ACA NEOGEO KING OF THE MONSTERS - (Rocky, Level 1 Difficulty, English Version)

Описание: King of the Monsters was developed by SNK and released in 1991. Calling all the monsters, calling all the monsters! Have you ever imagined giant, taller-than-skyscrapers monsters duking it out in a confined space while destroying everything and everyone in their ongoing warpath while performing wrestling moves on one another in a battle for supremacy? Well, this game is it.... except it could've been a whole lot better.

So what's the story? Well here is the official narrative taken from the wiki:

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Our planet in the near future...

As our civilization advanced technologically and through the passage of time, the earth experienced a gradual decline... Unexpectedly, this vast earth came to a surprising halt. Suddenly, Super Monsters unimaginable to the human mind began to appear all over the world! This crazy universe gave birth to these quick transforming Super creatures!!!! Super Monsters that would mercilessly destroy building after building. Super Monsters that would ignore the frenzied panic of the people. No human military came close to their power!

Some time later the Monsters began to ask themselves, “Who is the strongest one among us?”. And thus began the great power battle between the Monsters. Eventually, the ultimate natural destruction site, “The Land of Civilization,” became the final battleground for the 6 victorious Superpower Monsters.
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You get to choose one of six monsters who consist of Geon, a creature who's reminiscent of Godzilla, Woo, a giant gorilla, Astro Guy, a scientist who mutated into a giant hero/man-monster who has similarities to Ultraman, Rocky, a behemoth Egyptian golem, Poison Ghost, slime-like monster created from the Japanese polluted sea, and lastly Beetle Mania, a huge rhinoceros beetle creature hailing from the Amazon forest. All six monsters have some serious beef to settle with each other, as they want to see who's the strongest of them all. With causing some mass casualities in the process, of course.

King of the Monsters, aside from the wrestling-like gameplay, is unique in that in this game two players can select to fight against the CPU, or just versus each other instead, or just one player fights the CPU alone. As you could expect, you fight the enemy monsters through twelve levels (twelve levels too long, in my opinion) across Japan, ranging from Okayama, Hiroshima, Kobe, and Kyoto.

You have a simple control scheme where you can punch and kick, and double tap the joystick to run. You can perform running attacks, and you grab the opponent and "whiplash" them into the edges of the arena which have an electrified field, causing you or your opponent to get roped back into the arena. You can also grab and throw the opposing enemy. Whenever this is done, the opponent releases a red "P" sphere which powers up your character after collecting this ten times, so be prepared to body slam the enemy a lot, which you'll want to since it does a ton of damage.

There are three power-up tiers, so you need to collect 30 "P" power spheres overall. Each time you level up a tier, the color palette of your character changes, and your attacks are more powerful. However, I think that's about it - I haven't noticed a difference in defense or speed (although it seems like the CPU seems to do more damage and can move a bit faster than you, but this isn't surprising since it's, well, an SNK developed game so CPU advantages are always a given here).

The goal is to deplete your opponent's life gauge, then eventually knock them down in order to jump on top of them to pin them. If you manage to pin them for about 3 seconds, you automatically win the match. However, you'll have to pin down the enemy on average for about three to five, maybe even six times in later stages.

None too surprisingly, the game becomes more difficult the further you progress, and it eventually gets to the point where it's VERY difficult to avoid not being pinned or having most of your health wiped by only a few punches and kicks by the opponent, and also they can easily break your grabs since they always seem to have a frame advantage no matter what move you try to perform against them.

Lastly, you can hold down the A and B buttons to charge a special, powerful attack (for example, Rocky fires a massive boulder). This attack can change visually depending on how many "P" power-ups you've collected. Although, to me, it seems like no matter what power tier you're at, it seems as if all charged special moves do the same amount of damage. Even they are pointless to use late in-game because 95% of the time, the CPU will avoid it by jumping over it perfectly, or waiting in place for you to fire it, then they promptly leap over it. The frame advantage is a bane in this title.

So that's all I have to say regarding this title - see you next game!