From Wai Wai World, I'd known for quite some time that Konami had made a King Kong game, and years ago I looked it up expecting some side scroller only to be surprised that it's a top-down adventure game of some kind. I wrote it off back then, but looking for fun Famicom stuff to play, I couldn't pass it up for the couple bucks it was going for. It's certainly an odd game, but it's also quite a solid one as far as Famicom games go. It took me about 40 minutes (according to the game's clock) to beat the game using maps online to help me.

Now despite what the title may make you think, this isn't actually the sequel to any other King Kong game. (as Gunstar so kindly taught me) This is actually the movie version of the movie "King Kong Lives", which was localized into Japanese as "King Kong 2". King Kong is brought back to life with an artificial heart and a blood transfusion from a new "Lady Kong", but then she's stolen away from him and he's locked away. King Kong awakens in his prison furious at his lady love's capture, and he effortlessly breaks his bonds and sets off on an adventure to find her. Now, the game actually has amazingly little to do with the movie, beyond aesthetics like the artificial heart and the basic mission to save Lady Kong, but it's more than enough for a Famicom game from 1986 to give you the overall idea of what you're doing.

What exactly you're doing is going through eight stages collecting power ups and fighting bosses to collect eight keys. Those eight keys unlock the door to a final boss in the ninth stage who you of course need to vanquish to save Lady Kong. The gameplay itself involves going around in a Zelda 1-style overworld punching things to kill them. Punching is quite dangerous, as it naturally involves getting very up close and personal, so the thinking kong's way of taking out enemies is your other attack: throwing boulders. Now, you CAN go through each stage taking out each boss as you go, but that's the hard way. The other way is to do what I did, and go around collecting max health upgrades, max boulder upgrades, speed upgrades, and (most importantly) boulder power upgrades until you're beefy enough to mulch those bosses down as fast as possible, because those guys have quite a lot of health and are basically impossible to take down with only wimpy punches.

However, that's easier said than done. I used maps I found online, and hoo boy am I ever glad I did because this game is absolutely out to kill you. Once you get beyond the first stage, you'll very quickly find that not only are these stages designed like non-euclidean mazes (as screens aren't necessarily connected to the screen "next" to them), but you might not even be in stage 2. Permanent upgrades (those being health and boulder capacity, as speed and boulder power reset to default upon death), extra lives, as well as bosses and portals to other stages lie inside doors hidden under destructible debris found around each map, and there are several doors in each stage leading to different other stages. There really isn't any need to do all the stages in order, but exactly what leads where and how can get very confusing. If you played this without a map, you'd definitely be making one yourself, as you are really gonna need those upgrades to take down the bosses and survive the onslaught that the normal enemies throw at you. Playing with a map is basically easy mode, while making your own is basically super hard mode, and there isn't much difficulty balance between the two, unfortunately ^^;

The presentation is alright, but it's above average I'd say for '86. There isn't a ton of music, but what's there is nice enough and well done. The otherworldly landscapes and weird, surreal bosses you're fighting are nicely detailed, albeit there's very little internal consistency of setting between stages. Heck, you don't even start in the city the opening cutscene puts you in. You start in a canyon, and that city(?) is stage 5. This is firmly in the category of licensed games of the era that are only very tacitly connected to the source material, and they could really be anything else (which only makes it even stranger that the game never came out in other territories, as it would be super easy to just edit the Kong stuff very simply to just make this about nearly anything else with the same stages and gameplay).

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is a quite solid game, but I think only certain types of people are going to find much value out of it these days. It's an interesting curiosity on the Famicom, for sure, but you've gotta be pretty hardcore into retro stuff to be into this sort of thing enough to play it without looking up maps like I did, and if you DO look up maps like I did, you'll likely find the game a bit too short and easy. It's a cool historical piece that will likely never be re-released anywhere because of the license, and if what I've described here sounds cool to you, you'll likely enjoy this cheap, very text-light action adventure import.

Honestly, I have no fucking idea what's going on in this one.

So, The English translation for this title is "King Kong Lives: Megaton Punch of Rage." I have no idea what movie this is connected to or what the story of this game is.

Honestly, the best way I could describe this game is it's like an 8-bit NES version of Ape Out in it's basic gameplay. You can walk around, you can punch or use a found ability, and you can jump. The movement and jumping is pretty solid and fun, and the punching is tight and works, the abilities I got my hands on worked well as well.

The game is pretty damn confusing, I had no idea what my goal was, just wandering around as a big ape and killing green blobs, helicopters, tanks, dragons, just random shit. Eventually, I found a boss fight. I have no idea wtf the boss was meant to be yet I enjoyed it, but anyways upon beating the boss I got a little cut scene where it seemed I was rescuing a female Kong. So I'm assuming the plot is you need to collect keys to eventually unlock and save ur ape wife. Unfortunately after beating this boss I got completely lost and scoured the whole world for progression, yet found nothing. Kinda just stuck in limbo, I called it.

So, in my head-canon, I'll just act like that was the final boss and I saved my ape wife, and the Kongs lived happily ever after.

For what I played, it's pretty awesome, definitely worth some time, and unironically if you like games like Ape Out, give this a look.