Game:

King of the Monsters 2 (1992)

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King of the Monsters 2 was developed by SNK and released in 1992. Calling all the monsters once again and strap up for THE NEXT THING! So a sequel was made, but is it any better than the first game overall? Well... not really, and that's quite disappointing to admit out loud.

SNK tried to do something different, albeit slightly and not too far a stretch from the first game. King of the Monsters 2 is now a side-scrolling/fighting/wrestling tri-hybrid, where you spend the first few minutes of each level destroying buildings, random alien enemies, and human artillery all hell-bent on stopping you. At the end of each level, you fight a powerful (and cheap) boss, but the wrestling aspects such as pinning for a three-count are long gone. It's more of a matter of punch, kicking, jumping around and trying to grapple and slam your enemies to achieve victory.

Here is the story lifted from the SNK wiki, because most of time, the official writing is easier to get the gist of everything:
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In 1996, Monsters suddenly appeared all over the world. They were immensely powerful, and waged a fierce and violent battle against each other, alt but wiping out civilization in the process. For three years the people of Earth watched, helpless, as the Monsters wreaked destruction on the planet, until only the three strongest Monsters were left alive. There was no-one Strong enough to oppose the three Monsters anywhere in the world.

Finally, in 1999, a force equal to the Monsters appeared on Earth at last. But it wasn't what the humans had hoped and prayed for - it was an alien force, which came to invade the Earth. The Aliens were incredibly powerful, and stationed their strongest warriors throughout the world to attack and conquer the Monsters. When they discovered the Aliens, the Monsters bellowed out ferocious cries of rage and joy, and threw themselves instinctively upon their next opponents. The time had come to wipe out a new group of enemies, and decide once and for all which Monster was the true "King of the Monsters"!

Humans are no longer the masters of the Earth - and now the next battle is about to begin...
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So three of the monsters from the previous game have survived - Geon, Astro Guy, and Woo. They decided in order to fight against the alien army led by the powerful Famardy, they needed some serious upgrades. Our three heroes(?) (I guess they're not so villainous as they all were in the first game, I guess destroying most of the world and crushing humanity got boring) are now enhanced - differientating them from the first game. Super Geon is power-attribute based, Astro Guy is speed-attribute based, and Cyber-Woo is balanced-attribute based.

You can select any of the three heroes and play 1-player or 2-player mode against the computer. The 2-player versus competition mode returns also. The controls are about the same, punch, kick, and jump, and you can hold the A button to charge a special attack. You can collect "P" power-ups which are hidden in structures or dropped from enemies to change evolve your special attack into a stronger version. Your monster hero changes palette color to reflect this.

You can also pick up various point values, and even possibly a 1-Up (Trivia: SNK's early mascot, G-Mantle's face appears on the icon, although I've never actually SEEN the 1-UP drop during gameplay in any level). Also, there are detrimental power-downs. A reverse "P" which when collected, power downs your character, so try to avoid them. Another one is a bomb that explodes and your hero takes damage, so you have to be careful when trying to pick up "?" mystery items.

So aside from all that, King of the Monsters 2... isn't really that great of a sequel, in fact it's one of my lowest-ranked games by SNK because of the sheer ridiculous difficulty of the CPU bosses. Its VERY hard to avoid taking damage 95% of the time because the game is rigged to put the enemy bosses in favorable advantages no matter how you try to approach them.

The biggest flaw is the grappling - you can get away with grabbing and throwing a boss about three times total, but afterwards its borderline impossible because the CPU will win the counter-grab about 98% of the time until they kill you - then it seems like if you continue, you might get a few more chances to grab them since that's the only move that does the most damage compared to the standard punch and kick which are very weak.

(Description to be continued in Part 2).