Godzilla Generations: Maximum Impact

Dreamcast Game Review & Description

When General Entertainment decided to take another crack at bringing the King of the Monsters to Sega's Dreamcast in 1999, they wisely chose to burn down everything they'd built with the notorious Godzilla Generations and start fresh. Godzilla Generations: Maximum Impact abandons its predecessor's plodding city destruction simulator approach in favor of an on-rails shooter experience clearly inspired by Panzer Dragoon. Instead of wandering through Japanese cities at the pace of continental drift, you now autopilot forward while frantically aiming a cursor and unleashing atomic breath on anything unfortunate enough to get in your way. It's a radical transformation that trades methodical kaiju simulation for arcade-style action, and the results are, well, at least more interesting than watching paint dry on a building you'll knock down in five minutes.

The gameplay splits itself into two distinct flavors. City stages lock Godzilla into a fixed path as he stomps through urban environments, tasking you with targeting tanks, helicopters, jets, and buildings using a cursor-based targeting system. Boss stages pit you against the heavy hitters from the Heisei era film lineup: Biollante, King Ghidorah, Mothra, SpaceGodzilla, and the game's final challenge, Destoroyah. These monster battles allow free movement and introduce strategic elements like targeting specific body parts to disable abilities, like clipping a flyer's wings to ground them. Your atomic breath charges up in stages, progressing from standard blue beam to the devastating red spiral ray at maximum power. The lock-on mechanic attempts to help but proves frustratingly ineffective since you still need to manually aim even after locking onto targets, creating an awkward hybrid system that satisfies nobody.

Visually, Maximum Impact represents a significant upgrade over the original Generations, with more detailed textures and a Godzilla model that faithfully recreates the newer movie suit designs. The monster animations capture that perfect B-movie charm: flying kaiju dangle like they're suspended by invisible wires, military vehicles look appropriately toyetic, and the destruction feels satisfyingly cinematic. Unfortunately, technical issues like draw-in fog and environmental pop-in remind you that the Dreamcast was working hard to keep up. The orchestral soundtrack channels classic Godzilla movie themes effectively, and the monster roars are pitch-perfect reproductions from the films. When Godzilla unleashes his signature bellow, you instantly recognize it. Less impressive is the atomic breath sound effect, which resembles a generic energy generator rather than the iconic ray from the movies.

IGN awarded Maximum Impact a brutal 2.5 out of 10, calling it better than the original but declaring that only obsessive Godzilla fans would push past the first few levels. That assessment isn't entirely unfair. The controls feel unresponsive, with Godzilla seemingly deciding whether to obey your commands based on some internal coin flip. The boss battles range from tediously straightforward to genuinely infuriating, with Destoroyah on hard difficulty earning special mention as a lesson in cheap AI design. Her attacks combine luck-based dodging with range-dependent impossibility, creating scenarios where skill becomes irrelevant and prayer becomes your primary strategy. When you complete a level, Godzilla roars for approximately ten seconds, which grows old faster than you'd think when you're trying to maintain any sense of momentum.

Despite its flaws, Maximum Impact remains a curiosity worth experiencing for Dreamcast collectors and kaiju enthusiasts. It's one of only two Godzilla games released for the system and never made it outside Japan, giving it a certain import mystique. The game features proper cinematic cutscenes (with music but no sound effects, oddly), unlockable Viewer Mode for admiring monster models, and boss encounters presented in chronological order of their film appearances. General Entertainment clearly learned from the first game's disasters, even if they couldn't quite stick the landing on execution. It's not the kaiju experience Dreamcast deserved, but it beats wandering around aimlessly at glacial speeds. For those brave enough to hunt down this Japan-exclusive title, a range of hints, tips, and cheats related to Godzilla Generations: Maximum Impact may be found below.

GameShark Action Replay Cheat Codes:

The following dongle-dependent codes are designed for use with the Japanese (NTSC) version of the game, but may work on compatible systems:

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