This is the origin story of MonsterLab — a monster-building game by Michael A. Pace. From the night the domain was registered, through Dan Burton's hand-sketched roster of thirteen creatures, to a patented trading-card system and an 18-page Dreamcast pitch submitted to SEGA in 1999. Every receipt is here.
MonsterLab was conceived by Michael A. Pace as the premier fighting game for the SEGA Dreamcast — combining 3D combat with a deep creation system where every monster part was a collectible Digital Trading Card. Players would build, modify, battle, trade, and barter parts both locally and online, years before live-service collectible economies became standard.
Monsters consist of six main parts — a torso, a head, two arms, two legs. Each part is a DTC: Digital Trading Card with its own colors, textures, shapes, and attributes. Win a battle, take an opponent's part. Lose, give one up. Trade or buy missing parts online or in retail.
The fighting style was deliberately closer to Clay Fighter than Tekken: campy, exaggerated, full of hair-pulling, snot-blowing, noogies, and zit-popping. Wrestling with monsters, not simulation combat.
The opening cinematic, written in 1999, frames the entire quest. The monster dissolves into slime at your feet, leaving only the eyeball. The manuscript hovers in mid-air, and Dr. Stein — dismembered, scattered across his own lab — speaks through it.
You've been chosen to save the world from a terrible fate
Make up your mind before it's too late…
Evil monsters are loose, they're ugly indeed
Roaming under my castle in abundance like weeds…
I am Dr. Stein and they've torn me apart
They've left me in pieces with no place to start…
But fear not, 'cause beneath my castle and inside my lab
You'll find good monsters in need of rehab…
Kindly put them together and call them by name
They'll fight off the bad ones and drive them insane…
With courage, collect the clues on your way
I've left them for you in the words that I say…
Find the source to defeat evil once and for all
Shut them down and make them fall…
Pick up the eyeball and feel your fate
The night is young and the monsters wait…
This power bolt will help you to fight
It will fly you to my castle on this very night…
The world is at stake so be on your way
Pick up the eyeball and save the day!
You pick up the eyeball. A lightning bolt shatters the window, wraps around your body, and hurls you to Dr. Stein's laboratory. The eyeball leaps from your hand, bounces over to Dr. Stein's dismembered head, and briefly brings him to life. He tells you: "The evil Dr. Von Gersdorf has stolen his Book of Monster Formulas. You must retrieve it before his monsters take over the world."
The 1999 design document names a small core cast and signals a roster of ten boss monsters across ten castle levels. The hero — you — is a player avatar guided by the disembodied head of Dr. Stein.
The original mad scientist of MonsterLab. Torn apart by his own creations and scattered across his castle. His dismembered head is reanimated by a single eyeball just long enough to send the player on their quest to recover the Book of Monster Formulas.
Dr. Stein's former assistant. The traitor. Stole the Book of Monster Formulas and retreated to the deepest corner of the castle dungeon, where he now creates evil monsters and commands a horde of creatures across the castle's ten levels.
Runs the online Body Shop. For a small e‑money fee, he'll assemble a monster from cards you provide — for players who lack the Monster Glue or patience to build their own. The first instance of an in-game economy NPC in the MonsterLab universe.
The player. Pulled into the story by a power bolt the moment they pick up the eyeball. Default loadout: one monster torso with two randomly-attached appendages, plus two spare parts and Monster Glue in the meat-locker inventory.
The hand behind the look. A longtime collaborator of Michael A. Pace from their 1990s ad-agency days, Dan Burton hand-sketched the entire original monster roster, later refined in Photoshop 4.0 — the wet, lumpy, hand-rendered Garbage-Pail-Kids-meets-Spy-magazine style that became the MonsterLab visual signature. See the full roster ↓
The 1999 doc specifies ten end-of-level bosses, one per castle level. Each, when defeated, relinquishes a predetermined Super DTC — a rare trading card that can be brought online and traded in (along with the recovered Book of Monster Formulas) for a Super Monster Trading Card.
The original creature designs published at monsterlab.com between 1998 and 2004 — recovered from the Wayback Machine and reassembled here. Each character below is paired with its original bio copy, verbatim, exactly as it appeared on the 1998 site.
Original character illustrations by Dan Burton — longtime collaborator of Michael A. Pace from their 1990s ad-agency days. Hand-sketched and finished in Photoshop 4.0. Each piece carries the watermark of the era: that wet, lumpy, cartoonishly-gross horror aesthetic that defined the MonsterLab visual language.
Official Member of the Good Mad Scientists Association
Expelled from the Lithuanian School of Genetic Engineering in Venaltranziazaraklopskia for mixing and matching the cadaver parts of humans and animals and performing rhinoplasty on his colleagues while they slept. Voted least likely to succeed. Pronounced certifiably insane for his belief that an entire living creature could be spontaneously generated from a single eyeball — and that lawyers are actually caring human beings.
He soon showed them. He couldn't find a sympathetic lawyer anywhere, but he did succeed in generating spontaneous life from a single eyeball. He now runs a very successful Monsters Made to Order business from his castle in the hills of Sleepy Town — most frequent request: domestic servants and middle-management entertainment executives. Also markets the Ethical Advocate model #202, a lawyer-substitute popular in government lawsuits, and is rumored to be opening a plastic-surgery practice in Brentwood with a substitute for silicon.
However, his life changed drastically, one day when one of his own lab experiments went awry. But that's another story for another day…
Was the assistant of Dr. Stein, now he's yours. Protects you and the Laboratory from the bad monsters. The baddest, strongest, smartest, and most honorable of all the good monsters.
She's mean and stinks like an old lady. She might give you some old cookies or sugarless candy that can increase your vitality — but don't get too close or she'll pinch your cheeks and kiss and hug you till you die.
Wants to be your best friend, but oozes and smells rotten. Follows you around the corridors talking constantly. His balloons and pustules contain noxious gasses that will make you fall asleep if they burst.
Subterranean parasites which come to the surface and travel in packs to attack and overcome their victims. Now running rampant in the labyrinth.
She's able to morph herself into the monster part you're looking for. Be careful not to accidentally pick her up and bring her to the lab — she'll destroy everything. The only way to tell if it's her is by her color.
Keeps you from passing through doorways and achieving your goals. If contact is made, life essence is drained.
Watch out if you go exploring in the forest. HammerHeads hide in the trees and blend in, making them really tough to find. They'll jump out and tackle you and steal your monster pieces to bring back to Dr. Von Gersdorf.
Devours anything, ANYTHING in his path. Watch out — he'll eat you alive. But don't forget: he loves HammerHeads, and might even be your friend if you give him one.
Watch out for this guy. He's big, he's tough, he's heavily armored, and he lives deep in the Labyrinth. He won't stop till he finishes you off — or you finish him. You can't run away either: he can transform himself into almost anything and follow you wherever you go.
Part spider, part bat, part Elvis. Flies or walks around the labyrinth doing terrible impersonations. He'll spin webs to catch you and suck your life points. If you're captivated by his song, he'll lullaby you to death.
The only monster Dr. Von Gersdorf had to lock up. So dangerous because he can destroy any monster with the UnDoo Goo that spews out of his head. UnDoo has a good heart, and will help you if you free him from his shackles, or happen to have a Panic Button.
Kamikaze bats that fly and stick to your face, making it impossible to see where you're going.
Quest/Story Mode is a Mario 64-style first-person 3D exploration of Dr. Stein's castle and the surrounding town of Sleepytown. Below the castle lies a vast labyrinth of corridors and dungeons teeming with monsters. Each level has its own end-boss and its own arena that reappears in Versus and Online Battle Modes.
Default starting location. On one wall: a door to the Meat Locker — your inventory of monster parts hanging from hooks, alongside a can of Monster Glue. On the opposite wall: the huge door to Quest/Story Mode.
The inventory. Every item — torso, head, arm, leg, glue can, monster-enhancement formula — appears as a hanging DTC: Digital Trading Card. Two check boxes per card: connection status, and willing-to-trade.
The expanded framing of the world divides the castle HQ into three labs — one for each branch of mad science. Each lab is run by its own mad scientist, each produces a class of monster parts, and each is strong against one branch and weak against another.
Makes mechanical parts — gear-and-steam Victorian contraptions or shiny futuristic chrome. Pistons, hydraulic claws, rivets, brass plating.
Living parts. Heavy on plants, human flesh, animal tissue. Vines, tendrils, organs, fur, claws, teeth — the organic horror that defined the original 1998 poster.
Summoned magic parts. Undead bone, elemental fire/ice/storm, mythical-creature components — dragon scale, phoenix wing, troll knuckle. Pure spellcraft made physical.
Ingredients drop from defeated enemies and from mini-games scattered through the castle. Bring the ingredients to one of the three mad scientists' labs and play a lab-specific mini-game to combine them into a finished head, torso, arm, or leg. Then carry the part to the Monster Building Mode in Dr. Stein's lab — apply Monster Glue, attach it to a torso, name your creation, and save.
Each attribute is scored 0–100. Monster-enhancement formulas, found throughout the castle, permanently modify a single DTC's attributes when applied.
The complete game design document, dated 1999 and copyrighted by EMA Multimedia, Inc. Covers high concept, hooks, story, gameplay, all five game modes (Quest/Story, Local Battle, Versus, Monster Building, Local Trading, Online), DTC trading and bartering UI, Dreamcast controller layouts, security architecture for the patented memory-card system, and a $1.78M three-phase production budget. Below: the contents and the production summary.
DTC: Digital Trading Cards™ is the patented underlying technology. Patent #5,689,561 issued 1998; additional patents applied for. Copyright held by Michael A. Pace through DTC: Digital Trading Cards (1998) and assigned to EMA Multimedia, Inc. for the MonsterLab title (1999).
Origin domain: monsterlab.com, registered November 22, 1996.