The first time I ever saw Japan's most famous kaiju on the big screen was in Godzilla 2000: Millennium. Like any nine-year-old kid, I was obsessed with Big G. I read the Dark Horse comics, and I taped all the movies I could on TV. Things were different then; Godzilla was a big deal, but theatrical releases for Godzilla films were incredibly rare in the States If you saw those movies, it was on TV and they were dubbed or edited versions released under different titles like Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster. After Godzilla 2000 underperformed, it took another five years for the series to see a theatrical release in the U.S. – and into that void stomped 2002’s Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee.

It was the perfect mix of subject matter (big monsters who were super into professional wrestling), genre (3D fighting game), and time period (licensed games were still, like… a thing). It was the kind of game that could dominate a pizza-filled sleepover weekend or become your personality for an entire summer. One friend’s parents bought it for them, and that copy became communal: a holy thing, carried from place to place. Maybe it’s fitting that it’s back now in the form of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, 24 years later. The world (and Godzilla) has changed a lot, but original developer Pipeworks is still at the helm. It somehow feels just as relevant now as it did then, just in different ways, and revisiting it was a joy even removed from the nostalgia.

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