King of the Monsters

released on Jan 25, 1991
by SNK

Players get to choose any one of six monsters (four in the 16-bit ports) for battle, and two players can join forces to fight the monsters together. Battles end when one of the monsters is pinned for a three count or if time expires (in which case the player loses). The game consists of 12 total levels: the player first must defeat all six monsters, with the last monster being oneself, but in a different palette. Then the player must defeat the six monsters again, in the same order, but this time in different cities


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A cool game that's buried by its incredibly steep difficulty and somewhat mystifying mechanics, KotM is a big Kaiju brawler that could be amazing with any amount of communication with the player as to how grapples and combat choices interact with the CPU player's. But the monster design for Beetle Mania has been one of my favorite things since I was 8 so I could be biased...

While I myself have never invested too heavily into anything related to it, the kaiju genre is one that I have always been interested in, and found myself liking. It is such a simple genre on the surface level: take a giant monster of some kind, place them in an extremely populated area, and just have them completely decimate the area. Eventually, you can then also take another giant monster, place them inside the same city that the other monster just partially destroyed, and have them battle it out in a big, bombastic brawl. It is a genre that has lasted for about 100 years, maybe more then that, and has been expanded and populated into many forms, including video games, with one of the first ORIGINAL IPs to take on the genre in video game form being SNK’s King of the Monsters.

When compared to all of SNK’s other big franchises, I had never heard of this one before, which isn’t surprising, since it only had two installments, but when I found out about it, I thought it would be pretty damn good. I thought it would’ve been like Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, and SNK’s other fighting franchises, except instead of controlling humans, you controlled a bunch of giant, rampaging monsters. How could that not be awesome? Well, I soon found out when I played the game for myself, realizing that I was somewhat right and somewhat wrong about the game. I was right about it being a fighting game (in the most loose sense), but what I wasn’t right about was that instead of being awesome, the game was pretty ok instead. It isn’t bad by any means, and it does provide the monster-on-monster brawls that you would probably be expecting, but it doesn’t do much else to justify how it overstays its welcome.

The story is just about monsters fighting it out in Japan, and that’s it, but really, nobody is playing this game for the story, the graphics are, of course, great, but something about the monsters themselves look a little… off, the music is… fine, with not too many memorable tracks, primarily just coming off as background noise, the control is good for the most part, but parts about it can be pretty confusing, which I will get to in a bit, and the gameplay contains some good monster fights, mixed in with a little more to not make it seem like a bunch of button-mashing nonsense (for the most part).

In actuality, rather then a fighting game, this is moreso a wrestling game, where you take control of either one of five monsters, or one giant human (because… he just wanted to be involved?), rampage through several big cities in Japan, take on another monster that stands in your way, while destroying as much of the city as you can, to prove that you are truly… the King of the Monsters. This is about as much as the game has to offer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as you can still make a good game with a simple set up, and I did have a good amount of fun with it for a while. However, there are a few elements from holding it back.

In terms of issues referring to the game itself, fighting your opponents does feel alright for the most part, but it can get pretty clunky at points, trying to maneuver around the city that you are in, as well as trying to just get up after being knocked down. And speaking of which, the way you execute your moves, as well as getting off the ground, feels very inconsistent. It feels like there is no proper way to determine what does what in this game, whether or not it involves performing a special move on an opponent, breaking out of a special move from your opponent, or, once again, trying to get up off of the ground before your opponent can pin you down. Sometimes I manage to do all of these things in time, and sometimes I don’t. It feels like there is no proper consistency with it, and granted, there is a big possibility that I just didn’t know any of the correct buttons to press in those moments, but considering that I was succeeding at some points, I doubt that.

Secondly, this game has a massive issue when it comes to padding. In this game, there are twelve levels total before you beat the game, and for the first six levels, you are fighting a brand new opponent in a brand new city for each level, which keeps things fresh, interesting, and exciting. However, starting with Level 7, all of the levels start to just reuse the same cities and the same monsters over again, except this time the monsters are much more difficult to take on, while also having more health. So basically, for one half of the game, you have to spend it fighting a group of monsters in a bunch of different locations, and for the second half of the game, you have to fight that same group of monsters in the same locations all over again. Needless to say, this second half was completely unnecessary, and it would’ve been way better if they at least gave you a new group of monsters to fight rather then to just reuse the old ones. They can do it for their other games, like Fatal Fury, so why couldn’t they do it here?

Overall, while the gameplay is fun for a good while, and the ideas and presentation are pretty good, the game comes off much more of a gamble more then a proper wrestling game at points, while also overstaying its welcome with its repetitive second half. Sure, I myself haven’t played any other wrestling games in my life, so I’m not exactly sure how a proper wrestling game would handle, but I am willing to guess it is a little better then this. Either way, I would recommend it to those who are interested in the concept to play through the first six levels, as they are a good amount of fun, but everything else after that isn’t necessary to get the full King of the Monsters experience. Also, for some reason, the ending for this game is fucking depressing. It ends with a news reporter getting straight up killed by the monster you played as, and not in a funny way, but in a devastating way. Let me tell you, it was quite a tonal shift that I wasn’t expecting.

Game #305

charming in that its a kaiju wrestling game which certainly hasnt been done before, but the gameplay is pretty shallow and boring so unless you really like the concept its hard to really play this one all the way through imo. if you see it at an arcade, go nuts, it's worth popping a coin in, but I wouldn't really play this at home.

A bad dumb game that my dad borrowed from a friend when I was a kid. I loved it for some reason.

Seemed kinda trash not gonna lie. Pretty funny how it played like a wrestling game though.