Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is as clumsy and charming as you remember

When I was a kid, there were some games I only knew through magazines. I never played them, but they were all over the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Nintendo Power, so I knew everything about them anyway. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee was firmly a “magazine game” when it was released for the GameCube in 2002. I even had a free poster of it on my wall as a kid, one I kept hung up even after a wave of middling reviews eventually dropped.

Historically, games like that aren’t prime candidates for remasters. They’re left to become rare collectibles found at retro game conventions while canon classics receive countless double dips on modern platforms. So what a delight it is that Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered now exists, in all of its messy glory. Atari’s surprising revival brings back a quintessential magazine game, rescuing it from its cult-classic destiny with a makeover and online multiplayer in tow.

Does it finally prove 2002’s unimpressed critics wrong? Not exactly. It’s still the same messy and shallow fighting game in some ways. But the purpose of a remaster like this shouldn’t be to engineer a redemption arc; all games, even the ones you never experienced beyond their box art, deserve to be preserved and celebrated.

Developed by Pipeworks in 2002, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a 3D brawler where players duke it out with a roster of rubbery kaiju.

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