A 1986 video game by Epyx, which inverted the usual premise of you being the hero trying to save the day to having you control the big bad monster menacing the world. Overall it plays like a streamlined version of the earlier Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!. Perhaps the most dramatic difference being that there are actual win conditions beyond achieving a high score, as opposed to CCC where eventually your monster will be brought down no matter how well you play.
So saying, the game gives you six playable monsters:
- Godzilla, the King of the Monsters himself.
- Tarantus, a Giant Spider.
- Sphectra, a huge wasp.
- Glog, a pollution-spawned Blob Monster.
- Mechatron, a marauding military robot.
- Mr. Meringue, an Expy of The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
You have your choice of multiple cities to destroy (New York, San Francisco, London, Moscow, Paris and of course Tokyo), and various goals you can assign to each game (eat every vehicle in sight, find your missing offspring, destroy a radio relay, escape the city before you're destroyed, or just a good old rampage through the city).
A modern game with a similar idea is known as Kaiju-A-GoGo.
Provides examples of:
- Anti-Air: The Atomize ability will disintegrate hostile aircraft, and is the only way to destroy them.
- Artificial Stupidity: The vehicles and pedestrians are able to react to the monster, doing u-turns when they see the scary creature. However, they only do so at specific points, and if the monster is resting at a specific location, they will crash into the monster because they thought the monster was too far away at a previous turn point.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Godzilla's Breath Weapon and Mechatron's laser gun, with how they can only hit something right next to your monster, take a second to fire, and then have a cooldown period before they can be used again. They're basically useless unless you want to destroy a building without having to bump into it a bunch of times. Mr. Meringue has a similar attack with all the same drawbacks, but which is even weaker.
- The Cameo: Minilla appears as Godzilla's son during the "Search" mission.
- Damage Over Time: Glog's special ability is to hit a building once, and it will collapse several seconds later.
- Fragile Speedster: Sphectra, who is the fastest monster and the only one who can fly, but who does and can take the least damage. Tarantus to a slightly lesser extent.
- Mighty Glacier: Godzilla, Glog and Mechatron, who are the slowest monsters but can suck the most damage.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The mission where your monster is destroying buildings trying to find their son. Complete with a sappy ending where everyone feels bad for attacking when they realize what the monster was really trying to do.
- Monumental Damage: Wouldn't be a real movie about rampaging monsters without it! Oddly also one of the best ways to orient yourself with the in-manual map, since you spawn randomly every time you start a new game.
- No Waterproofing in the Future: Mechatron will short out and die quickly after entering water.
- Product Placement: Each game is set up like it's an actual movie with a crowd in a theater watching "coming attractions" for other Epyx games before the session starts. Of the advertisements,
- Regenerating Health: The monsters will slowly heal from damage, except for Mechatron (the manual implies he should have this ability, but went rogue before it was installed).
- The End... Or Is It?: Depending on the mission, if you lose you might get a postscript about how more of their kind are probably still out there and the menace isn't over.
