Monster in My Pocket

Monster in My Pocket, known to Chinese retro gamers as Devil in My Pocket or Devil General Mobilization, is a side-scrolling platform brawler developed by Konami and released for the Famicom in 1992. It was only released in North America with no Japanese cartridge release, adapted from the Matchbox toy line of mini monster figurines. An evil sorcerer casts a shrinking spell to reduce legendary monsters to palm size. Most monsters submit to him, but Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster resist. The pair travel through oversized human household environments to stop the sorcerer’s plan for world domination. The game features simultaneous two-player co-op. The two playable characters share identical stats with no unique special moves. You pick up household debris such as screws, cans, books and bottles to throw at enemies. Players have five health hearts plus three starting lives; one hit will not kill instantly. Extra lives are awarded at 5000 points, so the overall difficulty is forgiving compared with many Famicom games. There are six themed stages set inside giant-sized human environments: kitchen, fridge interior, sewers, attic, snowfield and the sorcerer’s castle. Each stage ends with a unique boss, including Spring-Heeled Jack, werewolf, gargoyle and the final TV demon. The soundtrack was made by Konami’s famous 矩形波俱乐部 (Konami Kukeiha Club). Heavy sprite flickering occurs on original hardware when many objects appear on screen. Chinese pirated multicarts used various fake titles and even replaced the cover art with Batman or Pokemon. Widely bundled on Subor multicarts, it is a beloved two-player co-op classic for Famicom fans.

These are the default keys. Click the gamepad icon 🎮 in the player’s bottom toolbar to rebind them. Gamepads are detected automatically. On phones you get on-screen buttons.

1P

2P

The NES was always two-player — 2P uses the numeric keypad, and NumLock does not matter. No numpad? Rebind 2P to other keys in the 🎮 panel.