My brother got the demo of this game free with a C64 magazine (could have been a Zzap! megatape) when we were small, and we loved it mainly because it was a platform game, kind of like a Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario for the C64. It was a late game for the C64 – it came out in late 1993 (when I was 9!).
Mayhem is so cute – he’s like a tiny yellow triceratops dinosaur thingy – and he can run really, really fast.
He could maybe even rival Sonic in the speed stakes! As I remember, the aim of the game was to restore Monsterland back to its sparkly, shiny happy former self by killing the baddies and collecting the stars. You could kill the baddies the same way as Sonic and Mario – by jumping on their heads or running into them. In fact, many of Mayhem’s moves mirror those of Sega’s Sonic.
The music was really good in this game. The theme for the first level is actually pretty scary and prompted my mother to tell us to turn it off! This game was best played with a joystick as the keyboard controls were a little fiddly. Adorable little Mayhem makes up
for it though - the graphics were the best and brightest we’d seen on a C64 game; a real work of cartoon art. Even the baddies were cute, for goodness’ sake!
So, all in all, I’d say Mayhem In Monsterland was probably the most enjoyable and addictive C64 game ever.
