NES Horror Legend Is Turning Into A Real Game

In 2011, a guy using the handle Cosbydaf wrote a story on the web about a Godzilla game he decided to revisit when he was a kid. It was a creepypasta — in other words, an internet tall tale intended to scare the hell out of anyone reading it.

The story was a curious one: Cosbydaf claimed that he had come across a copy of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters that was…different. For example, defeating certain monsters would cause them to explode in a weird red glitch:

Some areas seemed to be made entirely out of monster eyeballs:

Periodically, the game would even ask him strange questions via a feature that was never in the original Monster of Monsters:

There were even bizarre horror scenes that seemed created specifically to unsettle Cosbydaf:

My favourite detail, however, is that the game — which was originally released in 1989 for the NES — somehow had creatures from the Godzilla movies that weren’t created until the 2000’s. Overall, it’s one of the most detailed creepypastas out there, famed for being very image-heavy according to the Creepypasta Wiki. But, it wasn’t based on an actual game or anything like that — it was all make-believe! Now in 2015, however, developer Iuri Nery is actually making a real, playable game out of the legend, and so far progress on it seems pretty good:

Those are the wonders of accessible game development for you: now people can turn tall tales into a reality. Of course, as neat as it is that someone is bringing a creepypasta to life, it’s easier to be impressed by it when you’re familiar with the original tale. I spent an hour reading through most of it last night, and I was very impressed by how fleshed out and entertaining it is. The first two chapters can be found below, and you can follow development on NES Godzilla creepypasta game here.

NES Godzilla Creepypasta/Chapter 1: Earth & Mars

When I was a little kid, the two things I loved most in life were Godzilla, and NES games. So naturally when Godzilla: Monster of Monsters came out, it was like a dream come true. Well, almost. To sum it up, most of the game revolved around getting through (very repetitive) outer space levels while smashing up tanks and jets, and then fighting against Godzilla’s monster enemies. Overall it was pretty mediocre, but back then I didn’t care. When I got the game as a present for my tenth birthday, I played it night and day, as much as I could.

Unfortunately I had traded the game for Amagon a year later, much to my regret when I found out what that game was like. Recently, I had bought a new NES system, and through a lot of hunting and asking around, my friend Billy finally managed to find a copy of Godzilla: Monster of Monsters.

I was pumped to play my favourite childhood game. It never even occurred to me to ask where Billy found it. He also gave me some other games like Legend of Zelda, Bomberman and some stupid thing called Action 52, but Godzilla had to come first.

So I started the game, and the nostalgia came flooding back like a tidal wave. Godzilla’s 8-bit theme song flooded proudly through the speakers and I was soon grinning like an idiot.

Some people laugh at me for playing such outdated games, but I’ve never had as much enjoyment for any games other than those on the NES. Those 8-bit games take me back to when things were much simpler, more…safe. But after what’s happened with this game I don’t have those feelings anymore.

I had forgotten how quick the fun of smashing things as Godzilla wore off in the scrolling levels. The game bombards you with bullets and things crashing into you from every direction, and you’re too big to avoid most of them. Although my excitement had worn down some, it wasn’t long at all before I got to my first boss battle.

My first opponent was Gezora, an obscure squid kaiju who had never been in a Godzilla movie.

The most annoying thing about fighting Gezora is that he always backs you into a corner and starts smacking you with his tentacle, and you’re unable to move until he gets off you. This move doesn’t do any damage, but it can stall you until the timer runs out and you have to start the fight over, and he regains some health.

It’s as annoying as it sounds. And of course, he did it when I fought him. Only for some reason this caused the game to glitch up, because once he started smacking me, he never stopped. The timer is supposed to end the fight in about forty seconds, but this lasted for nearly five minutes. After a while the graphics started to mess up, with little red blocks all over the place.

Which was weird, but I just took the game out, blew on it, and then started again. I wasn’t about to let a little glitch stand in my way. So I started again and this time defeated Gezora and the level’s other boss monster, Moguera without any problems.

So then it was onto the next planet: Mars. I browsed around the board and found something unexpected: where Varan’s piece should have been, there was instead a piece representing Titanosaurus. There were only ten kaiju in the game, and Titanosaurus was not one of them. Or so I thought. Perhaps Titanosaurus was originally intended to be in the game but was swapped out with Varan for some reason?

So I began to feel very excited — not only was I playing my favourite game, but I was playing a prototype of some sort with a new monster! Needless to say, I ran through the levels as fast as I could to see Titanosaurus in action.

Fought Gezora again and beat him before he could do his tentacle smack, but this time the glitch started happening when he died. Gezora’s sprite didn’t sink to the bottom, but instead seemed to be devoured by the glitch, and his eye started randomly spawning all over the screen.

I know now that these glitches with Gezora were my first warning sign that something was very wrong with this game. But foolishly I ignored it, and proceeded on to fight Moguera, who this time had a glitch of his own:

Moguera was twice the size he should have been, which startled me. He was also considerably harder to beat than usual(which is to say, not at all), but soon I had defeated him also, and when he died yet another glitch happened:

This happened extremely fast so I was lucky to get a screencap of it at all, but what happened was that the Giant Moguera sprite started to “shatter” and “melt”. Also if you look at the garbled text at the right corner of the screen, you’ll notice what appears to be a bird in a cage…I still have no idea what that meant.

At this point I was about to fight Titanosaurus, and I was worried as to what kind of glitches would happen this time. But to my surprise, Titanosaurus looked just fine, although all of the game’s bipedal monsters were the same height, Titanosaurus was a bit taller. But since Titanosaurus actually was taller than Godzilla in his film debut, I thought this was kinda cool.

After a very fun fight with the monster that wasn’t supposed to be in the game, I took over the enemy base and proceeded not to Jupiter like normal, but instead to… “Pathos”:

Chapter 2

Pathos was the same as Jupiter in layout, except the board was dark blue rather than green. The first thing I noticed was that all the usual level icons had been replaced by a blue rock and some kind of orange honeycomb shape.

There was one icon that had part of the Jungle Icon shape, but I didn’t pay much thought to it. I checked the other side of the board to see the new monster. Instead of Hedorah, it was Biollante.

But that couldn’t have been right. “Godzilla vs Biollante” didn’t come out until 1989, and this game was made 1988. Perhaps Toho put Biollante in the game to build excitement for the movie next year, but changed their minds? I tried to rationalize the game’s abnormalities any way I could, but this would prove to be futile.

Pathos’ map song was the first new song I heard in the game. Like most of the new songs it was hard to describe, I’ll try.

It started out slow and suspenseful, much slower than any song in the game. But every twelve seconds or so there would be a loud clashing sound, and the tempo changed. It was like the composer randomly played parts from five different songs with the same instruments.

I moved Godzilla over to one of the many blue rock icons that had replaced the jungle icons and started the level. The level resembled a blue mountain range with a blood red planet in the sky. But there was something odd about the mountains, they had a “shredded paper” look to them. I thought at first maybe the glitch had affected it, but it looked far too intentional.

I quickly noticed something else about this new level: There were no enemies, at all. Not even any obstacles.

I should also mention that this was were the point meter started to become glitched beyond comprehension. But it didn’t bother me much, I never keep up with game points.

So without having to focus on anything, I listened to the music while walking through the level unopposed. The music had a sorrowful feel to it. It would have been rather pleasant, had I heard it in a normal game.

The level went on for three screens, but with no obstacles around I finished it very quickly. I tried other levels of the same type to see if any enemies appear, but there were none. There was little else to be seen in the blue mountains, so I tried the other level type.

I started one of the orange levels, and my eyes were assaulted with a grotesque background of tumorous orange eyes. The “sky” was the same as the ground, so I I assumed the game was indicating that this level takes place in a cave.

The only enemies here were Matango Spawn, but as you can see the little bastards were everywhere. The music certainly didn’t help, with a mixture of screeching sounds and loud drum beats that sounded like a monster’s theme in a horror film. After completing it, I tried to avoid playing through anymore of these levels whenever I could.

The map was short so it was only a few minutes before I was headed towards a rematch with Gezora and Moguera. But this time, their sprites and attack patterns were vastly different.

I fought Moguera first. Moguera’s replacement was a flying machine with a slight resemblance to a Pascagoula alien. It was a bit like fighting Mothra, only it moved with a lot more grace. It attacked by spinning its front tentacle like a corkscrew, and it still had an eye beam, except now it fired from the drill.

This lanky aberration had replaced Gezora, and the new beast was more of a challenge. It would run and jump at a fast pace, constantly swinging its arms around making it hard to get close, and of course it tried to pin me in the corner with as much annoying resolve as ever. I defeated it using a combination of tail whips and heat beam spamming.

I defeated them and was going to fight Titanosaurus, but when I started the fight Titanosaurus was nowhere to be seen, and the game simply went back to the map with the Titanosaurus piece now missing.

There was no one left to fight now but Biollante, so I eagerly started the battle.

I was quite surprised that Biollante started the fight in her Rose Form. She was immobile and used tentacles to keep me away from the main body, which took the most damage.

As expected, she turned into her Final Form after taking enough damage. The sprite looked pretty damn good for 8-bit.

The battle technique was the same, except now Biollante could move, albeit slower than any other monster. Being hit by the tentacles did more damage now, and Biollante could do an acid spit, which I managed to avoid by jumping in the screencap:

Not much more difficult to beat than Titanosaurus, it only took two rounds. But when Biollante was gone, The music had stopped, and there was a new icon replacing the base:

This icon wasn’t there before I beat Biollante. It resembled a red tribal mask, and I had a feeling of dread when I saw it. But it since it replaced the base, it must be the only way to exit Pathos. I moved Godzilla to the square and started the level.

It was a hellish looking place with no sky, and a flickering fire in the background. The fire looked far more advanced than anything I’ve seen on the NES. There was “music”, in the form of a slow, steady drum sound resembling a heartbeat.

All the text on the top of the screen, and the life bar, were gone. In their place was a single bit of text in the middle of the screen that said “RUN”.

My feeling of dread had intensified. I cautiously walked through the level, but like the blue mountains there were no enemies. I paced around for a minute before thinking “Run? …from what?”

The first time it hit me, I didn’t even see it.

I heard a noise outside my room and turned back to see if something fell, and when I looked back Godzilla was dying. I figured it must have just been a glitch, but I wasn’t going to play through the game without Godzilla so I restarted the game and went to the password screen.

Have I ever mentioned how creepy the password screen music is? If you’ve played the game, you know what I mean. It doesn’t at all fit the mood of the game, it’s more like something from a horror game. Maybe they made it like that so kids wouldn’t cheat.

I was quite annoyed at this point, because I thought I was going to have to fight all the monsters again. But that didn’t happen. The game started me off right where I was before I started the red face level. So I tried again, making sure to pay attention this time.

That’s when heard a low bellowing sound, and then I saw it. This….thing.

Do you know that feeling your body has when you feel like you’re in extreme danger? You start to recoil and tense up as the adrenaline flows through your veins, and your nerves start to feel very cold?

That’s the feeling I had when I took this screencap.

I haven’t seen all the Godzilla movies, but I’m pretty damn sure THIS was never in any of them. It had to be something the creators made up. But what kind of sick fuck would put THIS in a children’s game?

By sheer dumb luck, or perhaps the adrenaline boost, I managed to run fast enough to get away from it. It ran very fast, so much so that if you saw it you were almost certainly going to die. And when I say “die”, I mean your monster gets killed instantly if the creature touches them.

Once I had gone back to the map, I was so afraid that I was extremely tempted to just shut the game off and try to pretend this never happened. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen, it couldn’t have been real.

And even if I wanted to continue, I still had to get Mothra through this chase level. But as I stayed inactive on the map screen for a few minutes, my fear was replaced by burning curiosity. What the hell had just happened? What was the rest of the game like? I only had to beat this level with Mothra and then it was onto the next world.

But when I moved Mothra to the red face, the game registered it as me beating the level. I was quite relieved. I tried to prepare myself for the next world: “Trance”.

You can read the rest of the Godzilla creepypasta here.