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Godzilla: Monster of Monsters review

Game: Godzilla: Monster of Monsters
Platform: NES
Genre: Action
Developer: Compile
AKA: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (JP)

Reader review by sgreenwell

Date unavailable

Godzilla for the NES gets a pretty bad rap. I've constantly seen it been branded as an awful game by lots of retro Nintendo gaming sites. Godzilla isn't an awful game, but it's not great either. It manages to have a few interesting gameplay elements which seperate it from the pack of action games, however.

In Godzilla, you play the role of the king of monsters. In case you're unfamiliar with him, Godzilla is a big dinosaur and lizard hybrid that terrorized the world through a wealth of bad B-movies in the good old days. In the movies, he commonly rampaged through Japanese cities, while EXTREMELY badly dubbed actors tried to stop him.

In the game Godzilla, it's much of the same. You're attempting to save the universe from the scourge of evil monsters. You control Godzilla, and his monster moth friend who's aptly named Mothra. You travel from planet to planet, destroying the monsters that lurk there. Along the way, you have to battle through terrains. After defeating the monsters, you also must go to the space station at the end of each stage, so that you can travel to the next stage.

Now, the actual gameplay elements of Godzilla are just so-so. Most of the game occurs in linear left to right stages, where you pretty much stand around as various little ships wail on you. Your creatures move around too slowly to dodge, and besides, they take up a quarter of the screen, so it's nearly impossible to dodge if you were quick. As a result, you're often pinned to the left of the screen and forced to claw your way out.

You only have a few attacks at your disposal. Godzilla can kick, use a claw attack, a tail attack, or use his destructive morning breath on enemies. Mothra can spit little pebbles or drop weird umbrella locking objects on enemies. They're horribly uninspiring.

With all these gameplay flaws, how does Godzilla manage to be an interesting and sometimes fun game? Well, the boss fights are outstanding. Your characters face off, one on one, against a huge boss character from the Godzilla series. Each has different attack patterns, although they all attempt to do the same old crap, mainly pinning you against the left hand side of the screen until you die. However, the fights are still the bright spot of Godzilla, and not really seen in many other NES era games.

Graphics are another strong point of Godzilla. All of the main fighters in Godzilla (Godzilla himself, Mothra, all the boss characters) feature huge character models with lots of color. The other aspects of the game, such as terrains, backgrounds, and characters besides bosses, aren't done nearly as well, but are still a tad better than other games released in 1989.

Music is a whole other issue though. There's only two sounds that are present in Godzilla - a really annoying electronic theme and the constant ''BANG'' noise. Both get on the nerves pretty early into playing, so it's best to mute the television.

Is Godzilla an awful game? Nah. That being said, it's not good either. Godzilla is probably only worth playing if you're a fan of the Godzilla movies, or monster battling games in general. If you're not, skip it and play the other, better action games on the NES.

Rating: 5/10

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