Monster in My Pocket

[yamamanama]

83 days until the vernal equinox


there’s a pirate cart of this game called Flash Batman in which I guess Flash and Batman team up to fight evil.


I hope there’s a storyline to that hack and if there is, I hope the plot is that the Joker built a shrink ray.


and since Batman and the Flash have the same powers in that game, the Joker also built a ray that takes away the Flash’s superpowers. Also the ray had the side effect of swapping red and blue so maybe he had Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s help on the shrinkinator. Or maybe he stole Doofenshmirtz’s Inator-inator, which randomly generates -inators and the inator he got was an inator that swaps red and blue and he’s like “well, it would make Campbell’s soup cans confusing. That’s evil, right?”


This game was on Nick Arcade a few times. I watched and the kid who was playing was really timid about attacking enemies and didn’t actually achieve the quite resaonable score.



The two genders: Dracula and Frankenstein.


They’re both the same so I’m going to be Abby Normal.


Holy shitsnacks, the Warlock does look like Guile.


apparently if you bought the game, it came with an exclusive monster from your friends at Konami, which is either a minotaur wearing jeans and stompy boots or a Gazorpazorpian from Rick and Morty with his small arms covering his eyes.


monster in my pocket (still is? was?) a toy line with monsters drawn from folklore, myths, cryptids, literature, and other sources.
There’s a secret sound test in the game. This stage’s theme is called Theme of MM’s, what that means, I can not say, but it sounds a lot like a surf rock version of something from a Konami Ninja Turtles game.


the opening is definitely a deliberate nod to Castlevania. I think these guys are zombies. Living dead have been in folklore probably before language even existed but the word zombie comes from the Haitian vodun.


Skeletons bowl their heads at you. Well, they bowl heads at you. They still have their actual head after they roll them so I don’t know.



You can pick up the key and throw it to damage enemies.


Hunchback bounces around. The Hunchback of Notre Dame wasn’t a bad guy. I’m just going to blame the Warlock and his evil powers. Or he could really be a Fleaman. They kind of act the same.


Witches appear and disappear and fire a very slow moving hoop of electricity at you.


Probably the most blurry photo ever put on display.


I want to say that’s a chimera but it could just be a generic lion. I wrote this relying on my own eyes and a scan of the manual. The artwork in the manual is pretty good but the scan isn’t. And then I found a guide on Gamefaqs which lists the enemies found in each level and he refers to these guys as The Beast. So, uh, let’s just go with that. They do the exact thing as the zombies but they’re carrying knives to look more menacing.


I think that’s a winged panther. They swoop down at you.


You can slide down the banister and when you reach maximum velocity, you become invincible. Or you can jump down each step like a schlub.


Grant DaNasty? Is that you? No, that’s Spring Heel Jack, who was first sighted in London in 1837 and last sighted in Liverpool in 1904, three years after the death of Queen Victoria. A Mark Hodder novel depicts him as a time traveller.


You do get your health back upon beating a level.
Ogres are this level’s “run at you” Again, the guy who wrote the guide is working under the same “look up a vaguely similar looking monster in the manual” assumpions that I’m working with so take it all with a pillar of salt.


It’s not exactly a little kitchen, especially from your perspective. The music track is called Dancin’ in the Kitchen.


Those are ghosts. Lauren The Flute and the rest of the Flutiepies have attempted a deadness chart, with axes of corporeality, decayedness, and intelligence. Ghosts are on the low end of the corporeality axis. If they do toss their heads at you, I’ve never seen them do it.


The bouncy green guys here are Cerberus, three-headed dog guardian of the underworld. Oh yeah, you can see another head if you tilt your head and squint in the right way.
I think the ice cube man is a behemoth. Or maybe they’re goblins. This is a game based on a toyline where all monsters from gremlins to tyrannosaurs are more or less the same size so I’m not sure.


I just like the way the apple was rendered.


The manual says these guys are ghouls. At least, the only monster with “axe” in their description is the ghoul.


The flying green guys that drop eggs on you are rocs, also from Arab folklore.


That’s an ogre. I think.


Bigfoot is apparently an ice man. He’ll walk back and forth and when you attack him, he’ll pause, run back and forth, and shoots a cloud of ice glitter at you. Apparently you’re allowed to bring keys into boss fights, which probably makes this guy a jillion times easier.


I missed the point tallying the first time. You get an extra life every so many points.


The music is called Cola Float.


you immediately get blindsided by what this guide says is a catoblepas, which is basically a water buffalo with a giant head that has a deadly gaze or breath, depending on who you asked. They can also shoot fire. Nowhere does anyone mention that they can fly.


That’s a Jenny Haniver, a corruption of the French “jeune d’Anvers,’ because Antwerp in Belgium is where a lot of these guys were made. Take the carcass of a ray or skate that you find washed up or in your fishing nets, desiccate it, and then carve the mummy into a fanciful creature. Gives you something to do on your long sea journey. Japan does something similar with their ningyo.


Beware of low-flying golf balls.


I thought these guys were harpies but the guide says they’re hydras. They swoop at you.


We’re going to meet the Ninja Turtles!


I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s Charon, ferryman of the underworld. He is carrying an oar.


I want to say Triton. They’ll jump out of the water at you.
There are some really cheap hits in this part.
When you die, you lose a life and that’s it. You don’t lose any progress or anything.


Kraken pops his head out, which you’re supposed to attack, and flails his tentacles, which you’re supposed to avoid. You can brute force it but you’ll lose a few lives in the process.


The music here is called Monster Rap. And hey, “smooth like butter, like a criminal undercover.”
i played this first and when I first heard that song, I was like “hey, it sounds like Monster in My Pocket.
It’s really a coincidence, though. They kind of stop sounding alike after the smooth like butter part.


You move to the left in this level get assailed by hobgoblins, which I thought were tengu because they had that decoration from samurai helmets and everything, and harpies, this level’s divebomber enemy.


The guide’s guess is Baba Yaga. Depending on the story, Baba Yaga is either a hideous witch who eats children or a kindly old crone. She lives deep in the woods in a hut that walks around chicken legs.


The one who launches a hook at you is Kali, a Hindu goddess with a bit of an undeserved reputation. There was actually a bit of a controversy, but you know, that’s not really Monster in My Pocket’s fault. She is the goddess of destruction but it’s more like how the elements that make up our planet was forged in the fires of a dying star. Or some of those elements, anyway. Maybe life could find a way to make do without selenium or iodine or molybdenum.


I also learned that thallium was once used to induce hair loss but they stopped using it because of all the other horrible effects.
Also, Kali lends her name to the Kali Yuga, which is some slop from the Nazi Meme Machine.


this is cerberus’ fire-shooting cousin Chimera.


Redcaps are goblins from the northlands of Britain who use human blood to dye their clothes. No octorok eyeballs, sapphires, or tails of the red lizalfos for these guys. See the burning question.


These guys are presumably harpies.


But lucky for you, the boss, the Gremlin, isn’t hard. Gamefaqs called him the hardest boss. I dunno. I think the ice man was relatively hard.
He always comes in from the top, then the left, then the right, and he throws balls at you that arc and you have to stand between them.


The music here is called Asia Club. I rented this game as a kid and got up to this stage. It’s not a hard game by any means but you will get worn down.


I think this guy is Karnak. Karnak isn’t anyone’s name, it’s an Egyptian complex of temples named for a village whose Arabic name al-Karnak translates to fortified village. The pharaoh who ordered Karnak built was Senusret I. Karnak just sort of walks towards you. He does take two hits though.


The green guy who looks like a deranged Ninja Turtle is a tengu, a mischevious goblin spirit from Japanese folklore. Kind of the opposite of Set, in that their reputation got better as time went on.


That flying guy is a cockatrice, the product of a rooster’s egg hatched by a toad or snake, while a basilisk is born of a toad or snake egg hatched by a rooster.


I don’t know what Cōātlīcue (Nahuatl name meaning serpentskirt. Yeah, like the Cocteau Twins song) is doing in the garden of the Japanese restaurant. Unless it’s a Japanese restaurant in Mexico City. It runs at you and turns around when you try to attack it.


Manticores are from Persian folklore, and are a lot like sphynges, except they don’t ask riddles, only eat people. Here they toss bones in an arc.


Cyclopes are popping out of the walls. Sicily is that-a-way, man. Japan used to have elephants, up to 24000 years ago. Sometimes oni have one eye so maybe they came to the same conclusion about elephant skulls that the Greeks had.


Medusa has one true form. The real one shoots a ring of energy at you which paralyzes you if you get hit and then flies at you. Someone on the Zetaplays stream says she reminds him more of a banshee.


The music in the first half of the stage is called Theme of Emm’s.


Tyrannosaurus rex is a real dinosaur but couldn’t breathe fire and were also covered in feathers. They’re probably the toughest enemy in the game.


Minotaurs are also pretty appropriate for this place. The thing about minotaurs is that they run at you but then stop as if to say “I’m a cow. Why do I eat meat?” and you use this opportunity to destroy them. If you don’t, they realize “oh, yeah, the Warlock is paying me in Chuck E Cheese tokens to fight Abby Normal.”


Huh, I wonder if The Great Beast (seriously?) was meant to be the Ghidora to T-rex’s Godzilla.


When you get to the palace part, the music changes to Boss World.


Behemoth jumps out of the window and lunges at you. Try to hit them when they hit the floor. I can’t even tell what they are. They look like Agahnim.
It’s boss rush time! You’ve already seen them all.


There’s no health pickups between them. But there are health pickups after the last rematch.


don’t jump while he fires lightning.


he probably is the hardest boss in the game if only because he takes a lot of hits and his attacks are hard to avoid even if you are moving.



but you can’t just rest on your laurels and put on the ritz just yet.


That’s right! We’re fighting Warlock through the TV!


He’ll send windigos after you. Windigos are what becomes of people who eat other people. Especially the brain.


Don’t be afraid to lose lives.




burning question: How did John Boyne see that list of ingredients for red dyes and not realize that something was amiss? Thistle and nightshade? Ok. Keese wings, swift violet, and silent princess plant? Fine, maybe they’re some real life plants he’s never heard of. So far, so what?. There are 380,000 plant species out there, after all. But did he not bother to look up what octoroks and lizalfos even were? Peppers, which were confined to the Americas at the time this novel was set? Sapphires?!?!