This Week In Retro: King of the Monsters [1991] (Patreon)

February 25, 1991: Fighting comes to the NEO•GEO and...it big

by Diamond Feit

Before leaping into this week's column, it is necessary to address the 180-foot-tall lizard in the room: Godzilla. In a nation that has transformed its image through global exportation of its own pop culture, there stands no larger ambassador than Godzilla. He was one of the first post-war Japanese creations to hit it big on the world stage, and he’s only grown since his 1954 debut. Today Godzilla can serve as hero or villain, as pitchman or as nuclear allegory. It's that old gorilla joke come to life: Where does a 20,000-ton monster sit? Anywhere he wants to.

Godzilla had become such a cultural force that by the time I entered the world he was almost genericized. The official Toho film series experienced highs and lows over the decades, but over time the character outgrew the studio that birthed him. Like King Kong before him, no one needed "Godzilla" to make a Godzilla property; any sufficiently oversized, scaly monster would suffice. Even though I was an American child who had never seen a Godzilla film (OK, I saw one), growing up in the ’80s I saw plenty of monsters in the media directly derived from Godzilla's image, and I understood the reference.

Video games were also willing to "borrow" famous monsters for their own needs. The best-known culprit was Midway’s 1986 arcade hit Rampage, with its trio of giant monsters (including a lizard and a gorilla) smashing buildings and trashing military forces. The original SimCity included an unnamed giant lizard as a "disaster" who could lay waste to your virtual metropolis. Less famous but no less relevant was The Movie Monster Game, a 1986 computer game that allowed players to their pick of giant creatures, then destroy a city before humanity destroys them. In that one, Godzilla was actually an officially licensed participant, though "Mr. Meringue" and "Mechatron" were not.

I lay out all of this backstory to make it clear that in no way do I condemn the fine people at SNK for creating King of the Monsters 30 years ago with a wholly unauthorized cast of not-quite famous kaiju. Debuting just two weeks after the fiercely original Sengoku, King of the Monsters is a conceptually innovative work that represents the first "fighting" game for the NEO•GEO. It just happens to rely on "legally distinct" giant creatures who battle one another atop six cities in Japan. Even its title is taken from the subtitle of the 1956 American release of Godzilla, a phrase that had become synonymous with Godzilla himself; his 2019 American film outing even reused the subtitle.

King of the Monsters offers players a choice of six kaiju to choose from. The monstrous lizard Geon and giant ape Woo are obvious homages to Godzilla and King Kong. A slimy beast called Poison Ghost is a likely stand-in for Hedorah, a.k.a. Smog Monster. Beetle Mania (heh) is a giant beetle, a possible nod to Megalon. Astro Guy is a human-like character whose laser beams and vocal utterances suggest he is based on Ultraman. Lastly, Rocky is not a boxer but is instead a rock monster, one who reminds me of a character from The NeverEnding Story or Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four—although that could be coincidental.

Whichever character you choose in King of the Monsters, the game unfolds the same way: Two monsters square off in Tokyo, and the entire city serves as the battleground. The player must defeat the CPU before time runs out in order to move to the next city to face another monster. Even though there are only six monsters and six cities in the game, a complete arcade playthrough requires two full loops through the roster (the cities are magically rebuilt for the rematches).

Fighters are free to move in any direction; the stages are larger than a single screen. Every city is full of buildings to trample, including famous landmarks which can be destroyed for bonus points. Tokyo has the Tokyo Dome, Osaka has the Tower of the Sun, and Hiroshima has the Genbaku Dome—which is admittedly a little grim, given the circumstances. During the match, vehicles drive or fly onto the screen to shoot at the monsters; while their fire must be avoided, the vehicles themselves can be grabbed and thrown as weapons.

If this sounds a lot like Rampage, or like Pit-Fighter starring giants, there's a twist: King of the Monsters is actually a wrestling game. Monsters can punch or kick each other, but the big damage comes from grabbing an opponent and tossing or slamming them to the ground. Every city has an energy barrier on each far edge of the screen that rebounds monsters like the ropes on a wrestling ring. And even though the monsters have a life bar that depletes during combat, the only way to win a match is to stand on your opponent and pin them to the ground for a three-count.

While the NEO•GEO library would eventually come to be dominated by fighting games, this was far from the case in 1991. Instead, the systems’ initial offerings were heavily weighted in favor of "action" games. That proved to be a broad genre, as it included titles as varied as platformer Magician Lord, shooter NAM-1975, and proto-first-person-adventure The Super Spy. King of the Monsters resembles SNK's first-ever "fighting" game, Street Smart, much more than what would be SNK's next fighting game, Fatal Fury.

Of course, if we're talking about fighting games in 1991, then we have to point out another monster: Street Fighter II. Depending on the source, King of the Monsters either beat Street Fighter II to arcades by a matter of weeks, or Street Fighter II was already out in February of 1991. Either way, Street Fighter II would define the fighting genre from that point on, while King of the Monsters would not. Its own sequel, King of the Monsters 2, would play out more like a beat-’em-up than a fighting game, as the series switched from arena battles to longer stages with a variety of power-ups.

Even without invoking the name and legacy of one the greatest video games of all time by way of contrast, King of the Monsters does not have a lot of strong points in its favor. The combat is too limited to be fun, as punches and kicks have no reach, nor do they stun your opponent; if your monster is close enough to land a punch, you’ll surely be punched in return for no net gain. Giant monsters wrestling is a fantastic idea on paper, but in execution, the game relies too much on mashing buttons in order to land powerful moves. Likewise, mashing buttons is the only way to evade being pinned; having more life than your opponent does not seem to offer an advantage.

As a sulky teenager unfamiliar with the charms of giant monster movies, I was never super into King of the Monsters. It is too repetitive, too button-mashy, and way too hard to actually complete without spending a small fortune on continues. As a wise adult who has recently become smitten with Godzilla and his *ahem* cinematic universe, I still find King of the Monsters too frustrating to enjoy as I do other NEO•GEO games of this era

There is, however, one personal connection I share with King of the Monsters. If you can manage to beat the game, regardless of which monster you choose, the ending is presented as a news broadcast covering your rampage. The anchorman, who is fully voiced, declares "there is no way to stop this monster!" and fears the station will be destroyed next. He is then struck and killed by falling debris. Images from that shocking finale are featured to this day on my Twitch channel (like comment & subscribe) as my default "offline" banner.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan, is an active Twitter user, and would never, ever trample the Tower of the Sun.