Doing the Monster Mash

By Chris Taylor

If you've ever longed to stand 180 ft. tall above Tokyo and do the monster mash with a few of your closest buddies, now is the time. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (Infogrames/Atari; $49.99) has just been released for the Nintendo GameCube, and perfectly preserves the rubber-suited spirit of its 1954 cinematic predecessor. The plot--alien invaders have unleashed the inhabitants of Monster Island upon major urban centers--is dispensed with in a handful of campy cut scenes, taking players straight into a series of titanic dustups between 11 old-school monsters, including no fewer than three versions of the giant reptile himself. Never has a fighting game been this outrageously over-the-top. You get to stomp on reasonably realistic re-creations of San Francisco, Seattle, London and, of course, Tokyo and pick up structures like the Space Needle and hurl them at your opponent. Watch out for those pesky humans, whose tanks and helicopters will swarm around you the moment you start smashing their property. No rubber suit required, unless you're into that sort of thing.