King of Monsters is too Short to be Great

King of Monsters is an arcade game released by SNK in 1991. In this game, you play as a giant monster and fight other monsters in an arena. It sounds much better than it really is, especially if you were stuck with one of the home console ports.

Takara handled the console ports of this game. The SNES got a version of it in 1992, and the Genesis port was released in 1993. The game was successful enough to warrant a sequel in 1992, which would also be ported to home consoles.

I played the SNES version for this post. This version is missing some content from the arcade, which feels somewhat unusual to say, considering there wasn’t much to this game to begin with.

TLDR: King of Monsters would’ve been a fun weekend rental.

Narrative

Since this is a port of an arcade game, I wasn’t expecting an amazing story. It just has to set up who the characters are and why they’re fighting. And the story for King of Monsters does exactly that.

In the near future, super monsters emerged. The manual doesn’t give an explanation of where they came from; it just says that they showed up. After some time, they started fighting each other.

Eventually, there were only four left, and they started fighting in “The Land of Civilization.” What happens when there is only one left? No one knows, and I guess it isn’t all that important.

This gets the job done. It does make me wonder about what happened to all the other monsters, if there ever were any. I guess this explains why two monsters are missing from the arcade game.

Gameplay

There isn’t much to this game. You pick a monster and fight in an arena. If you win, then you move on to the next arena.

The console ports only have four monsters to choose from. This is one of the changes from the arcade version. Here is the roster:

• Geon – A Godzilla-inspired monster
• Rocky – A golem
• Beetle Mania – A giant rhinoceros beetle
• Astro Guy – A giant human that looks like it was inspired by Ultraman

The two characters from the arcade are a King Kong monster and a toxic sludge monster. I’m a little surprised that the King Kong monster was cut from the game. It would’ve been cool to recreate King Kong vs. Godzilla on the SNES or Genesis.

One cool thing about this game is that each arena is a city. It’s explained in the manual, but I’m just not sure where the electric fence that surrounds the area came from. That is a weird touch.

I had to check the manual to see what the moves were. The game gives you the basics, and there are some prompts to help you when you’re fighting. What I was looking for were the special and grapple moves.

The manual explains all of this. Here is a link to the PDF I was using (Link). Some of these are a little hard to pull off, which I’m sure was my fault instead of being the game’s fault.

You can pick up and throw several things. These include tanks, ships, helicopters, and jets. It makes a lot of sense for a game like this.

There are some power ups in the game. These appear as red balls with a P in the middle of them. When you collect them, it will increase the power of your special and regular attacks.

There are eight fights in the game. These take place in four cities in Japan, with the final battle taking place in Tokyo. Sadly, this means you’re going to have some repeat fights because there are only four monsters.

Overall, the gameplay is fine. It is a fun arcade game that has a serious lack of content in the home console ports. King of Monsters would have been a weekend rental back in the day, or one of those games that sat on the shelf for a while after you beat it a few times.

Reviews at the Time

King of Monsters has been released in the arcades and on a lot of home consoles over the years. This is great because there are numerous reviews for those versions in print and on YouTube. I tried to stick to the reviews for the SNES from the early 1990s.

I went to MobyGames to find these reviews. Instead of going through a few of them, I’ll just be looking at the consensus. What that tells me is that this was an average game.

I know that nostalgia plays a role in some people’s feelings about retro games. If you played something as a kid, you’ll forgive some of the game’s rougher edges. I do that plenty of times.

The MobyGames aggregate score for both players and critics is 60%. That is right where I’m at. These scores include all versions of the game, and don’t let someone’s opinion change yours.

Visuals

This is a good looking game. I love the pixel art on the character sprites, and the levels look excellent. There are only four levels and four characters, though.

The level design isn’t anything special. It is just a patch of a city that is ringed by an electric fence. It is easy to see the fence, and I like how the game shows the impact of these monsters fighting in a city.

Because there are only four characters, the developers swapped the color palettes for each monster. This is a cheap way to tell which character you’re playing as when you play with your friend, or when you have to fight the same monster as the one you’re playing as.

There isn’t too much to say about graphics. What is here looks good, but there isn’t much of it. Everything is well detailed and colorful.

6/10. It looks great on the SNES, but there is a serious lack of content for a game like this.

Pros

• Fun concept
• Great characters
• Wonderful graphics

Cons

• Very repetitive
• Tiny roster of monsters
• Only one game mode

Conclusion

I feel the same as when I played the SNES version of Mr. Do! or any other arcade port. There just isn’t enough here to warrant buying this game. It would’ve been a fun game to rent back in the day.

If this game had more game modes besides the base game, then I would’ve liked it more. As it stands, this got old quickly. I like the game, but it is very short for an SNES game.

It doesn’t help that the roster is so small. With only four characters, you’re limited in what you can do with a game like this. Once you’ve figured out how to play and beat the game with each character, you’re left with nothing else to do but find something else to play after a few hours.

If you liked this review, please check out my posts on King of Dragons or Knights of the Round.