FRANKEN:

Franken is one of the larger enemies who may pursue you through the halls of the main hub, and he appears to be based on the undead villain of House. These enemies are actually named in the manual, which is nice, and it's a pity the bosses can't boast the same.

OMEN:

This disquietingly named fellow kind of resembles one of the child-like goblins from House, but in pixel form, looks more like a huge-headed Peter Lorre frog person, which, I have to say, might be a whole lot more frightening.

BIG LADY:

House had a corpulent, blue-skinned ghoul-woman with a mouth full of slavering fangs, but "Big Lady" feels even creepier, her sprite even more uncanny. I remember being fairly rattled when she'd pop out of a door and come at me, and the thought of it is still pretty dreadful. It's that huge, pale, toothless set of smacking lips.

FLYING SKELETON:

The only interesting thing from the box art to appear in the game is also just another House refugee, and amusingly enough, referred to by the manual as a "large bird." How silly. Everyone knows birds have dog skulls and bee wings.

ELEPHANT:

The last monster sort of resembling anything that appeared in House, and only rather vaguely, other web reviews laugh at this one's name, but I think "Elephant" is an appropriate and creepy thing to call a grey, wrinkly ogre with emaciated limbs and sagging flesh. I guess they were thinking of the "elephant man."

ZONE 1 BOSS:

Sadly, the known names end here, but on the plus side, we get to kick off the bosses with this total cutie-pie, and we'll just call it Truman. It looks like a Truman to me. With a body like a water bear and humongous, cartoonish eyes, this little monster really lives up to the strangeness of the cover art, at least in my book, and if its design doesn't tug at the heartstrings enough, it's the most pathetic fight in the game. Truman is shorter than you, significantly slower, and does nothing but steadily inch forward until stabbed to death, possibly lacking any will to live or just completely misunderstanding its job.

ZONE 2 BOSS:

The second boss is some sort of ghostly figure made of either sand or flatulence, it's impossible to tell. One thing is for sure: of this monster's two possible facial expressions, one is ridiculous and the other one is hilarious. I'm not going to tell you which is which. You have to work out some of these things for yourselves.

ZONE 3 BOSS:

This fast-running boss has a lot of legs, an articulated shell, and cute little eyes peering out of the dark recesses in its armor. It's kind of like a huge, hump-backed isopod! It's just a pity the actual stages in this game are so boring in comparison to creatures like this; apparently, alien dimensions alternate between forest, cave, gold brick temple and river, occupied by things as otherworldly as fish and bats, until you get to these boss fights.

ZONE 4 BOSS:

Initially, this boss just looks like a rather disquieting turtle, neither the strangest nor the most intimidating thing I expect in another universe, but eventually, the turtle will break apart into what may be its "true" form, a swarm of aquatic bugs with bulging googly eyes! That's more like it!

ZONE 5 BOSS:

This might just be the most interesting monster in the game. Its design is obviously based on a trilobite, but it stands upright, and it has another row of spikes facing us, with a fourth on the opposite side. It attacks by spinning its bladed body like a top! How freaky-weird is that for a giant upright trilobite? Its snout even feels like it forms a faceless, humanoid head on a vague "torso." Now that's an inhabitant of an unearthly reality.

ZONE 6 BOSS:

Boss #6 keeps up the steady quality level, resembling a leech with a gigantic, gaping maw from which it produces many smaller, viciously fanged offspring. Lacking any teeth of its own, it likely lets its little ones do all the feeding for it...or maybe it's even the female, and the smaller ones are the males?

ZONE 7 BOSS:

Not as bizarre as the others, but a reptilian humanoid with gliding membranes is still interesting enough. I guess I just got used to all those lovely big bugs.

ZONE 8 BOSS:

I like this shelled, rolling reptile. It's a little turtle-like, a little armadillo-like, but mostly it just looks like the Buzzy Beetles from Super Mario Brothers, with more menacing shrew-like jaws. What was up with buzzies, anyway? They were referred to as beetles, but designed like black turtles? How do they relate to the Koopas? Why call them beetles if they're turtles? They don't buzz!

ZONE 9 BOSS:

A skeletal serpent feels a tad mundane here, but at least it's a floating skeletal serpent, and every time you damage one of its vertebrate, they sprout their own new head and join the fray!

ZONE 10 BOSS:

Much more interesting than the last three, this boss is just a floating, impenetrable tangle of bones, almost like a bagworm of bones, only periodically revealing the human skull at its core! It's a shame this oddball couldn't be the final boss...

ZONE 11 BOSS:

Come on. A flaming lion? That's just hokey. It sure doesn't feel like something from the primordial reaches of the cosmos, or even very creepy or grotesque to any degree. This is the ultimate, evil villain masterminding all this crap, who took away your more successful older brother, apparently. If you ask me, the final boss should have been the skeleton from the cover, with the lungs. I don't want to end on such a mediocre note, so I guess I'll just have to draw a nice picture of two best friends.