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The year is 199X, and mysterious messages are suddenly received announcing a general attack on all of Japan. Then, just as in the message, first King Ghidorah appears in Osaka and starts to tear the city apart. Helpless before the monster, the Self Defense Agency turns its eyes to Godzilla, sleeping at the bottom of the Sea of Japan, as its final weapon. What they had in mind was to control Godzilla with human hands and make him fight the monster. The plan was executed immediately; the operation box that was developed by Professor Ogata was shot into Godzilla successfully. The Strategy succeeded and Godzilla awoke. But could Godzilla and his ferocious fighting spirit really be controlled? Everything depends on you who have the controller in your hands.
—The game's Attract Mode

Super Godzilla, released on SNES in 1993 for Japan and 1994 for the rest of the world, is easily considered one of the most disappointing Godzilla games since you don't fight the other monsters so much as you step forward, punch, move back, select an attack and then just watch a short cinematic of the monsters beating each other up. In short it's less of a video game and more of a movie.

The game is most notable for having a rather good story with several plot twists, which makes sense considering it uses the script for the unmade and canceled Godzilla vs Bagan movie. The game is also well known for the ability to turn Godzilla into the title character, Super Godzilla in the last two stages and the unused monster Bagan, who makes his first appearance in this game, re-emerging 29 years later in Godziban.

This video game provides examples of:

  • Adaptational Villainy: Heisei Mechagodzilla was a robot built by humans to fight the Heisei era Godzilla, who was usually a neutral but still a destructive force whenever he came into contact with humans. In this game its a Mechagodzilla used by alien invaders.
    • Biollante is made into a full blown villain, while her movie incarnation was neutral to humans at worst.
    • Mecha-King Ghidorah was a cyborg built to protect Japan from Godzilla in the movies. Here he's King Ghidorah upgraded by aliens invading Earth.
  • Adapted Out: The Japanese version of the game uses the Heisei era Mechagodzilla, but when the game was brought to the US, he was switched out for the Showa era version, for unknown reasons. This might be due to the fatc that at the time, the Heisei incarnation of Mechagodzilla was almost completely unknown in the United States.
  • Alien Invasion: It just isn't Godzilla unless there's a threat from space.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted. Unlike fighting games, you'll never switch sides when fighting, you'll always be on the left and enemy will always be on the right.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Godzilla's stronger moves take a lot of time to charge, enough that your opponent will certainly interrupt unless you use a booster to make them charge faster (and even then, it's hit or miss for the biggest one).
  • Beam Spam: This IS Godzilla we are talking about.
  • Big Bad: Bagan full stop. Mecha-King Ghidorah gets some of this too.
  • Bittersweet Ending: A somewhat more optimist example. In the end, Bagan is destroyed and the invading aliens are defeated. Godzilla's mind control device breaks and he returns peacefully to the ocean to hibernate, leaving humanity uncertain about what will happen when he rises the next time.
  • Boss-Altering Consequence: The last two bosses are different depending on your actions in Stage 5:
    • If you go straight for Mecha-King Ghidorah without collecting the energy cells which transform you into Super Godzilla, and before the city is 50% destroyed, you fight Mecha-King Ghidorah as regular Godzilla in what proves to be a rather challenging boss fight. However, this allows Professor Ogata to finish the Super Energy Bank, allowing you to start the fight against the Final Boss as Super Godzilla with all of your health and items. The aliens will also comment on Godzilla looking different, before shrugging it off saying it won't matter.
    • If you collect the energy cells to turn into Super Godzilla before facing Mecha-King Ghidorah, or let the city reach 50% destruction regardless of if you do, then the Super Energy Bank isn't finished. While Mecha King-Ghidorah becomes much easier to beat if you transformed, it turns Bagan into a Hopeless Boss Fight, forcing you to Hold the Line until the Super X comes by to deliver more energy to turn into Super Godzilla again.
  • The Cameo: The Super-X2 from Godzilla vs. Biollante is in the opening and ending movies but other then shooting down an alien mother ship it's sole purpose is to fly over Godzilla and direct him via mind control. Likewise the original Super-X from The Return of Godzilla will make a cameo in the battle with Bagan if Tokyo reached 50 percent damage or higher before you beat Mecha-King Ghidorah or if you choose to become Super Godzilla and defeat him as that. In that case you have to hold off Bagan as normal Godzilla for a while in a suicide mission until the Super-X arrives with the energy to turn you into Super Godzilla.
  • Counter-Attack: It's actually easier to list monsters that don't have them, Ghidorah, Battra, and Bagan, end list. Oddly enough, the trick to avoiding Mechagodzilla's is actually hidden by the change in mecha for the translation. Those who had seen the Heisei movie would know that the Mechagodzilla of that film charges it's super grenade by absorbing Godzilla's regular atomic breath, but that his full power breath can overload it. The original mech could deflect it with a shield but couldn't counter with a missile making those who hadn't heard of it wonder where that came from.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The computer charges faster than you do, but to balance it out isn't as consistent in its usage of those powers as it could be. The UFO enemies can never be knocked out of their charging state.
  • Cut and Paste Environments: Averted, as the battlegrounds will change depending on the current area. There's a lot of consistency within individual areas, though; mountainous forests in Biollante's lake all look the same, but the city skylines change square-to-square. A good example is King Ghidorah's fight in the first level: depending on which sector you encounter him in, he's fought in front of either the Shinseki Tower or Osaka Castle. The other bosses, however, are always fought in the same places, such as the Final Boss fight taking place at the National Diet building.
  • Diabolus ex Nihilo: The final enemy, Bagan. In record time people go from saying "Bagan?" to freaking the hell out when he destroys Tokyo in mere seconds, and right after he's introduced.
  • Event Flag: A surprisingly good number of them. MechaGodzilla will not stop warping until you destroy the mothership on his level, Biollante will not appear until you rescue Professor Ogota, the Battra cocoon does not show up until you beat the adult, which may or may not hatch depending on whether you reach it in time, and beating Mecha-King Ghidorah as either Godzilla or Super Godzilla. Letting the city reach 50% destruction will determine whether you can turn into Super Godzilla before facing against Bagan or be forced to fend him off as normal Godzilla for a while as your allies desperately try to get the energy you need to transform.
  • Fake Difficulty: You can't dodge and when a boss does a special attack there is nothing you can do to stop them. The only mercy is that the game has bosses use attacks at random so they won't always use their strongest attacks.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: Bagan. All of the monsters fought in game just exist as bosses for the player to fight but since this is Bagan's only appearance he stands especially as existing simply to serve as a boss to fight with Super Mode.
  • Godzilla Threshold: The JSDF get desperate enough to use a mind control device that was never tested on Godzilla and it works.
    • Turning Godzilla into Super Godzilla counts for this, as Godzilla himself is already insanely powerful, yet Mecha-King Ghidorah is the first monster to appear where the option is made available. Given how powerful the cyborg is, Super Godzilla is extremely useful. Bagan literally requires you to be Super Godzilla to have any hope in hell of beating him. One can argue that the aliens time traveling to capture Bagan and enhance him with Godzilla and Ghidorah's genetics also counts as by this point Godzilla's pretty much killed everything they threw at him and it seems they were getting incredibly desperate even with Mecha-King Ghidorah as a trump card.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Fighting Bagan as normal Godzilla. In theory it's possible to defeat him since your attacks can still hurt him, but in practice it can't be done without cheat codes as Godzilla's attacks do almost no damage while Bagan's can potentially kill him in as few as four hits.
  • Hyperactive Sprite: The monsters just will not stop moving.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Timed events often count on the enemy randomly closing the distance to you so you can reach them. If they decide to wander in the other direction, you usually can't catch up in time.
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: King Ghidorah's cells prove to be very useful. After the fight against Biollante in level 3, Godzilla is enhanced with King Ghidorah's cells to increase his health pool by a significant margin.
  • Monumental Damage: King Ghidorah makes his entrance by destroying Osaka Castle.
  • No-Sell: Certain bosses are completely immune to certain special attacks. Super Godzilla is immune to most enemy attacks period, hence why you don't get the transformation until the final level.
  • Power-Up: Eventually Godzilla can be turned into Super Godzilla. His tail whip is replaced by an energy tail ball, his body slam is replaced by a shoulder ram that makes the enemy suffer mini explosions on their body after being hit, the weak version of the blue atomic breath is replaced by an orange Nova Beam, and the strong version of the blue atomic breath is replaced by a blue energy attack shot from the stomach called the Navel Beam which takes the form of Super Godzilla's face before hitting the enemy. There's also a health boost. Bagan gets this, as well.
  • Prehistoric Monster: Bagan who is from Earth's "ultra ancient past", in the "land of Legend", China.
  • Plot Twist: Lots of them. Professor Ogata will study the remaining King Ghidorah head to see if anything useful will come from it. He discovers that the King Ghidorah cells store huge amounts of energy— possibly a Call-Back to Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, which came out roughly the year prior to this game's American release in its native Japan— and fuses them with Godzilla to make him stronger. This gives the player more health. He continues to study King Ghidorah cells to see if there are more secrets. Amazingly he finds that giving Godzilla a huge amount of energy while he has King Ghidorah cells fused with him will turn him into Super Godzilla who is pretty much Godzilla on steroids. The aliens even get in on the act as well. After kidnapping the Professor, they use Godzilla cells and rose cells to make Biollante. After beating Mecha-King Ghidorah you find out there is one more monster to fight, even worse it's a super monster pulled forward in time from the past named Bagan. When you finally decided to take it down before it can move on to the next city it transforms after a large explosion and the aliens reveal that they had used a similar cell fusion on Bagan, giving him Godzilla and King Ghidorah cells to make him even stronger and this is after his first form had already destroyed the city!
    • If you are playing the U.S. version of the game the second boss will seem to be another Godzilla until you punch it to reveal that it's the Showa MechaGodzilla.
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: The final stage after Bagan shows up.
  • Regional Bonus: The English version of the game replaced the Heisei MechaGodzilla with his Showa counterpart (you even start the fight against Fake Godzilla) and removed the head crest from Super Godzilla's head and the Navel Beam's copy. Bagan also has different portraits unique to the English version.
    • Toho justified the change to Showa Mechagodzilla due to the fact that the Heisei Mechagodzilla was almost completely unheard of in America at that time. This did not end up being utilized as a reason to swap out Mecha-King Ghidorah with another monster however, as the aliens' technology works as an in-game justification for the upgrade he gets.
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The unnamed alien race serving as the main antagonists look like humans with enlarged skulls and huge, bulging brains.
    • Allegedly, this was a repurpose of the design for "Alien Miko", a scrapped villain for one of the early pre-production incarnations of the film ''Godzilla vs. Gigan".
  • Scripted Event: This game is very story heavy, unlike most Godzilla games.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Mechagodzilla in both versions of the game. While he has less health than King Ghidorah, he also takes less damage from your attacks, making him more durable overall. Furthermore, he counters your regular atomic breath, forcing you to either make do with weaker physical attacks or try to set up a super atomic breath, and making the random attack dangerous to use. And true to the film versions which always come close to killing Godzilla, they've got some pretty mean attacks: Showa Mechagodzilla has a very strong basic attack that hits three times and greatly adds up, and while Heisei Mechagodzilla's version is weaker, he makes up for it with his signature Mega Buster beam which does a lot of damage.
  • Warm-Up Boss: The first King Ghidorah fight. He's the only boss in the game besides his own upgraded form without any real gimmicks, and he has relatively low health, making him fairly straightforward and allowing you to get used to the fight controls.

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