A Look Back on Video Game King of Monsters
One of my earliest memories as a child took place in 1993; My grandmother took me to a tiny local video store called Star Video and to the right were the Sega Genesis games, I distinctly remember one title catching my eye almost from the start; King of the Monsters.
The box art featured a superhero that looked like Captain America with the wings from the sandals of Hermes as ears. Behind him was a huge green T-Rex/Godzilla hybrid, the head of a rock creature, and a giant beetle looking monster. I turned the box over and saw that it was a fighting game (more like a wrestling game similar to WWF Wrestlefest) featuring giant monsters, and the battleground was Japan; I was all in (wrestling pun).
Around this time, I also discovered TNT’s MonsterVision and was in the early days of my monster mania. My grandmother rented it for me, and before I knew it, I was sitting in front of the television, ready to do battle with giant monsters that would level Japan. There were four characters to choose from, Astro Guy (the Captain America character), Geon (my favorite and obviously a Godzilla homage) Rocky (a giant rock creature) and Beetle Mania (a giant beetle).
I picked Geon and suddenly was a Godzilla look-a-like, fighting monsters in Japan, destroying buildings, and using tanks and airplanes as weapons; I was in absolute heaven when I played this game. As I played, I began figuring out the special moves and how to get the power-ups. The special moves and power-ups made the game so much more fun for me. I remember the controls taking a little time to get used to, but after that, I was a master of it. The game was relatively short, and you could beat it in no time. I didn’t care; I was getting to play my favorite genre of movie in a video game.
When revisiting the game over twenty years later, I find it doesn’t have the same replay value that retro games like Contra, Sonic, or Mario have. The controls are a little delayed (which could be the port I recently played), and it gets boring fast. I like to play a match or two from time to time, just for the sake of nostalgia, but even that wears off quickly. Putting it simply, it's too easy.
King of the Monsters is one of those games that was fun for the time it came out, and for the fan base that played the game. Giant monster games were few and far between, especially in the West. The Godzilla games that were localized were not good at all except for Super Godzilla. So, King of the Monsters was able to give fans what they want.
One would figure that the giant monster genre of movies would lend itself easily to the medium of video games. Of course, the answer is always in the execution of the game. Just because something seems like it should transition from one medium to the next does not mean it will, and King of the Monsters was executed very nicely for the time. Though, it doesn’t hold up so well today.
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