Who woulda thought a walking atomic horror would inspire such great game music?
SHOW NOTES
0:00:00 – Godzilla (Battle Legends)
0:09:20 – Moguera (Monster of Monsters)
0:10:03 – Gigan (Monster of Monsters)
0:12:05 – Mechagodzilla (Monster of Monsters)
0:17:12 – Earth (Monster of Monsters)
0:18:55 – Mars (Monster of Monsters)
0:20:06 – Planet X (Monster of Monsters)
0:25:52 – Title Screen (Godzilla GB)
0:26:27 – BGM1 (Godzilla GB)
0:24:00 – Mechagodzilla (Super Godzilla)
0:35:48 – Bagan (Super Godzilla)
0:40:29 – Stage Select (Battle Legends)
0:41:29 – Philippines Trench (Battle Legends)
0:44:22 – Abashiri Ohara Field (Battle Legends)
0:46:24 – Versus (Battle Legends)
0:54:29 – Fight Theme 2 (DAMM)
0:58:20 – Fight Theme 6 (DAMM)
0:59:42 – Menu (Save the Earth)
1:01:12 – Fight Theme (Save the Earth)
1:04:23 – Ending (Monster of Monsters)
Gamera is really neat, he is full of turtle meat
We all love him, Ga-Me-RA!
Oh, wait–which giant monster podcast is this again? Anyway, I wanted to share my wistful Godzilla story, involving the terrible 1998 American film. Like a lot of guys and big dumb event movies, I wanted to see it. But I had an extra special reason to want to see the film: Her name was Yukiko. She was an exchange student visiting Portland that summer, before starting her first college term in Pensacola, FL.
She was and is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. I’m not just talking looks, but grace and charm and everything. I knew her host mother, and we’d already done some stuff together. I was dying to figure out some sort of ‘in’, some way to hang out with her outside of the chaperoned setup.
Godzilla was my ‘in’. I invited her to see the movie, and to my surprise she said yes. FYI, she was quite familiar with the series, and at least at that point in time, Godzilla was still a venerable cultural icon in Japan. I imagine it might be similar to how we view King Kong today, except as you know, the original Godzilla was a serious film with an important message that got lost in translation(although the upcoming film looks to be more faithful to that idea). She was interested to see an American take on something so culturally significant to her, and I was interested in just being in the same space.
I was half-sorry I subjected her to the film; it was just like most every other American attempt to recreate something important: Ham-fisted, self-indulgent, and gratuitous. The one shining moment came when Maria Patillo’s character spins around and says to Matthew Broderick, “And it’s not Godzilla, it’s GOJIRA!” The audience laughed, I laughed, but Yukiko laughed harder than any of us.
I’ll hold on to that memory indefinitely. ’98 was the beginning of some bad times(5 years’ worth), and maybe because of how much I cared for her, I decided it was better to go it alone. It remains to this day my one great regret in life. But what does this have to do with games? Heck if I know.
Maybe because I didn’t pay attention during the radar days, but I never knew that Brett was a super huge Kaiju (lol) fan. I love a lot of stuff about Japanese pop culture, but Kaiju are one area I never paid much attention to. With that said, I cannot wait for the new Godzilla movie this week! Great show of retro love!
69 DUDES!
When I was a kid I used to play Super Godzilla all the time. Well I tried to, I never had any idea what I was doing but Godzilla was awesome to look at.
[…] Who woulda thought a walking atomic horror would inspire such great game music? In honor of the upcoming Hollywood reboot, prepare for a tracklist most monstrous! LISTEN NOW! […]
While barely anyone played it, Unleashed actually did have a couple of descent tracks, although they were more “rocking” than what I’d consider “traditional” monster/kaiju style compositions.
Loved Godzilla on NES. Never got to play the others except for Godzilla Generations on Dreamcast. Ouch.
man I forgot how great the Godzilla NES music was. that really takes me
back. thanks for that. great ep.
Man, I’ve never heard pitch bending on the SNES like that before! Kudos to B-relston for unintentionally coming up with the best damn nickname for the SNES sound chip I’ve ever heard:
“All the trumpets”
So that begs the question: If the Genesis sound chip(s) had a nickname, what would they be? My vote goes to:
“Razor metal farts”
Oh man, those Super Godzilla songs were gross, definitely a showcase of the SNES sound chip being used at it’s worst.
But all that nastiness was pleasantly washed away with the surprisingly superb soundtrack of Battle Legends. I was blown away by how good those tracks were, specially the “Versus” theme! Such energy behind it! sure, it sounds super anime, but it was so damn awesome.
Thanks again for another super varied, fun episode Mr. Elston! I am completely ignorant of Godzilla as a whole, (Save the 98 movie, unfortunately.) so this was both an enlightening and a really fun episode to listen to 😀
the Super Godzilla songs were so awful and wrong that they were kinda awesome
[…] going on here at on the Time of Lasers. VGMpire just did a whole episode based entirely on Godzilla VGM, we’ve got a semi-regular feature on the 1970s Godzilla cartoon, we currently are giving out […]
MAN, I remember watching my brother play that re-release of Super Godzilla on the SNES and finding the navigation system strange. I also didn’t understand why the HUD had to take up half of the damn screen.
The Super Godzilla music…I understand where they were trying to go with it (some of it comes really close to sounding great) but it wasn’t executed properly. There are tons of SNES games that utilized orchestral sounds amazingly (Breath of Fire, Illusion of Gaia & the Final Fantasy games of course), so I guess you could say this is a case of what NOT to do with brass samples.
I remember my one friend going on a AVGN-styled tirade about Godzilla for GB. It’s a very silly game, but listening to the music again it’s not that bad! I’d have to say my favorite tunes on this podcast came from the TurboDuo stuff though. Great sampling there.
I’ve never been a huge Godzilla fan, but with this new movie out and my interest in kaiju rekindled by Pacific Rim…I may have to bunker down and watch some of these movies and try out more games. If you’re into all of that, I highly recommend trying out War of the Monsters & Robot Alchemic Drive on PS2. The latter was made by Earth Defense Force dev Sandlot and features some epic giant robot vs. alien city fights, with a twist (you’re controlling both the robot and finding a good vantage point for the pilot, who’s controlling it remotely).
Wow, the memories! Godzilla on the Gameboy was the first Gameboy game I ever had besides the Tetris pack-in. My 6 year old self was definitely confused and put off by the kiddie tone… but because it was the only other game I had for the time I forces myself to play it.
And uh, after you get past the kiddie tone it’s not that bad. It’s a surprisingly large puzzle game… Like we’re talking bubble-bobble large. The first dozen or so levels I could beat reliably but after that it gets hard. REAL hard. I never beat it.
I’m amazed it’s taken this long for anybody to bring up Rampage.