Monster Madness

Monster Madness, a top-down shooter affectionately parodying B-Movies, notably monster movies. It's very reminiscent of SNES game Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Artificial Studios and Immersion Games were the original developers while Immersion and Psyonix Studios handled the port, and SouthPeak Interactive was Publisher for both iterations. The Xbox 360 and PC versions have the subtitle "Battle for Suburbia", while the Polished Ports on the Play Station 3 and Android have "Grave Danger."

Tropes used in Monster Madness include:

• All Just a Dream: Or Was It a Dream?
• Ancient Tomb: Level 14.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes - You can unlock 3 extra clothing options by getting all the characters' Tier 2-3 weapons, every melee weapon, and beat the game on a certain difficulty, except Zack who you just need to complete the Bestiary and Jennifer where you need to S-Rank the game on Madness. The Play Station 3/Android version has you doing various missions and mini-games.
• Affectionate Parody: B-Movies, of course.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever
• Bad Bad Acting
• Big Bad: Larry Tools.
• Big Foot: A standard enemy who likes to kick boulders.
• Blood Knight: Billy. He has no alliance, he seeks revenge against the universe, he just waves his chainsaw around until it runs out of juice then he punches everything until his, or the universes', temporary defeat.
• Classic Cheat Code: By pausing during game play you can enter the Konami Code to access the cheat menu in the 360 version.
• Chainsaw Good
• Chupacabra: An interesting result of monster splicing.
• Creepy Cemetery: Level 12.
• Dead Weight: Fat Zombie.
• Enemy Summoner: Captain Bones can only be defeated by the heads of its conjured allies.
  • When a Harpy dies it'll lay an egg that'll hatch into another Harpy if you don't crack it fast enough.
  • Witches can drop black cats.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies
• Evil Counterpart: The Ghoul Squad, Death has summoned a rag-tag bunch of concentrated evil based on the fears and dislikes of the Heros.
  • Anthony: A hard working, shotgun wielding, country boy with a raccoon eating his head. Andy's long torturer.
  • Butch: Mean, stupid, and strong as Hell with a minigun in tow. Death's "gift" to Zack.
  • Clarisse: Just a demon who exists, with nothing worth noting, no special powers, no special looks, just a demon. This boggles Carrie's mind to no end.
  • Kelly: A rich, once beautiful, cheerleader who's face was destroyed by a mad plastic surgeon, now devoid a mouth and lips and a chip off her shoulder. Jennifer doesn't care much.
• Expy: Mr. Huggles has no relation to a large purple dinosaur.
• Face Heel Turn: Lawrence Thompson and Mr. Huggles
• Fake Difficulty
• Feather Flechettes: The Harpy, naturally.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell
• Gag Boobs: There's a cheat which increases Jennifer's bust.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: The Ghoul has one, Mr. Griswold, sewed to its back. Griswold can even stun and blind you with a camera flash.
• Haunted Castle: Setting of the final Chapter.
• Deadly Change-of-Heart: Inverted, Andy tries to side with Larry Tools following The Reveal, but suffice to say he won't let him.
• Heel Face Turn: That Billy
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Billy, doubles with Freudian Excuse.

Marked for a loser from birth, Billy was put up for adoption and was denied promptly for being totally boring, uninteresting, and a slightly scary child. Growing up, Billy had many pets... But none of them would play with him. This losing streak continued up to the current Monster Madness. Seeing an opportunity to fit in, he sided with the Monsters. Once again rejected, he now takes his frustration out on anything in his way.

• Hollywood Nerd: Zack is a defining Type One example.
• Human Resources: Monster Tokens are made of souls.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Easy is Child's Play, Medium is Thriller, Hard is Horror, and Harder Than Hard is Madness.
• Improbable Weapon User: Boy these kids sure are crafty with their mailbox maces, a banjo, swordfish sqords, bamboo, Pom-Poms, a mannequin's arm, a boot on a stick, and a fishing pole, to name a couple.
• Instant Expert: The kids have no problems using UFOs the moment they spot one.
• Jerkass: Wally McDoogle, has you risking your life and holding you hostage to fetch gold zombies, protect a pot 'o gold, and for his amusement. Fans will probably enjoy killing him in the final stage.
• Leprechaun The Man Child Jerkass Wally McDoogle.
• MacGyvering: Larry should really change his last name to MacGyver, even if it takes a couple plutonium rods to make things.
• Monster Compendium: The Bestiary, filled with little factoids, battle tips, and the difficulty gauge of each monster using glowing skulls as markers. The highest skull level is 10.
• Monster Mash: Has it ever been in a monster movie? Evil Dolls, Evil Clowns, Evil Trees, Martians, Cats, Dracula, Swamp Creatures, Frankie, Werewolves, and a Gym Teacher.
• Ms. Fanservice: Jennifer. Even the unlockable costumes are a cheerleader uniform, a Walkig Swimsuit Scene bikini, and the like.
• Nail'Em: A nail gun is the equivalent of a standard pistol.
• Nigh Invulnerability: Captain Bones, use every bullet in your arsenal and he'll still get up for more. But throw just one head and he's dead.
• Night of the Living Mooks: It's like there was a zombie sale and the Zombie Warehouse and Monster Madness won the lottery. Zombie Chihuahuas, Zombie Zeppelins, Explosive Zombies, Zombie Torsos in Wagons, Zombie Actors, Zombie Tanks, Zombie Gunners, Zombie Bikers.
• Nintendo Hard: The game gets a LOT harder as it goes on.
• One-Winged Angel: Larry Tools turns into a demon rock star.
• Ordinary High School Student: Four playable ones to choose from—a nerd, a goth, a slacker, and a cheerleader.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Larry Tools' final form is powered by Monster Tokens
• Rank Inflation: From F-S Depending on how much junk you find, how many monsters you kill, how many Monster Tokens you collect, and if you ever died.
• Running Joke: Carrie being mistaken for a zombie.
• Shout-Out: "Zombies have eaten my neighbors!".
  • Gremlins are small blue creatures who wear white Phrygian caps and white pants.
  • The cast attends L. R. Jenkins High School.
  • Twofer, Bob Zombie is a flying, dreadlocked, warlock zombie pothead with a Jamaican accent and cool hat and car. His Final Speech is various titles of Bob Marley tracks.
  • Easy difficulty's called Child's Play.
  • Snake's flavor text begins with "Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?"
  • Billy a chainsaw wielding ball of hatred who wears a red and green striped shirt and a hockey mask.
  • Jack-O's flavor text reads as such:

Every couple of years, the residents of Halloweenville are called upon to vote for a new face to represent them during Halloween. Even though a certain skeleton had won the popular vote, Jack-O had more electoral votes and won the election.

• • What happens after Mr. Huggles returns to the black void of insanity? He turns into Jaba the Huggle!
  • Flux capacitors are just random junk waiting to be used in a top-tier weapon.
  • To the tune of SpongeBob SquarePants theme

Larry Tools: Who lives in a van, down by the river?"

• Spiritual Successor: to Zombies Ate My Neighbors
• Sprint Shoes
• Standard Status Effects:
  • Slow and Disarm: Mummies have locusts and Undead Bikers use smoke grenades, Spiders can only slow. You and your teammates can lay down sticky glue
  • Stun/Freeze: Frankie shocks, Banshees scream, Fat Zombies fart, and Ice Demons freeze, Ghouls can blind and stun with a camera flash, Gremlins throw their wrench at you and take you stuff.
  • Fear: Cats, Zombie Dogs, and Undead Hands latch onto and make you run around all willy-nilly;
  • Lift and Drop: Ghosts and Harpies
  • Possess": Ghosts can do this, decreasing movement speed for the ability to spew a green goop that's potentially [split pea soup,
  • Burn: Imps and Fire Demons thrown fire balls while Zepplins, you, and your teammates throw Molotov Cocktails. In addition you and your team can use a flamethrower gun and robot arm.
• Storming the Castle: Level 15.
• Taking You with Me: When near death, or on fire, an Explosive Zombie will rig itself to explode and run in your general vicinity.
  • The Principle tries this when defeated.
• The Engineer: Gremlins are a Type One with tennis ball turrets and that cursed wrench.
• The Reveal: Larry Tools reveals near the end of the game that he had actually been using the kids to farm monster tokens and his real name is Lawrence Thompson.
• Theme Tune Cameo: Zack's Character Select idle chatter has him humming to the music.
• White Mask of Doom: Billy Wears a Hockey Mask.