PROLOGUE

There's something special about rediscovering an old relic or piece of tech, whether from your childhood or something fresh, unfamiliar, yet enticing. It's a feeling most are familiar with, either to fill in a gap of those old memories or to be enchanted by an object of a less advanced era. I was especially fascinated by the evolution of video game consoles, and I occasionally played some games I had as a kid. So it’s no surprise that I'm a sucker for old and obscure video games, leading me to go on shopping sprees for those games and consoles to try them out. I find it surreal to play a game that other people would've considered a part of their childhood, almost like discovering a time capsule.

Sorry if I haven't properly introduced myself. My name is Joshua. I started going around to play old and obscure games when I was 19 and mostly focused on games and consoles anytime before the 6th generation. I don't often go to Ebay to do this, simply because sometimes you can't fully trust people there. I prefer to go to a location and see the game in its physical form. There was an instance in which I went to a retro store sometime around March (I forgot what it was called, but it was a decent distance from my house). I picked up a lot of Nintendo games there, but what caught my eye was an NES cartridge called Godzilla: Monster of Monsters, whose cover photo was a bit wrinkled in some spots and had a “used” price tag of $10.45. I remember seeing bits of it online through longplays. From those previews, it's got nice artwork and decent music, though the gameplay can be repetitive. But then again, you could argue the same for all NES games at the time. Anyways, I purchased those games and drove home. I didn't start on that Godzilla game until around mid-June. And so, when the time came, I entered with no real expectations of how the game would go. The title screen was admirable in its sprite art, and so I started on NEW GAME.

The game seems to have started on Pluto, which I guessed meant it was through the solar system backward (if you consider Pluto a true planet). Weird decision, but oh well.

Godzilla is not particularly fast but does have strength. While Mothra...well, she isn’t the best for two reasons. Whenever she gets hit, she goes to the bottom left corner, and sometimes she’ll attack an enemy projectile that hurts her for no reason. It was good that both of my monsters were already level 10 by the time I finished this planet, so I didn’t have to worry about dying early. The bosses were sometimes challenging but no real difficulty, although those weird horseshoe-looking projectiles were annoying. And so when it came time to capture the enemy base, well...

This happened. From what it looks like, I’m either above space somehow, or in a sort of structure (which is an understatement considering there’s literally nothing in the background). I kept walking for a short while until I saw something resembling a shrine.

It was at this point that music would start to play. It’s been two years since I’ve heard it (and I'd prefer to forget it), but I remember it having this “calm” facade. It was played in a way where you could tell there were moments when it wanted to intensify in melody. But it couldn’t. Then the space in the middle had an eye fade in, and the side doors opened. Presumably, from that eye, it said:

Characters then appeared in both openings from the sides, and the eye was gone. The eye, or temple (I wasn't sure if they were the same at that moment) then declared:

Considering those two characters were not from any language on Earth, as far as I could tell, it was all luck-based. And at that moment, I couldn't say with absolute certainty if they were a benefit or a bad choice. Relying on my gut, I chose the option to the left and hoped for the best. A couple of seconds passed. The eye then “woke up” and...

And suddenly, the floor beneath me started to crack and shatter, from which a cutscene appeared showing Godzilla falling through.

“Well that was weird.” Was all I could say. I had a feeling that wasn’t part of the game but again, I figured it was a ROM hack. So I moved Mothra over to the base, expecting Neptune to be next. Instead I got this...