Godzilla

Godzilla is a creature that was mutated by man's creation of the atomic bomb. "Born" in 1954 by this catastrophe, Godzilla represents the evil of man and will often come ashore to remind humankind of their sins. Or at least, that's how Godzilla first started.

Eventually, as more Godzilla movies were made, Godzilla's image of terror was turned into an image of the protector of Earth. His movies were being targeted towards a younger and younger audience. Many people criticized this change in the 60's and 70's as it lost the focus of the original vision of Godzilla. However, since Godzilla's reboot in 1984, he has regained his more serious image and has ever since been portrayed respectfully to the original vision.

The Godzilla video game franchise, on the other hand, hardly remains consistent. Besides recent years, each Godzilla video game has been rapidly different from the next.

Godzilla in Video Games

While a huge icon in popular culture, Godzilla video games usually rely more on the franchise than solid game play. While some entries offer a unique experience with fairly solid game play, most sell based on the fact 'Godzilla' is attached to the title. Even Godzilla: The Series, a Game Boy Colour game based on a Saturday Morning Cartoon based on the American film, sold fairly well.

Some of the stand-out titles of the Godzilla game series is Godzilla: Kaiju Daikessen for SNES (Japan-only) and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee for GameCube and Xbox. Both titles are tournament fighters and are still used for some competitions today.

Godzilla usually possesses fairly typical attacks which feature in almost every game. These include his trademark radioactive breath, various punch and claw attacks, a powerful tail swing, kicking and of course stomping. A lot of entries choose to build on these attacks by making them more powerful or offer a special attack via a pick-up. One examples featured in Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a powerful pulse attack where Godzilla emits a huge shock wave from his body, which injures and throws into the air any enemies within the blast radius. This particular ability could have been inspired by the 1991 film, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, in a scene where Godzilla is being strangled by King Ghidorah and does something very similar.