I’m not sure what to think about this game. I sent my Chapter 1 write-up to Zach to get his thoughts on it, to see if he could give an insight on what it was doing.

“I told you before, I don’t know how the game does these things.  If you’re suggesting I put these graphics in the game myself, you’re mistaken because this is the first I’ve seen of any of it.

It looks like the game has recreated itself again since I played it. That’s not a good sign.

Not a very helpful response, but oh well. I don’t know what I expected him to say anyway. As for the game, I’m heading into World 2 today.

It’s called “Gelid”. No more actual planets?

And here’s the Gelid board. Glad to see that I have Godzilla! There’s quite a variety of levels here. That evil looking symbol at the bottom right must be my exit. I hope I don’t meet up with Red in here.

By pressing Select on the level icons I discovered that these levels all have their own names, which are:

“TUNDRA”

“ICE CAVE”

“ISOLATION ZONE”

“LOST WAY”

“TEMPLE OF SILENCE”

“SIN”

The first two sound reasonable enough. But the others, I have no idea. I’ll start with a Tundra level.

TUNDRA

The Tundra is about what I expected. It’s quite pretty to look at.  Godzilla plays like normal, but he moves slightly faster, which is nice. The music here is a new track which has a subtle yet foreboding vibe to it. It has a definite “wintery” sound, and seems more advanced than the usual NES music.

Stage creatures are no longer dinosaurs, instead the Tundra is populated with various weird beasts. I suspect this will be the case for the rest of the game, but I don’t know.

There’s not a whole lot going on in here. I don’t have to use many attacks because most of the creatures here are non-aggressive. It’s rather calming.

The snowfall has turned into a blizzard. It’s hard to see and I’m coming across more and more bodies buried in the snow.

The snow went berserk and made it almost impossible to see when I reached the end of the level. When it started coming down like this I could tell that that my observation time was over, so I got to the end quickly.

There wasn’t much resistance from enemies. Actually, I didn’t come across anything living near the end.

ICE CAVE

After having to deal with the blizzard, I’m somewhat glad that this level is “indoors”. I can’t go left for obvious reasons, so I head on to the right. The music is very odd – somewhere between “relaxing” and “mind-numbing”.

These blue creatures are enemies that chase me around. They don’t deal much damage but I prefer to outrun them, trying to conserve my health.

There are numerous spiked pits I have to jump over, it’s a tricky to do so without running into the beasts. You can see me failing at that in the screenshot.

I also have trouble with these things that use freeze breath. They seem to hone in on my presence and wait to attack at the most inconvenient spot.

The level ends with a mini-boss fight against this crystal covered creature. There’s very little room to move without getting stabbed by icicles, though the boss doesn’t seem affected by them. He moves fast and can spin in the air, but he’s not much tougher than the other enemies.

The 1st real boss is a crab called “Ganimes”. Maybe that’s a Godzilla monster, I’ve never heard of it before.

Fight was quite easy. The crab moves forward and back while snapping with it’s claws, then jumps and spits. I made short work of it by constantly kicking it in the face.

Things are going pretty well so far, but I’m only halfway through.

ISOLATION  ZONE

This level is some kind of platform in space surrounded by floating crystals. Very slow, lonely sounding music playing in here. Some of the crystals have baby-like things inside them, which I can knock out by punching the crystal.

When I punch an empty crystal, it takes me to a small, boxed-in area. I went into 4 crystal rooms, the first was the screenshot above, the second was the same except the room was empty.

The third sent me to a frozen corridor where I had to run past snake monsters that emerge from holes in the wall.

And the fourth sent me to this little character. I walked up to him and a text screen came up, he had something to say;

Um….citation needed? No seriously, I don’t get it.

And that was the end of the level apparently.
Another boss fight, this time the opponent is a giant turtle called “Kamoebas”.

It’s slower than Ganimes and doesn’t have any ranged attacks. But it’s more damage resistant, and doesn’t seem to move in a set pattern.

Sometimes it extends it’s neck out to bite me, but it’s easily avoided. I’m getting a little concerned by how low my health is. I can only hope the game increases my life meter soon.

LOST  WAY

Lost Way is also a floating level like Isolation Zone, except with a cloudy background and numerous platforms. The music is gentle and calm, sounds like a lullaby. I proceed in the direction of the arrows (though I would have gone to the right anyway).

This level has me on edge because I can’t always tell if I’m going to land on a platform when I jump or if I’ll just make Godzilla fall to his death.

It might seem like the platforms are densely packed from the screenshots, but it’s more like there are clusters of platforms throughout the level, some of which have wide spaces in between them. I’m having to make many “leaps of faith”.

There are plenty of creatures here, some of which are enemies from previous levels. Among them is the ice breather(damn it). It’s easier to get rid of them here than it was in the caves, because I can make them fall off the blocks. I kill all the ice breathers I see to prevent having one of them freeze me mid-jump.

After wandering around for a few minutes I found this platform of gold blocks that moves up and down. It took me down to an area with a blue dinosaur (why is everything blue in Gelid?), which I thought was an enemy at first, but instead of attacking it started following me around.

As the dinosaur and I march on, we see many other creatures wandering around, looking just as confused as us. That’s when I realized that the arrows don’t actually lead anywhere, they’re intended to lead the occupants of this place into dead ends.

So now I’m ignoring the arrows, and instead looking for the gold blocks. I’ve got no idea which direction the exit might be, but I have a hunch that those will lead me to it.

There’s also something that looks a floating blob of snow. Don’t know what that’s about.

After using two more gold elevator blocks we found this little guy, who spoke:

I felt sorry for the poor whatsit, so without even thinking about it I blurted out “Sure.”

He responded to what I said, and that freaked me out. I hadn’t pressed any buttons or anything, but “Usol” heard my voice…somehow.

It made me jump, but Usol seems harmless enough. So I’m gonna keep on looking for the exit.

Aaand we found the exit. Took about 6 minutes of backtracking, the exit ended up being somewhere behind the spot where I started.

TEMPLE OF SILENCE

Right from the start, an enemy comes crawling at me. It’s a slug looking thing with it’s arms tied and mouth sewn shut. It has no attacks except running at me. There is no music, or any other sound here.

There’s lot of enemies in this level, I’m attempting to jump over/run past them. The temple appears to be nothing but a hallway of enemies.

Got to the edge of the hall. There was a drop which put me at another hall beneath the first one, going back to the left.

I don’t have a lot to say about this level, except that it has some damned strange looking enemies in it, and the complete lack of sound gives me an uncomfortable feeling. Not to mention the statues.

Here I am going through the end of the level. Lots of those ugly multi-face head things are floating around.

And that’s the last of the Gelid levels. Well, almost. Still have get through “SIN”.

Before I dive in there, I’m trying to figure out what this might be. The name is very vague, but suggests that this will be something unpleasant. The level icon doesn’t give me any hints.

..Yeah I don’t know. Here goes nothing –

It’s a boss fight! I should have known. As soon as I heard the music I could tell this would be a boss.

Got up close and heat beamed, but he kicked me. It didn’t do much damage, but I’ve only got 4 bars left so I can’t take too many hits.

I try to run up and hit hit and get smacked aside, if I’m too far away he starts using a freeze beam out of his eye. The only way to beat him is to keep moving constantly.

The “hyperactive squirrel” method of battle proved to be a winner. Lethar eventually grabbed Godzilla, and that’s when he got a heat beam to the face.

After Lethar died, an image of a gate appeared on the screen. It had 7 holes, one had Lethar’s icon in it and the other 6 were empty…

After pressing Start I’m sent back to the Title screen. Turning the game off for now.

Well, that was….insane. While playing the game I got so wrapped up in it that I sorta forgot that none of this should have been happening.

The game does seem to follow specific themes, with everything in Gelid being cold and blue, but for the most part… agh. I feel like there’s a traffic jam going on in my brain. I need to take a break.

The connection between the tv and computer is all set and ready to take screenshots.  I guess I’m ready to begin too. Here goes nothing…

Okay, the opening screen looks the same. If this is like Zach’s game there won’t be anything noticeable until the first boss fight, but I’m gonna be disappointed if this whole game ends up playing normally.

Only a few seconds in and already something’s off. I almost didn’t notice, but the “Last Game” option is gone.  I don’t know why, as usually it would have done the same thing as “New Game”.

Oh god, I really hope this doesn’t mean that I can’t save.  I don’t want to have to play this entire game in one sitting.

Maybe the world titles will work as passwords or something. No way to know until I start playing.

It skipped the Solar System Intro entirely. That’s a shame, I like hearing that music.

…What the? What is this? This isn’t what the Earth board is supposed to look like. And I don’t have Godzilla or Mothra?

Holy shit!

Looks like I don’t have to worry about not seeing anything new. Nothing in that above screenshot was in the original game, besides the life meter. I don’t think any of it was in Zachary’s playthrough either. The only other thing that seems to have remained the same is the music.

My lone playable character is this dinosaur. Since the meter refers to it as GODZILLA, I assume this is him prior to getting mutated.  So no heat beam (yet). It can only attack by punching and biting.

There isn’t much in this jungle aside from other dinosaurs. The pterodactyls divebomb me when I get close, most of the others either attack or run away. Sometimes when I kill one of these I get a health power-up, (which looks the same as the original).  It’s a short level, I got to the end in less than 2 minutes. I’ll try the blue and yellow icon next.

This level is a beach, as you can see. Those little crabs are a pain, they jump and latch on while draining health. But they don’t take much punishment and give health when they die, so it balances out. Only problem is that they’re everywhere in this level. I try to jump over them when I can.

In the second half of the level, there’s less of the crabs and more of these aquatic dinosaur/fish enemies that emerge from pits. I’ve played quite a few platformers in my day, so this is nothing difficult. It isn’t scary either, but it’s giving me a weird feeling. It’s hard to explain. It’s like if I hadn’t tried out the real game before, I might not have known anything was out of place.

For a “supernatural game”, so far it’s just playing like a normal game. But not the game that it should be. None of these dinosaurs or levels are supposed to be here, and I have no idea where they came from.

This 3rd level is very glitched. No enemies at all, and my Godzilla dinosaur is flashing and his body parts are rearranging themselves with every step. The music is similarly distorted, it’s slowed down and has a lower pitch.

I was going through the level, trying to figure what went wrong with it, when I suddenly got attacked by a very glitched Ghidorah! I almost freaked out because there was no way I would win a fight against Ghidorah like this. But then the game froze and made a loud buzzing sound, then it returned to the board like nothing happened. Weird.

The last level type is another jungle. It has the same graphics, but this time its set at night. The dinosaurs here are different, and a lot more aggressive. They come from the left and the right sides of the screen, so I have to pay attention to both.

I’m attacking the small dinosaurs for the power-up and avoiding the rest, because I’m fairly certain the triceratops at the end of the board is a boss fight. I don’t know what to expect from it, but I don’t want to be low on health.

The level is longer than the others, and I notice a strange kind of teamwork occurring with the enemies. The blue raptors will follow my dinosaur around and keep jumping at him, knocking me back into the path of the larger dinosaurs.

There’s another large dinosaur of the same color that does a similar thing, charging at me and inflicting damage until I either get away or kill them. It’s like these dinosaurs hate me for some reason!

Here I am at the boss fight. There’s a nuke going down in the background, and the battle is timed at 1 minute. This must be the decisive hour when the dinosaur becomes Godzilla. I guess this triceratops must be the strongest animal on the island, a rival. Better take him down now, or else a very different King of The Monsters will arise.

He doesn’t have much attack variety, he seems to be limited to charging. I jump when he does it and then assault him with everything I got (which isn’t much).

He went down with only 4 seconds to go. No time to outrun the bomb, but it seems I wasn’t supposed to. A “cutscene” starts to play:

When it ends, the game goes back to the Game Select menu. “New Game” has been replaced by “Continue”.

And that’s World 1. For my first impression…. I’m not sure what to say. I feel a bit overwhelmed. Where did all of this come from? And why?

Hello everyone. My name is Carl, and I have just obtained a game with quite a story behind it. Maybe you’ve already heard about Zach and his NES Godzilla cartridge? I wasn’t aware of it until I saw the eBay auction, and it really grabbed my interest.

I skimmed through the recounting of what the game supposedly did. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but something about the whole thing just captivated me, and I decided to buy the game. I thought if nothing else, I’d get a new game and a nice conversation piece. I used Buy-it-now and got it for a decent price, $10 including shipping.

Zach sent me an e-mail and we talked for a bit. He seems like a decent guy despite being a bit loopy and dramatic. He made it clear that he was dead serious about the game being unnatural and dangerous. I still wasn’t entirely convinced, but I played along.

About myself and the game: I actually never played NES Godzilla, at least not with the actual cartridge. After I won the bid I played the game on an emulator a bit to see what it was like, and also so I could point out noticeable differences (if there were any) later on. The first 2 worlds were decent fun, but it got boring pretty quick.

I’m not a Godzilla expert. I liked watching the movies when I was a little kid, but that was a long time ago. I hardly remember any of the monsters except for the really famous ones like Rodan and Mothra. So if the game starts throwing a bunch of obscure Godzilla related stuff at me, I might not catch it.

And here is the game cartridge itself:

There’s nothing visibly wrong with it, no weird marks or anything that would make it stand out. If it got misplaced and sorted in with some regular games, you’d never know the difference.

I haven’t actually started playing the game yet. I’m still in the process of hooking up the tv to the computer so I can take screencaps in the event that things get interesting. For now, here’s a photo I took of the title screen starting up: