Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena
North American box art
Developer(s)	Radical Entertainment
Publisher(s)	THQ
Director(s)	Tom Legal
Producer(s)	Cam Weber
Designer(s)	Pete Low
Programmer(s)	Scott Andrews
Artist(s)	Jeremy McCarron
Composer(s)	Marc Baril
Series	Monsters, Inc.
Platform(s)	GameCube
Release	NA: September 18, 2002[1] EU: April 11, 2003
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Monsters, Inc. Scream Arena is a 2002 sports game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by THQ for the GameCube. The game is based on the 2001 film Monsters, Inc..

Plot

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 a dodgeball war to keep the power running throughout the monster world.^[2]

Gameplay

The gameplay consists of basic dodgeball matches, with simplistic controls aimed at a young audience.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[2]

The game contains a variety of modes and rulesets, including:

• Whoever gets hit the fewest times wins the round.
• Hit the targets that appear in the room the most to win.
• The player who is able to hold the special ball the longest before another player knocks it out of their hands wins.
• The team who has the fewest balls on their side of the room wins.^[2]

Reception

The game received "unfavorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.^[3]