King of the Monsters

[LoneSage]

For the first time, I played through these two games. I owned KOTM2 on SNES a long time ago but never spent too much time on it.

Before I talk, here are some old threads from 20-ish years ago talking about the games:
From the day before 9/11: https://neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/opinions-on-king-of-the-monsters.58227/
From 2002: https://neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/king-of-the-monsters.52926/
Another from 2002, where the user formerly known as nruva shares a story that the lead designer on PS2's War of the Monsters never heard of KOTM before: https://neo-geo.com/forums/index.ph...ad-a-point-in-the-emumaster-thread-but.50479/
From 2006, long before this Biden economy: https://neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/where-my-king-of-the-monster-fans-at.129439/

Bobak wrote two good reviews for both games:
KOTM 1: https://www.neo-geo.com/reviews/neo-reviews/kingofmonsters/kom.html
KOTM 2: https://neo-geo.com/reviews/neo-reviews/kom2/kom2.html

OK then, now I'll get onto my thoughts.

I first played through 2, and man, what a slog. It reminded me of 3 Count Bout, in the sense that the game looks fantastic but is just not fun to go through. The struggling grapple sessions are complete bullshit, where you'll lose more than half the time for seemingly no reason. Normal punches and kicks do so little damage they may as well be nil. It feels impossible to get in any special attacks with how long it takes for them to charge. The last level boss rush is a complete chore, followed by one of the most monotonous bosses in the entire Neo library. A little extra polish and care would have gone a long way with this one. Clearly the graphics had a lot of polish and care, but things like not being able to do anything about the underwater slug boss's defense makes it drag on way, wayyyy too long.

The monster designs and gore were appreciated, at the least.

The second level boss is my favorite:


And look at this fucking guy, jesus SNK:


The last boss, as horrible as it is, is an absolute unit:


The ending credits, along with the nice developer caricatures (how many Neo games did that? I can't think of any others), included this little Easter egg showing the human host's body being decoupled from the monster. Gross bro!



After I played 2, the next day I went through 1. Personally I'm not a fan of wrestling games. I was kinda dreading going through it because I heard it lacked the scrolling sections from the sequel and was purely a wrestling game. Imagine my surprise when that helped make it the superior game to the sequel. Despite not being as nice looking as the sequel, keeping the levels concentrated to one area of a city and having electric lines acting as the ring's ropes really helped this game. I also liked the game taking place entirely in Japan instead of haphazardly all over the world. In the sequel's first level New York setting, there's a freaking space shuttle. I've always liked seeing real life locations in video games so it's cool seeing the Glico Running Man and Osaka Castle in Osaka. The game itself has far less bullshit and is way more fair than the sequel. On top of that, six characters compared to the sequel's three (what happened there?). And while I'm not a big fan of the game repeating itself fighting the same six monsters again, it's a lot more tolerable than the sequel's annoying boss rush because the levels take place at different times of day than the first time around. The feeling of the game is also much less grotesque than the sequel, no blood as well. Not bad or good, just different.

I would actually like to play this multiplayer, seems like it'd be a fun time.

Golden Pavilion spotted in Kyoto:


You see the Glico Running Man?


My first time seeing this ending. Not as classic an ending as Cyber-Lip but still prime early SNK goofy endings.



All right then. Feel free to talk about King of the Monsters.

 

[herb]

I played through KOTM1 for the 1st time earlier this year and it was incredibly fun

 

[BeefJerky]

Love both a lot but your critique of KOTM2 is valid, Sage. I've heard people say teh Neo has no good wrasslin' games but KOTM1 is tits.

When I was a kid my family would go on vacation to a little beach town in Florida and the laundromat there had a big red with KOTM1 in it. Played it a lot over the years. It's pretty high up on my homecart want list but I've been having trouble finding a complete copy in nice shape that isn't horribly overpriced.

 

[Neo Alec]

Did you watch my vids? I already said all this stuff once, and for all time. lol

Watch BBH's KOTM2 1CC video. He shows how to stay out of the grapples.

Someone mentioned in my comments that you can actually control the KOTM2 grapples if you time your button mashing to the rocking back and forth of the characters during the grapples. I never tried this, since it was after I was done playing, at least for the near future.

 

[LoneSage]

Did you watch my vids? I already said all this stuff once, and for all time. lol

Watch BBH's KOTM2 1CC video. He shows how to stay out of the grapples.

Haven't seen your vids on these two because of Chinternet.

Funny enough, someone uploaded BBH's 1CC on the Chinese YouTube equivalent.

 

[GutsDozer]

The first KOTM was my favorite as well. It was just different enough from the sequel that KOTM2 just doesn't feel as fun. Same thing with World Heroes. My personal favorite is WH2J. But playwise the first World heroes is better and had more features like death match. I guess it just comes down to personal taste.

 

[wataru330]

Chinternet.

Bruh. Every now and then, I wonder if you’ll come home.

 

[Neo Alec]

Haven't seen your vids on these two because of Chinternet.

Guess they block all those NordVPN ads as well.

My first time seeing this ending. Not as classic an ending as Cyber-Lip but still prime early SNK goofy endings.
View attachment 75753

It's amazing because of the "Oh noo. Oh noo," with the funny accent.

 

[Azra113]

KOTM 2 is a guilty pleasure, the final stage is complete bullshit though.

 

[NeoSneth]

KOTM 2 is a guilty pleasure, the final stage is complete bullshit though.

Isn't the whole game Bullshit? Everything the computer does is utter bullshit.
I seem to recall people were looking into the code to figure out the grapple logic. Was that ever figured out for KOTM2?

 

[Neo Alec]

Isn't the whole game Bullshit? Everything the computer does is utter bullshit.
I seem to recall people were looking into the code to figure out the grapple logic. Was that ever figured out for KOTM2?

Here's what silverwings commented on my video, if someone wants to confirm or deny:

@silverwings21
5 months ago
22:11 The grappling in this one isn't about tapping the button as fast as you can, but tapping it once, at the right time. You rock back and forth in a grapple, you got to tap the button at the right frame of animation (I forget which, it's been a while since I played it: either when you are back or forth).

There are 2 phases to grappling too: a winning & losing phase (see 8:57) Woo starts the grapple winning (he's shaking the boss) then he is in the losing phase (the boss is shaking him, due to tapping the button at the wrong frame of animation) then Woo loses the losing phase and has the wrestling done on him by the boss.

 

[LoneSage]

Alec I can't watch your videos, can you share a little of your throughts here on both games? Cheers

 

[Neo Alec]

Alec I can't watch your videos, can you share a little of your throughts here on both games? Cheers

Man... I need to get back to not writing the 3 Count Bout Video. Is the CCP still letting laowai just hang around?

KOTM1 sucks and it's a slog, but it's cool that you can do 2-player co-op and I have a lot of nostalgia for it. It's a great concept that for some reason no one besides SNK was quite coming up with (guess that's why it was ported to commoner consoles).

I was always a fan of KOTM2 but working on this video I fully realized all the bad things that have been said about it. The presentation is excellent, but it's very unfair, forcing you to resort to cheap strategies. It can still be fun for the occasional casual play with 2 players.

 

[Azathoth]

KotM was the first Neo game I ever saw in an arcade. They had it in one of those cabs where the control panel is a pedestal and the game plays a few feet away on a large projection monitor. I never got to play it, but got to watch two guys play a 2 on 2 match and I thought it looked amazing. I was a huge fan of giant monster movies growing up and up to that point the only thing that I had ever played dealing with the subject was Godzilla on the NES, so KotM was mind blowing.

When the Genesis port released I picked it up as soon as I saw it even though no reviews of it were available at the time and I still hadn't played the arcade version. I had a lot of fun with it. Having only 4 characters and being restricted to 1v1 matches sucked, but beyond that I thought it was great. I always thought the animation was a bit crap but it wasn't until much later I found out the arcade original was just as choppy. I think they did a great job cramming a lot of shit into a tiny 8m cart, it's a port where if you enjoyed the original then you'd probably be happy with the Genesis version. IMO it's behind Slam Masters for best Genesis wrestling game.

I like the Genesis control setup more than the arcade version, although maybe it's just from playing it first and being used to it. For the little time I played it the SNES port seemed like the lesser of the two.

Genesis KotM2 is an odd duck. I don't think I'd call it horrible, but if you're gonna be strictly 1v1 I'd just as soon have all the mechanics and setup as the first game. Fireball motions do not mesh well if you're on a 3d plane.

 

[NeoSneth]

KotM1 is a fun romp. I never thought about it, but @Neo Alec is right in that it's a slog. It's a very slow match for an arcade game. As a videogame I'll defend it all day.
KotM2 is a downgrade in everything but some graphics.

 

[BIG BEAR]

I still love KOTM2 and play through it from time to time.The key to this game is being passive aggressive where you allow the CPU to initiate the grapple..in the meantime,you want to kick,punch, dropkick and throw projectiles(piece of building ,aircraft and power up attacks) at you're opponent.
The power up attacks have the mega man element where some attacks are more affective on certain end stage bosses than others..this where the minus power up comes in handy because you can only carry two Super Attacks.
By the time your enemy opponent grabs you for the grapple you're odds of winning will be very good.
I didn't know anything about timing the animation in the grapple but I will give it a try in the future..I always like discovering something new in KOTM2

The first KOM is a nothing burger to me...I remember purchasing this one upon launch and running back to Babbage's to swap it for something different..
That was very nice of EB and Babbage's to allow us to swap 200 USD worth of plastic back then..
I'm sure we would all be happy to purchase AES games for 200 USD a pop now...
BB