Okay, the Angry Video Game Nerd put us onto this recently after a minor mention of Dancing Monster the Commodore 64 game.

He didn’t go into the finer details about it, so we wanted to dig deep and find out what exactly was going on with this weirdness. Hurray!

The Surreal Brilliance of Dancing Monster on the C64

The Commodore 64 was launched in 1982 by Commodore International as a home computer and gaming thing.

So, yes, this was shortly before the video game industry was transformed forever by Nintendo and its NES console (plus Super Mario Bros. in 1985).

Before Nintendo, the idea of what games could be was a bit all over the place. With no set structure on a popular format, some developers just did whatever the hell they fancied.

Dancing Monster fits into that mindset rather neatly.

Launched in 1983, this thing was developed by Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd. It’s in the shooter genre, from a kind of first-person perspective.

There’s also some dancing in it. Well, okay, lots of dancing. By a monster.

Apparently, the game’s developers were Peter Dekany and Denes Baan. The genre is “miscellaneous”, which is pretty accurate.

What’s actually going on with the plot? The idea is there’s a beautiful princess who’s turned into a monster and is ordered to dance for eternity.

As the player, it’s your job to disassemble the monster by firing at certain body parts. Behold!

Now, this game was probably intended as a bit of fun for kids. But it’s inadvertently a bit terrifying, to be honest.

From some of the YouTube comments we’ve seen, that appears to be the case. Some gamers have revealed they played Dancing Monsters and it freaked them out big time. Marvellous!

As a game, though, what are obvious observations? It’s weird. Yes. And the animation is kind of jittery.

The monster moves about the place in a weird pattern, set to a background of diarrhoea brown and other colours.

The music is godawful. And the whole point of the experience is somewhat lost to us, but that’s no bad thing.

Ridiculous things are often some of the best things. Just look at Professional Moron! Eh, eh?

So, not exactly the type of game that’s gone down as an all-time classic. But Dancing Monster is weird enough to make us gawp in wonder.