Nickelodeon: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

Thirty-one years ago today, on August 15, 1995, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States received a rather peculiar visitor: Nickelodeon: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. This game whisked players away to the grimy, yet somehow charming, underbelly of the monster world, following the adventures of Ickis, Krumm, and Oblina.

These aren't your typical horror show villains; they're students at the prestigious (for monsters) Academy of Monster Education, trying to scare humans while also navigating the usual schoolyard drama. The game itself was a platformer, where you'd switch between the three distinct monster pals, each with their own unique abilities – Ickis with his roar, Krumm with his eyeballs, and Oblina with her… well, her unique slime and shape-shifting.

It arrived in a year that saw a flurry of console releases, a time when the SNES was still holding its own against the incoming tide of next-generation hardware. For fans of the show, it was a chance to step directly into the animated world, a digital extension of the Saturday morning cartoons they’d grown to love.