King of the Monsters

King of the Monsters is a fighting/wrestling game. It was released by SNK on July 1, 1991 in Japan (later released on the Virtual Console), with later ports for the Super NES and Sega Genesis by Takara. The game uses giant monsters that are reminiscent of kaiju and tokusatsu characters. King of the Monsters was included as part of SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 which was released for the Wii, PlayStation 2 and PSP in 2008.

Players choose one of six monsters (four in the 16-bit ports) for battle, and two players can join forces to fight the monsters together. Battles end when one of the monsters is pinned for a three count or if time expires (in which case the player loses).

The game consists of 12 total levels (8 in the 16-bit ports) which takes place in 6 cities in a futuristic 1996 Japan . Each city is featured twice with the game beginning and ending in Tokyo. Other cities include Kyoto, Okayama, Osaka , Kobe and Hiroshima (the latter two are omitted from the SNES port. The Sega Genesis port only features Tokyo with the other cities being "Mega Port", "Dragon City", and "Castle City"). The player first must defeat all six monsters, with the last monster being oneself, but in a different palette. Then the player must defeat the six monsters again, in the same order, but this time in different cities.

• Geon: A Godzilla-like dinosaur.
• Woo: A King Kong-like giant gorilla (not available on the ports).
• Poison Ghost: A creature covered in toxic waste, inspired by Hedorah (not available on the ports).
• Rocky: A giant Moai-like golem made of boulders, very likely to be an allusion to Daimajin
• Beetle Mania: A large beetle-like creature, possibly inspired by Megalon.
• Astro Guy: An Ultraman-like superhero with the name reference from Astro Boy.

The King of the Monsters series was mostly forgotten following the second game. However, it briefly received some recognition in 2005, when SNK Playmore released NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, a fighting game featuring many of the company's popular characters. Cyber Woo is featured as one of the playable characters, although in a much smaller form and controlled by a human. Also, Yuki and Ai, two other characters in the game, have a combined attack where they can change into Atomic Guy for a brief period of time. The game also features 2 King of the Monsters stages (one day, one night) where you can see the skeleton of super Geon and a rusted old Cyber Woo locked in combat.

Atomic Guy, Super Geon, and Cyber Woo appear as character cards in the DS game SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS. Both Atomic Guy and Super Geon have their names transliterated directly from Japanese, so their names are spelled as, respectively, "Atomic Gai" and "Super Zion".

In addition, King of the Monsters inclusion on SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 led to many rare pieces of King of the Monsters production art being featured on the disc. In 2018, the game was ported to the Nintendo Switch Shop by Hamster^[1]. The port features two extra features in a High Score Mode and Caravan Mode.^[2]

King of the Monsters was a regular on the popular Nickelodeon game show Nick Arcade. It was almost always picked, leaving other games like ActRaiser, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and El Viento out, this was the same on earlier broadcasts of Sky1 show Games World.

Mega criticised the game, awarding it a score of 10%, with Andy Dyer making the comment "unforgivably bad. There should be laws to protect us from crud like this".^[3]

• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms.^[1] Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers".^[2] This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months.^[3] The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing.^[4] A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.^[5]

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school.^[6][7] Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information.^[5] In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.^[5]

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount.^[8] This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign.^[7] A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art).^[9] Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel,^[10] and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.^[7]

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million.^[11] The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager.^[12][13][14] Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface.^[1] This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.^[15]

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue.^[16] Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.^[17]

• IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions

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