The first time I saw Japan’s most famous kaiju on the big screen was in Godzilla 2000: Millennium. Like any nine-year-old, I was obsessed with Big G. I read the Dark Horse comics and recorded every movie I could on television. Things were different then; Godzilla was a big deal, but theatrical releases of Godzilla films were incredibly rare in the United States. If you saw these films, it was on television and they were dubbed or edited versions released under different titles like Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. After Godzilla 2000 underperformed, it took another five years for the series to hit theaters in the United States — and into that void stomped 2002’s Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee.
It was the perfect mix of subject (big monsters who were into professional wrestling), genre (3D fighting game), and period (licensed games were still, like… a thing). It was the kind of game that could dominate a pizza-filled sleepover weekend or become your personality for an entire summer. A friend’s parents bought it for them, and this copy became common: a holy thing, carried from one place to another. Perhaps it’s fitting that it’s back now in the form of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, 24 years later. The world (and Godzilla) has changed a lot, but original developer Pipeworks is still in charge. Somehow it feels just as relevant today as it did then, but in different ways, and revisiting it was a joy even removed from nostalgia.
There’s no individual equivalent to what Destroy All Monsters Melee is, but the idea is pretty simple: you choose one of 12 monsters from Godzilla’s history (up until Godzilla 2000) – Godzilla, Gigan, Megalon, Ghidorah, etc. – then choose a real-world city or iconic Godzilla location to take on. Throwing rocks and skyscrapers at each other and crushing annoying military forces who would really rather you do damage elsewhere. The last kaiju standing wins.
Despite the name, this is not a simple remaster. You’re not just looking at the upgraded models. It looks fantastic while still maintaining the “it’s guys in rubber suits kicking each other” vibe that defines the films it’s based on. The audio also pulls its weight: the soundtrack has the resounding authority you’d expect from a Godzilla film, buildings crumble and crumble spectacularly, beam attacks sound forceful and painful, radio calls from military forces in the area let you know where they’ll focus their fire, and the announcer has a blast. And the monsters, of course, look alike. And yes, Godzilla does The Noise, as you remember, even if it’s your first time here.
It’s all held together by a spit-and-duct-tape storyline that’s just there to make you brawl: See, there’s this alien race called the Vortaak. They’re little green men with funky helmets, a fashion sense straight out of the 50s, flying saucers and more than a little ego. They’re here to conquer Earth, and what better way to do that than to mentally control the frankly absurd number of kaiju hanging around, ready to destroy a city at any moment? Unfortunately for them, whichever monster you choose breaks free of its mind control and decides that Earth is worth saving. Leaving the Vortaak means KOing other monsters. All in a day’s work, in fact.
This is Adventure mode, which is one of several single-player options where you can rearrange towns. You also have Destruction for score hunters, where you have to destroy a city in a limited time, an improved Adventure mode for monsters that are at a higher level and have better stats (which you earn through the experience you gain from playing certain modes), and Survival, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Look, you can count the number of fighting games with good two-handed single-player modes (and several of them have the words “Soul Calibur” in their titles), but what’s on offer here is solid if not spectacular. You only start with five monsters and a few stages unlocked, but Pipeworks has smartly reworked this remaster so you can unlock the rest in any order you want. You just need to complete the requirements, which you do by playing, following rumors, and unlocking research, and you can swap what you focus on whenever you want.
On the one hand, yeah, it’s super satisfying to unlock Ghidorah because it’s Ghidorah – as soon as he stops being a silhouette I can’t select and starts being a beautifully golden three-headed dragon that I can take into battle, a lizard part of my brain gets very happy because I can’t wait to fly around and shoot lightning bolts with this bitch. On the other hand, it’s really annoying to see Rodan or Ghidorah or Mecha Godzilla in Adventure Mode and have the 12 year old in my head put down his slice of pizza long enough to say “hell yeah, I want to play that one” and then realize I can’t, especially in multiplayer. Does this give you more reasons to keep playing? Absolutely, and it was all part of the original experience. But man, sometimes you just want to hang out with your friends and not worry about unlocks, you know?
Multiplayer, of course, is really what Destroy All Monsters Melee is designed for, and I’m very happy that Pipeworks has added online play in addition to the returning local options. It even works very well! Most of the preview matches I played went smoothly, although I did experience a few disconnections. (Almost all of this happened when I was winning or doing well – I’m not saying my boy Lucas is a fraud or anything, but…)
It’s here, in multiplayer, that Destroy All Monsters Melee really shines. People will naively tell you that it is a potato masher with no depth. These people are stupid and wrong, and if this was a Godzilla movie, they would have had a dramatic close-up right before a giant monster foot turned them into pulp. Can you play a chaotic four-player game where everyone crashes? Of course. You can also fight wacky team battles or take on a CPU that’s never as difficult as another person (although, surprisingly, you can’t mix CPU opponents with online friends; let me do a comp stomp, man!). This can definitely be a casual board game if you want.
But the problem with Destroy All Monsters Melee is that there’s actually a lot more to it. Each monster has fierce punches, kicks, and attacks that you can chain together into combos. Tilt the left stick in one direction and you get heavy attacks. Each kaiju has an energy attack governed by an energy bar that you can use as a quick projectile or charge up a beam. You can also pick up and throw buildings and rocks, or even other kaiju. You can run, jump, fly (if your character has wings), crouch, and block.
All of this opens up most of the things you’d see in a traditional fighting game. Did someone shoot you? Avoid it. If you knocked down another monster, it can wake up with an attack, but if you block it or stand just outside its range, you can punish it instead. Ending a predictable sequence when an opponent blocks means you’re either hit or thrown for your trouble.
Each monster also has different stats to take into account. Gigan’s sword arms mean he hits…well, like a kaiju with sword arms, but his projectiles are relatively weak. Anguirus can’t block normally, but his spiked carapace means that anyone who hits him while his back is turned is going to dance around in a lot of pain. Megalon can dig and come up under you. And Godzilla 2000’s extra speed means he can apply pressure much more easily than his 90s counterpart. Knowing what the other city smasher you’re watching can do is important, and someone who understands the difference between Blunt and Edge attacks or knows when to dodge your ropes is going to beat your colossal ass up and down Tokyo Bay if you’re just mashing.
But smart card play is also important. Once you start destroying a city, there is less cover to hide behind in subsequent turns and fewer objects to throw at your opponent. This also means it’s easier to head straight for powerups that appear on the map, like Rage, which buffs your character and grants access to powerful Rage attacks. There are health and energy upgrades, as well as my favorite, the Mothra Airstrike, which the announcer proclaims with a relish that makes me think he’s been waiting to see a giant butterfly bomb another kaiju his whole life. If you break cliffs on Monster Island, you can throw another monster into the lava. Open the force field on the alien’s mothership and there’s a whole other part of the scene to fight in. That’s a good thing.
Is it as deep as Street Fighter or Tekken’s Guilty Gear? No, but there’s a lot to do in a Destroy All Monsters Melee match, and knowing your kaiju goes a long way. There’s replay value in filling the gallery and chasing scores in Destruction mode, but if you vibe with what’s here, it’ll be because you love it. And by “it” I mean cutting up a monster the size of the Chrysler Building and watching it hang in the air for a second before it falls back to Earth.
Certainly, the deeper things are not easy to learn because Destroy All Monsters Melee teaches you almost nothing. Aside from loading screen text and a list of basic moves, there are no tutorials of any kind, so I learned through trial and error, talking to people I played with, and looking up guides for the original game. This sucks, because the fun part is digging into these systems, and it’s a lot more fun when you understand the layers hidden beneath the scales (or metal).
I came away from Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered with my brain rewired – or perhaps more accurately, it reminded me of what’s important. It’s not the size of the roster or whether there is a progression system to keep you playing forever once the character is unlocked. It’s not about achievements, daily quests, battle passes, or all the other pointless Skinner Box nonsense that’s crammed into everything these days. It’s a time capsule, a pure reminder that what makes a game are the moments at 2 a.m. when you throw your buddy into the lava pit… which happens to contain a Rage power-up. It’s the feedback and the laughter. It’s like putting myself in my nine-year-old’s shoes, seeing a Godzilla movie in theaters before the series drowned itself in cultural influence and an interconnected multimedia universe. The joy is in the thing itself. By letting go of your expectations and remembering how things can make you feel if you let them. Everything else is just noise. And not the cool Godzilla kind.
Gn tech
