"*bommp* *bommp* *bommp* (that's me stomping on the disk, not Godzilla walking.)"

Ahhh. Godzilla. So much comes out of that name. It all started with the movie from 1954. Nearly everybody remembers the giant black, brown or green (depending on whose version it is) monster that fights other 200-foot monsters and levels cities. In business, since the 1954 movie, Godzilla has truly become a farce- er- force to be reckoned with. Spawning over 20 different (I use the term loosely) movies in a few countries, 2 nonsensical cartoons, 3 toy lines, a dozen or two books, and a ton of stuffed animals (what me and my brothers used in place of ''dolls'' to sound more manly, but they were still just ****ing dolls). That's just a sample. Yes- I used to watch the movies, but it was for the sole purpose of laughing at it with my brothers. And even that got old after watching about five of them. All they ever really did was make the same movie 20 times only removing Rodan and pasting Megalon and replacing the city with sand. But since this is about a video game, let's go deeper into its video game history.

Throughout the years, Godzilla's name has blessedthe NES (twice), the Gameboys (three times), the Turbo Duo, the Super NES, the Saturn once, the PSX, the Dreamcast (twice) and even a silly pinball game. That makes a whopping 14 games total when added with this version (I'm probably missing some)! But this certainly can't be called a series because they were made by 9 different developers and are in 9 different genres.

This particular incarnation of Godzilla is a mid-80's ''strategy'' game from a company that didn't bother to put their name in the intro. But who made this game is the LEAST of my concerns.

Oh no! Send the army! Godzilla's in Japan! And he's stomping on crap! There's your plot. The concept of the game is equally simplistic. It's set on a chess-style board consisting of 20 squares if I remember correctly. Godzilla is always present on one of those squares. He wanders around the board while you deploy infantry, paratroopers, tanks, planes, choppers, battleships, missiles, bombers and/or atomic bombs to try to stop him from leveling Japan's capital (Tokyo). You choose who and/or what attacks Godzilla and the quantity of it. You have higher amounts of some things than others. For example, you get tanks by the hundreds and ground troops by the ten-thousands, but you only have one atomic bomb per game.

STOMPING GROUNDS

PLOT/DIALOGUE: 5+

I already told you that the plot is just the simple plot of the first Godzilla movie and there's not much to it. But there is a lot of text on this game. It's certainly the closest thing on it to dialogue. When you deploy troops or weapons, you simply type the number of them (but they all have certain individual maximums) you want to send out on the keyboard. After you deploy something, it'll/they'll attack Godzilla, then a text will appear. If you send 50 planes, it could say something like, ''you caused moderate damage to Godzilla- 33 (planes) destroyed''. An atomic bomb may cause ''major damage to Godzilla''. Whenever Godzilla walks into a different city (board square), it says things like ''Godzilla enters Osaka- 1228 dead''. But if Godzilla enters Tokyo, you'll see BIG shiny statistics! Me and my brothers used to laugh at them quite a bit. Mom used to think things like that were rather sadistic, but we needed to get SOMETHING out of this game!

GAMEPLAY: ?

What the heck is gameplay? And why are you asking me about it?

DESIGN: 3+

I gave an extra point here for its originality. Your troops and weapons have absolutely no manifestations, and neither do the citizens or cities (aside from Tokyo). They're just a bunch of numbers- not even walking numbers like on the Koei games. Godzilla is your only enemy on the game, and he doesn't have ANY patterns. The atomic bomb is the most interesting thing about the game. It damages or destroys everything in its path. But no matter how many cities you let the big guy decimate, none of it will matter if it isn't tokyo, even if he crushes everything BUT Tokyo. If you drop a bomb too close to Tokyo, you'll do Godzilla's ''job'' FOR him and the game will end.

GRAPHICS: 3

Strategy games have never been known for great graphics and animation, but this is a bit too weak even for the strategy genre. All that's here are blue vector squares (spaces), a few water spaces around the land and the city of Tokyo that's just a pile of white rectangles. It's all black besides that and the big guy. Then again, Godzilla isn't as big you'd think- the jolly green giant is only about 2 inches tall. There aren't any animations for any battles except for when you drop the atomic bomb, in which your target and the 9 squares around it turn completely red. There's nothing even close to being impressive concerning the graphics. I would've at least have wanted to see Godzilla have a walking animation, rather than just disappearing then reappearing on another square in one frame.

SOUND: 7

This seems to be the main concentration of the game! Whenever you deploy something, it makes some decent or great sounds. When you send out airplanes, they sound pretty realistic, as do the tanks. They have both the moving/flying sounds and the respective shooting sounds of the vehicles and weapons. The atomic bomb doesn't sound too good, though. Since this is a Godzilla game, there definitely should of been a stomping sound, and a splashing sound when he walks in the water. There isn't either one, and that hurts the feel of the game a bit.

MUSIC: 2

That's one point for each tune. When you lose, the game plays the ''R.I.P.'' tune which lasts for about 8 seconds and the text ''Godzilla wins'' appears. When you win, it plays an escalating seven-note tune that lasts for about 4 seconds with the text ''Godzilla is dead''. Both are done on irritating squeaky ear-piercing keys. It's a good thing that they only last for a few seconds. The game doesn't really have any music aside from those two very short ''game over'' tunes, and after hearing them, you'll be quite glad about it.

CHALLENGE: ?/COOLNESS IN CHALLENGE: 3

Challenge is yet another category that mere mortals cannot fathom. You don't really decide the fate of Japan- Godzilla does! If he feels like it, he can just walk straight to Tokyo before you can even give him a scratch. Other times he runs circles around the city like an idiot- as if he's WAITING for you to destroy him! You will never be able to tell what emotional trauma Godzilla may be going through each game! He gets in mood swings- from madcap to lazy, and from (tactically) intelligent to ignorant! The most you can do to try to understand him is find out if there's the stench of beer from his breath.

LONGEVITY: 3

While Godzilla acts differently every time you play, it'll get quite old quite fast. The game takes about 15 minutes to load and 15 more minutes to beat (or lose). It's the same routine. Although the game is a lot harder if the big guy steps too close to Tokyo at the beginning (since you can't drop an atomic bomb then). After you beat Godzilla a few times, hear all of the sounds a few times and laugh at the ending tunes a few times, there isn't too much to the game. No matter how much his pattern may change, and no matter what you send after him in what order, the bottom line is that you're still fighting the exact same single enemy every time you play. It's the only game of any kind I can think of that only has ONE enemy to fight all through. Normally, being unique is a good thing, but not in that case.

What we're basically looking at here is A STRATEGY GAME THAT DOESN'T REQUIRE STRATEGY! 90% of it is luck. The player is just dependant on how well your troops fight, how much your bombs choose to hurt him, where Godzilla walks and when he walks there.

OVERVIEW

TOWERING

*fun for the first try or two
*the army sounds are pretty good

PUNY

*there's only one enemy throughout the entire game
*there isn't much to the music.....
*or graphics.....
*or challenge.....
*or replay value.....
*or gameplay (if anything)!

KEY MOMENT

After you finish getting annoyed by the two ending tunes, you'll realize just how amusing they are.

WORD TO THE WISE

Drop an atomic bomb at your first opportunity. Don't worry about all those silly innocent people. They aren't important unless they live in Tokyo!

SAY WHAT?

Okay- I finally HAVE remembered something good that came from the Godzilla license: Bambi Meets Godzilla! Truly a classic.

Besides all those other games I mentioned, Godzilla also had a cameo on the pre-SNES versions of Sim City (before they replaced him with Bowser).

HOW'S THIS CITY AFTER GODZILLA PASSED THROUGH?

There isn't anything left in it but rubbish. This city is in far too bad of shape to bother with, so just move to a new one.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/01, Updated 03/06/01