Oh Godzilla what have they done to you?
The plot of the game is fairly straight forward, war has broken out between Earth and Planet X, and Godzilla and Mothra are Earth's first and last lines of defense against the alien onslaught. Through out the game, you control both Godzilla and Mothra as they fight their way through various battle zones and engage a variety of monsters from the Godzilla series.
Overall the graphics are pretty good for the NES Era, Godzilla and Mothra are well done, and look like their movie counterparts. During the battle zone stages, it's fun to attack the various enemy space ships and tanks. However the highlight of the gameplay are the fights between Godzilla, Mothra, and an enemy monster, who are all drawn from the various Godzilla Movies. However the graphics and over all game play are the only few redeeming factors for this game.
While the graphics and game play are over all okay, they are also the game's fatal flaw. At times the graphics will flicker or suffer from lag time, however this is a common flaw with NES games and many games played on 8-bit consoles caused by too much being on the screen at once. However the biggest flaw lies in the gameplay itself. When one thinks of a Godzilla game, they think of rampaging through cities, instead we are treated to a combination of chess master and super mario. Before you can enter a battle zone, you have to first use a hexagonal shaped chess board to move your monsters to the various enemy battle fields, and only then can you fight in the battle zone or against the enemy monster. But more then anything most of the game play is just plain boaring, often having the same battle zone repeated over and over again.
Another major problem lies in the controls, especially on the hexagonal boards. Often time the controls fail to respond, or are so stiff that it takes forever to execute a simple move, such as moving from one square to another on the map screen, or executing an attack. The only time that the controls seem to be fairly responsive, is when you're fighting the other monsters.
Another problem with this game is a lack of Godzilla Characters, as the player you're limited to just Godzilla and Mothra while the computer has control of dozens, and some of the monsters, such as Magura, Gezora, and Varien either never appeared in a Godzilla movie until long after this game had been released or were restricted to stock footage or poster cameos in other Godzilla movies. It isn't until much later in the game that you start encountering much more appropriate Godzilla villains including fan favorites Mechagodzilla and King Gidorah.
Overall Godzilla Monster of Monsters had the potential to be the definitive Godzilla Game of the 8-Bit Era, but boring and repetitive game play coupled with crippled controls, and a lack of Godzilla monsters destroyed any chance of this game appealing to anyone but hardcore Godzilla Fans or people desiring a complete NES Library.