I love Godzilla. Long time followers of my blog (all seven of you) know this to be true as well. Godzilla is awesome & he does everything like a boss. You know what’s more fun than watching Godzilla stomp through giant cities while wasting other giant monsters? Actually being Godzilla and stomping through giant cities while wasting other giant monsters! Yes, there are plenty of Godzilla video games in existence with more recent titles such as Destroy All Monsters Melee and Unleashed getting a little more recognition. However I’m going to use the way-back machine and pull you back in time to the red-rose tinted time of the Super Nintendo era and totally go into detail about how much of a Godzilla nerd I am, because I’m about to talk to you about an entirely different Godzilla game.



It might seem wrong to be calling a movie licensed game on one of the best gaming platforms ever obscure, but hear me out. Super Godzilla is an old Super Nintendo title that, to be perfectly honest, isn’t that great. It’s not an inherently bad game in the sense that there’s anything broken about it, outside of some lacking in the explanation of the game mechanics. However, the game itself isn’t exactly great either… nothing you’d mention to anyone who isn’t a fan of big city destroying monsters. It’s a game aimed at a fraction of the already existing Godzilla fanbase, not something to pull in new people.

The actual gameplay of Super Godzilla is an… interesting… take on how to do a Godzilla title. Some humans find a way to control Godzilla (why? I don’t know, for science?) and use him to fight other monsters that are attacking Japan. The first half of the gameplay involves moving Godzilla around levels in order to find, and of course fight, the enemy monster on the level. This is done by using a split-screen technique that shows a top-down view of the level (usually a city) with a blue dot representing Godzilla. Why it’s not a green or grey dot to match his skin tone is beyond me. The upper half of the screen is pretty much just for show, as it’s just an image of Godzilla stomping around the city tearing through buildings and shit.



As you move around the levels you’ll have to navigate around obstacles such as buildings or vehicles from the Japanese military. Getting close to the military units will cause them to open fire on you and take damage, because apparently they missed the memo about Godzilla being controlled by humans for the sake of good (or it could just be an innate reflex to shoot at Godzilla upon seeing him, since he’s been stomping down Japan for roughly 40 years at this point). Another way to take damage during these sequences of the game is by running into buildings. Yeah you read that right, smashing through buildings hurts Godzilla in this game. Doing the main thing he’s known for doing hurts him. Imagine if Mario lost health every time he jumped into one of those power-up blocks, it’s the same idea. Navigating the level isn’t just about avoiding damage, there are power ups littered around the level that can do things like boost Godzilla’s health or damage output (which will be more important in the other half of the game’s mechanics). Also floating around the level are, usually, two other things; sometimes you’ll encounter UFO’s that act like mini-bosses, and the main boss in the form of an enemy monster. Both of these characters are represented by different colored dots on the map and beginning an encounter with them only involves moving Godzilla to the dot. Thus the “monster battle” portion of the game takes place when the two magic dots meet.

The battle section of Super Godzilla also uses a split-screen approach, although this time the lower half of the screen is dedicated towards things such as Godzilla’s health and moves while the upper half is for watching Big-G show the bad guys how it’s done. To what is probably your disappointment, Super Godzilla’s monster battle sequences don’t play like a straight up 2D fighter (that would come later). Instead the game used some quirky “fighting spirit” system that I honestly still don’t entirely understand even today. The monsters move back and forth on the upper half of the screen while two ‘fighting spirit’ bars move back and forth on the lower half of the screen, seemingly linked to the movement and position of the monsters above. The stronger (aka: further to the right) Godzilla’s fighting spirit bar is the more powerful his attacks will become and the more likely they will hit, and the same rule tends to apply to the enemy monsters as well. When your fighting spirit gets high enough pressing a face button will cause Godzilla to punch the enemy monster. Connecting with this punch opens up a window in the bottom half of the screen that shows an attack Godzilla can perform. The player can either use this attack or try to quickly substitute it for another attack before the attack window closes.



If you do select an attack then you are greeted by a nice little cutscene showing Godzilla performing his attack on the enemy monster. For the Super Nintendo era graphics these little sequences actually look pretty nice. The same “cutscene for a special attack” rule applies for the enemy monsters as well, and this whole process repeats itself until one of the enemy monsters is defeated. Defeating the monster ends the level, ending the level sends Godzilla to the next level. Rinse and repeat until there’s no more game to be played. There is a little more to this game, but not too much, such as a plot involving an alien takeover and the scientists using magical science stuff to make Godzilla even more powerful (because that’s such a good idea). The final boss of the game is actually a pretty interesting original monster named Bagan, a creature that has been dropped from three different Godzilla movies during production stages before being introduced in this game, whom is actually quite a difficult challenge.

Super Godzilla walks a line between classification as an obscure title and being a title simply nobody cared about, and you can really say it goes either way and technically be right about this too. However, I classify it as an obscure title simply because of when it was released and the audience it was catered towards.

Super Godzilla was released a few days before Christmas back in 1993. For reference 1993 was the year; “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by Meatloaf was a #1 song, Jurassic Park was released, and Brett Favre started his first full season as an NFL starting quarterback. Being a Godzilla fan before the rise of the internet was pretty tough. Finding any Godzilla movies on television usually required mining through TV guides hoping Sci-Fi channel or some other backwater network would be having a monster movie marathon. Beyond that you had to search through rental stores hoping they’d have something, which was a crapshoot at best because even if you did find something the VHS tape was usually in pretty rough shape. If you could actually find a Godzilla movie on sale at a store or garage sale then you pretty much felt like you found the Holy Grail.

With no Amazon & eBay, or video streaming websites getting in touch with your inner kaiju fan was problematic. If you were a Godzilla fan and a gamer that was even worse, and that’s not even including how much you were begging to get picked on in school. Before 1993 there were only three Godzilla video games in existence, two were on the NES and one on the Gameboy, and none of these games were good (not a single friggin one). If you were turned off to the idea of future Godzilla video games nobody would really blame you.

You might be thinking this is obscure enough already, but oh wait it gets better because I’m about to blitz you with some stuff you probably didn’t think you’d ever know.

Super Godzilla is a game that was released during the Heisei series of Godzilla films. The Heisei Godzilla film era covers all of the Godzilla films made from 1984 until 1995 and exists in a separate continuity of films from the 60’s and 70’s Godzilla movies (known as the Showa era), keeping only the original 1954 film as canon. Godzilla himself in this film era isn’t the kiddie drop-kicking hero most people know him for, and is a destructive force of nature that can be classified as an anti-hero at best. These films, compared to the previous two decades, take themselves pretty seriously. Super Godzilla was designed to exist within the Heisei era and thus uses monsters from this era as well, Godzilla himself also resembles his early 90’s look as well. So you’re probably thinking “okay, big whoop, so it uses the 90’s stuff” but here is the problem: in Japan there had already been five Heisei era Godzilla films by 1993 and only two of those movies had been released in America (The Return of Godzilla & Godzilla vs Biollante). In fact none of the other Heisei era films would come to America until 1998… three years after the entire series had concluded, and the first two films in this series that did see a VHS release originally still haven’t seen a proper DVD release here.



So not only was Super Godzilla just appealing to exiting Godzilla fans who happened to own a SNES, but it was using monsters and likenesses that American audiences had absolutely zero clue about. In fact, I’ll list all of the monsters that appear in Super Godzilla here and go into detail about the issues this game has for its transition overseas.

--King Ghidorah
--Mechagodzilla
--Biollante
--Battra
--Mecha-King Ghidorah
--Bagan

Now King Ghidorah is a Godzilla arch nemesis who’s been around for a long time so obviously fans know who he is. However it should be noted that this game’s version of the monster uses the version shown in Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, a title not yet available in America. Not a big deal for King Ghidorah initially, but it will matter in a little bit. Mechagodzilla also is known from the earlier era of Godzilla movies too however this version of Mechagodzilla was supposed to use the Heisei version shown in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 2 (again not released in America at the time). Besides having a vastly different origin than the original 70’s Mechagodzilla, his abilities and appearance are also substantially different. To attempt to resolve this confusion for the American version of the game, Toho had to swap out the 90’s Mechagodzilla with the 70’s version and modify some of the monster’s moves and abilities as well (even giving this MechaGodzilla a fake-Godzilla skin like in the 70’s movie).



No problems with Biollante in this game as his film came out a year before the game in America, and it was considered the “new” bad monster then. Battra becomes a definite head-scratcher for American fans in this game; most fans think of Mothra for the “giant stupid bug” in the Godzilla mythos and not this odd evil version that (again) appeared in a movie we, again, didn’t know existed yet. The final villain that will be unclear for American fans is Mecha-King Ghidorah. Now I did say King Ghidorah gets a pass for being a very well-known villain despite his newest Vs flick not being stateside, however this one doesn’t. Mecha-King Ghidorah appears in the finale of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah as a rebuilt version of the beast sent back from the fucking future to kill Godzilla (Fun fact: Mecha-King Ghidorah’s remains are used to make the 90’s Mechagodzilla). So again, this is a monster American fans will definitely not know of.



To recap; Super Godzilla is a title that appeals directly to Godzilla fans whom own the SNES, actually knew of the games existence (as this was Toho’s only Super Nintendo game to make it to the U.S.), weren’t turned off to the previous Godzilla games, and had some sort of working knowledge of the 90’s era Godzilla films. Perhaps I’m just confusing “obscure” with “niche”, but regardless Super Godzilla in my opinion fits the bill for both. Yes, the game’s obscurity has been lessened ever since the birth of the information age (AVGN even discussed the game) however when looking back to games of this era I really think you need to keep it in your mind that the internet pretty much didn’t exist to us yet.

I’ve gone back and revisited this game a few times in the recent past. It’s still a pretty rough playtime considering the odd gameplay style it has and in general is a bit frustrating since you’re fighting the game just as much as you’re fighting the other monsters. But for fans of Godzilla who at least want to taste something different than an arena fighter like the more recent ones, it’s a game I’d at least recommend you sample for a few minutes. The worst that can happen is that it puts you in the mood to watch some Godzilla flicks, which is really never a bad thing.