. Cute isn’t it? Are those Hungarian folklores influences\h\h
on Dancing Monster? Possibly, I’d like to\h think that the creators of Dancing Monster\h\h
were making their own slant on the whimsical\h tales they heard as children. With the express\h\h
purpose of traumatising a whole new generation\h of children with a trunk faced dancing monster.
Bishop says that the games Andromeda made all\h started off with a storyboarded game idea. Then\h\h
the appropriate developers were brought on and\h details were ironed out. After that, Andromeda\h\h
would set up a bidding war between software\h houses. That must mean Commodore’s CBM itself\h\h
saw this utter horror and from some reason\h smashed their money down on the table.\h
Sold! Although\h\h
Bishop says Andromeda wouldn't simply accept\h the biggest bid; they would always take into\h\h
account the distribution network and publisher’s\h commitment to the game itself. That being said, he\h\h
notes specifically that Commodore,\h despite having secured Dancing Monster,\h\h
didn't do very much promotion despite it being,\h and I quote 'a very good game'. Okay, mate. Sure.\h
At the article’s publishing, a comparatively\h massive 180 people combined were working\h\h
on games for Andromeda. Our two credited\h individuals for Dancing Monster among them.\h
And that's where the trail ends. The writer of\h this script could not find out if either of them\h\h
were the ones responsible for the idea, or the\h extent to which either of the developed the game.\h
In 1983 Commodore released Dancing Monster\h as part of a compilation edition of five\h\h
fantasy-based games. Just to really make sure\h as many children were traumatised as possible.\h
Well that's Dancing Monster, one of the weirder\h retro games you'll find yourself...exposed to.