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The Together Retro game club over at
http://racketboy.com played a double feature for October that consisted of
King Of The Monsters (Genesis, Neo Geo, SNES) and
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (GameCube, PS2, XBox). Of course I gave both titles a chance. You see I'm not only an avid participator in the Together Retro game club -- I'm also a big Godzilla fan, so a double feature of giant monster games seemed like a blast to me. Unfortunately neither game really blew me away all that much.
King Of The Monsters I had played before in its Genesis incarnation around the time it originally was released. I remember not being too enthused back then, but figured I'd give it another shot. Basically it came off as a wrestling game, only you were a giant lizard or monster and instead of a ring you fought on top of a city. The idea is certainly cool, but there's a few things that I didn't care for about it. First of all, it's almost annoying that the few characters to choose from are so obviously meant to be Godzilla-like characters. Instead they're just second-rate Kaiju-wannabes. Not to mention that there's very little distinction from one character to the next. Unlike in a game like
Street Fighter where character selection is important, the move set is so similar from character to character in
King Of The Monsters that it's almost uninteresting. But worse of all is the controls. I just don't feel like the controls are responsive, or well thought out. Ultimately
King Of The Fighters falls into the old button-mashing category.
As far as
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee goes, it at least sidestepped many of the mistakes that
King Of The Monsters made. Of course the big draw is that the Godzilla license is present here. Once you unlock them all in story mode, there's a pretty hefty roster of Kaiju to choose from, which is awesome. And although there's no denying that the graphics in this game are breathtaking, I personally preferred the 2D charm of
King Of The Fighters. Of course graphics are something I can always get by as long as the game is good, but ultimately I really found the controls here overwhelming. I also found the monsters to move too sluggishly, which I suppose is more realistic but not really as fun. Add to that the cheapness of the AI, which meant that I was often being ravaged in Round 2.
Oh if only there was a game that took all the awesome stuff from these two titles and avoided all the crap! If only there was a 2D melee Fighter that used real Godzilla monsters and had excellent controls! If only there was a game where I could play as King Ghidorah!
Most likely you realize that I'm getting around to the fact that there is such a game. And if you read the title of this blog post then you may have guessed that it's called
Godzilla: Domination! and it was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002.
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/lvWHd.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/QohmN.jpg[/img]
Yes that's right,
Godzilla: Domination rules. You get to play as the king lizard himself along with the aforementioned and ridiculously awesome King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Megalon, Mothra and Rodan. Each of them has their own specific special moves, which is useful while pummeling other monsters all over the globe. The graphics are fantastic. They resemble the 16-bit
King Of The Monsters style quite a bit, but are far more detailed on the 32-bit hardware with no sign of slowdown even during four-way melee action. Bottom line: this game is great. Go get it!
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/YClFr.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/e6lJv.jpg[/img]
