| Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena | |
|---|---|
 North American box art | |
| Developer | Radical Entertainment |
| Publisher | THQ |
| Director | Tom Legal |
| Producer | Cam Weber |
| Designer | Pete Low |
| Programmer | Scott Andrews |
| Artist | Jeremy McCarron |
| Composer | Marc Baril |
| Platform | GameCube |
| Release | |
| Genre | Sports |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena is a 2002sportsvideo game developed byRadical Entertainment and published byTHQ for theGameCube. The game is based on the 2001 filmMonsters, Inc. and was released in North America on September 19, 2002, and in Europe on April 11, 2003.
The game begins after the events of the film, with a cutscene where several monsters are trying to make a child laugh. When they fail, another monster has a ball thrown at them causing an uproar of laughter, causing their laugh power meter to increase. This sparks an idea to start adodgeball war to keep the power running throughout the monster world.[3]
The gameplay consists of basic dodgeball matches, with simplistic controls aimed at a young audience.[3] The game contains both a single-player mode and multi-player mode for up to four players. In both modes, the winner is the first monster to knock off the opponents.[4] Each player's goal is to throw "laugh balls" at competing players, while doing this each monster will react differently upon contact. The ultimate goal is to knock off your opponent and fill the laughter canister with children's laughter first.[citation needed]
The game contains thirteen playable monsters, seven arenas, bonus stages, and unlockable mini-games.[citation needed] Playable monsters and stages are unlocked throughout the game's single-player mode. Each arena is based on a scene from the movie and has five different objectives, like obtaining the most points from pure hits, hitting targets, holding on a special ball longest, and more. "Laugh balls" have different traits and abilities, such as being fast, slow, sticky and explosive.[3]
The game contains a variety of modes and rulesets, including:
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 39/100[4] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Game Informer | 5/10[5] |
| IGN | 2.5/10[3] |
| Jeuxvideo.com | 10/20[6] |
| Nintendo Power | 3.2/5[7] |
The game received "unfavorable" reviews according to thereview aggregation websiteMetacritic.[4]Game Informer rated it a 5 out of 10, stating that it had "little else to it other than chucking balls at opponents in various settings."Game Informer noted that the game "replicates the movie's charm wonderfully, but its lack of variety hardly qualifies it even as a game."[5] Fran Mirabella III ofIGN, who rated it a 2.5 out of 10, called the game "nothing more than basic dodgeball -- the kind you used to play in the schoolyard -- in a shiny Disney/Pixar package."[3] Mirabella noted the game's young target audience and simplistic gameplay, calling it "mind-numbingly and laughably boring."[3] Mirabella did praise the game's soundtrack as "splendid".[3] Four out of five reviewers inNintendo Power rated the game three-and-a-half out of five whereas the remaining reviewer rated it two out of five.[7]
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