Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered

[Dai]

One of the best Godzilla games returns with a new coat of digital paint for modern platforms on 3rd November 2026.

https://youtu.be/D-TQ419mM8I?si=Be_yAYZf_e0mlGHt

[Kailem]

I never thought I'd see the day!! I've literally wanted a re-release of Destroy All Monsters on modern systems with online multiplayer *forever*! Well better late than never!

I will say though, in a bit of a monkey's paw situation, that I'm not loving how overly brown the cities are looking though. The colours on the original Gamecube version popped, especially on the nighttime Tokyo stages, so it'll be a little disappointing if they've made everything look bland and muted in this one.

Either way I'll be buying it day one because duh. And that's cool they've added Showa MechaGodzilla too! The official blurb still lists 12 monsters in the roster (I had to look up who the 12th was because I only remembered 11 from the Gamecube version ), so it'll probably just be a skin, but that opens up the possibility of more stuff like OG Godzilla or Final Wars Gigan etc. that weren't in the original. And even if it's only MechaGodzilla, that's still cool too!

Crazy that this is finally happening!

[lhb412]

Not a video game guy, but I appreciate how happy this is making folks.

I didn't think of this at the time, but in retrospect these Pipeworks games were very significant just in terms of Godzilla content. After Godzilla '98 underperformed the real losers were the licensed products, so I reckon we had a decade plus of reluctance to license Godzilla and make anything. It was certainly a downgrade from the '90s where toys (Trendmasters), books (Random House) and comics (Dark Horse) were fairly plentiful on US store shelves. In the '00s those games were some of the most significant Godzilla stuff in the culture.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ They sure were. The original GameCube edition of Destroy All Monsters Melee sold so well that Nintendo reissued it with the "Player's Choice" banner on the cover. The threshold for that at the time was selling more than 450,000 copies.

I was already a Godzilla fan and a GameCube kid before DAMM came about, so it was a huge deal for me. I remember seeing ads for it on Comedy Central during shows like Crank Yankers and South Park. This was one of them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY7EDoXuWWE

The Toonami action block on Cartoon Network even aired a review of the game in rotation during commercial breaks, rating it 6/10: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Ft9uctqpc

In a sign of those bygone times, Infogrames actually created a website just to promote the game, which was www.GodzillaOnCube.com and is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20020929055542/http://www.godzillaoncube.com/

DAMM makes me nostalgic for the time of the Millennium Series, particularly that stretch prior to August 2003 when Godzilla 2000 remained the newest movie to be released in America. I remember being in 7th grade when I first heard from another kid at school that there was a Godzilla video game called "All Monsters Melee" for the GameCube, and what felt like an eternity of checking video game shelves in stores and perusing the store catalogs that came with the Sunday newspaper only to find nothing, and then I was in 8th grade when I unexpectedly saw a TV ad for the game later that year. That eternity was really just the span of a few months during 2002; it's wild how time feels so much longer and slower when we're growing up.

My hype peaked when I got my hands on issue #171 of GamePro magazine. The main feature was the game Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and the main cover image was Goku punching Frieza from the anime but the cover also had "GODZILLA" printed above the title between little graphics of Godzilla and Gigan, and the lower part of the cover promised in-depth strategy guides for Kingdom Hearts, Star Fox Adventures and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, with the game's title displayed next to a little graphic of Anguirus! I wish I still had that magazine because I pored over every Godzilla-related page of that issue back then. It reviewed the game in detail and the strategy guide had a full breakdown of each monster's moves and how to control them. I was so ready when I finally got the game and it was everything I had anticipated, being able to play as Godzilla and other kaiju.

I haven't played DAMM in a long time now but I do still have the same GameCube disc with the original case and booklet that I got more than 23 years ago. I also still have the Nintendo Wii console that I got in 2012 and it can play GameCube discs, so I can dig that out of the closet whenever I want to play it again but I just don't have much time for video games these days. I've never been a major gamer but my lady has always been a PlayStation player, so we've kept up with the latest PlayStation consoles and I've been getting my Godzilla gaming fix from the PS4 game and GigaBash for years now. My heart goes out to all of the kids who have become Godzilla fans since the PS4 game went out of print, because I know they've been craving a modern console game that lets them play as Godzilla and they've been waiting much longer than I did for DAMM. If they were in middle school when Legendary's Godzilla: King of the Monsters opened in theaters then they're in college now! I'm psyched to get this remastered edition of DAMM for the PS5 this November but I'm especially thrilled for all of the young fans today who will get to play it for the first time. I know exactly how exciting this is for them!

[Kailem]

Likewise I was also already a huge Godzilla fan by the time DAMM came out. I had a Gamecube but I'd kinda drifted more towards PC gaming in the early 2000's, so I wasn't keeping up with console gaming news as much as I used to. I still remember having no idea the game existed until I saw an ad for it on TV that had Ghidorah gameplay and being like "wait, WHAT?! There's a Godzilla game out for the Gamecube?!?!"

Needless to say I bought it asap and played the hell out of it. It's such a fun game. It was also kinda weird playing it in the UK as several of the films that some of the monsters were from weren't available here (and still aren't!), so I had kind of a backwards experience to what most US players probably had when I bought my multi-region DVD player and was able to import those films. I remember watching Godzilla vs Destoroyah for the first time and thinking "he sounds just like he does in the game!"

And yeah it got a lot of replays on my Wii as well, which was even better because the resolution was slightly higher than on the Gamecube itself. I still think it's the best of the Pipeworks Godzilla game trilogy, despite having the smallest roster. It's the one that's clearly the most polished and complete, with Save the Earth and Unleashed both feeling rushed and rough around the edges. I've long suspected that's because Atari probably just gave Pipeworks as long as they needed to get DAMM made because they didn't have any expectations for it, but then once it turned out to be a surprise success they made them rush the sequel out for a Christmas release. Not to mention with the Gamecube being more powerful than the PS2 and OG Xbox there was a noticeable graphical downgrade for STE compared to DAMM.

Still, I do very much hope the sales of this remaster convince them to go ahead with remastering Save the Earth and Unleashed as well, because they'd absolutely be day-one purchases too.