Godzilla Warriors 8: Zenith

BTS:

The Godzilla NES Creepypasta was the basis for this book. In the creepypasta, a guy finds a used copy of the NES Godzilla video game, and it turns out it's haunted. As he keeps playing, he realizes that the demon haunting the game has been a part of his life for years, and eventually beats the game and the demon with the help of his dead girlfriend. I'm not a big fan of the ending of the story, but it's still one of my favourite creepypastas I've ever read.

Some elements from the original creepypasta I added to the story were the fact that it involved a "dead" girlfriend, Red constantly chasing the main characters, Godzilla, Mothra, and Anguirus being the main characters, and Solomon guiding them. The name Zenith also comes from the story, as it's the last level in the game. There's a few others as well, but those are the main ones.

I included some references to the NES itself, as well as the Godzilla NES game. The characters are playing an NES at the beginning of the story. The game they're playing is Bubble Bobble, which I specifically chose because of the main character's resemblance to Godzilla. I was gonna include the actual Godzilla NES game, but that wouldn't have made sense. Also, when the story took place in Zenith, I had the characters in the story reflect the colours they appeared as in the game (Godzilla's blue, Anguirus is orange, etc."

I included quite a few references to the plot of Book 10 and the future of the series in this story. I'm not going to reveal them because of spoilers, but I figured that since we're three books away from the end, I may as well start teasing some things.

Radon appeared previously in the Rodan prologue book. She's based on the female Rodan from the original Rodan movie. I named her Radon because that was Rodan's Japanese name before the movie was localized. I realized a bit too late that it's actually really confusing having both names essentially being spalled the same.

Rodan's Fire form was based on Fire Rodan, who first appeared in Godzilla VS MechaGodzilla 2. Like in this story, Fire Rodan was a more powerful form of Rodan. I used the form in my story to give Rodan fire-based powers, which I neglected to give him in the original Godzilla Warriors book. The form will return in future books.

The hair dragging Godzilla into the ocean was inspired by a scene in the movie It. I wanted the story to evoke the same feelings of watching a horror movie, and It was the last horror movie I saw at the time of writing. Some other things were inspired by Devilman Crybaby, an anime series I watched shortly before I started writing. It's a horror/action anime, and I was trying to evoke the same uncomfortable feeling it gave me in the story.