While I was waiting outside the Atari booth for my appointment to see Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered to start, I heard it, friends. The noise. You know which one. And I knew, then and there, that my faith had been rewarded. What I did not expect was for them to put a controller in my hands. But I’m really glad they did.

One of the coolest things about this remaster is that it’s being developed by the original team at Pipeworks, and you can feel it when you play it. I confess I hadn’t played it in a hot second; that game is from 2002, after all. But this feels like the game I remember burning countless days of my life with. And it was time well spent, honestly.

I jumped into one-on-one multiplayer, and let me tell you, folks, Destroy All Monsters Melee still has that immediate sense of joy I felt playing it when I was a kid. And it looks stunning. This may be billed as a remaster, but Pipeworks hasn’t just juiced the resolution and called it a destroyed city. These monsters – and the environments they’re rampaging through – look great. Seriously, go find footage of the original game and then go watch footage from this. This bad boy runs in Unreal Engine 5, and it looks like it. And it’s not just the monsters who look better. You can play each stage during the day or at night, which rules.

This may be billed as a remaster, but Pipeworks hasn’t just juiced the resolution and called it a destroyed city. These monsters – and the environments they’re rampaging through – look great. Seriously, go find footage of the original game and then go watch footage from this. “

My first match had me playing as Ghidorah. Initially, I was worried about range because Ghidorah doesn’t have arms. But he does have three very long necks and surprisingly versatile kicks and a really strong beam attack that’s somehow even stronger if you charge it up. He’s kind of a menace, actually, and I was surprised how quickly I picked up the game again after having not played it in well over a decade. Whether I was using my energy beams to send my opponent flying across the stage, hurling a building at them, or grabbing them and bouncing them around like a volleyball on Ghidorah’s heads, it felt great. But getting hit? It doesn’t feel good, and it shouldn’t! These are big, lumbering beasts, and if you get knocked off your spot, you’ll feel it. I pulled off the victory, but I was having too much fun to worry about it.

For our second match, I went back to an old favorite: Godzilla from Godzilla 2000, which was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw in a theater. That said, I feel like my opponent took the last game a little personally, because he picked MechaGodzilla and locked in. Original MechaGodzilla, mind you. While the original game had MechaGodzilla 2, the remaster will feature the OG.

This match was much closer. Godzilla 2000, God(zilla) bless him, doesn’t have the pure brute force (or range) Ghidorah packs, though his tail is particularly nasty. What he does have, though, is a frankly absurdly powerful atomic breath that not only does hilarious amounts of damage but also pushes enemies mad yonder. So while Ghidorah felt like he could play at any range, my millennium monster felt like he wanted to play at range, which was… difficult, because MechaGodzilla was no slouch there, either. I did pull it out with some lucky atomic breaths, a lot of thrown buildings, and the odd lucky tail attack, but it was last-pixel-you-can’t-even-see close, and there wasn’t much city left when we were done wrestling around in it. That’s Godzilla, baby.

In addition to the monster-mashing melee action, the remaster will improve the original’s unlock system, so you can unlock monsters, locations, and gallery items in any order you like, and, in what is in my opinion the most exciting addition, this version will feature online multiplayer. Godzilla be praised.

The nature of tradeshow appointments means I only got to spend a little time with Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, but it left me hankering for more, and that’s not a bad place to be. Now I just need to get some friends online come November. We got cities to destroy, and it’ll be cool not to have to be on the same couch to do it.

Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Bluesky @edgarallanbro.