1981 advertisement for Epyx's "Crush, Crumble and Chomp!"

This vibrant advertisement appeared on the inside front cover of issue #53 of Dragon magazine, which was published in September 1981, when the Smurfs, Entertainment Tonight and Serena Williams were just entering the world.

The artwork — with its Godzilla stand-in, panicked white people, and way-oversized post office — is by George Barr.

"Crush, Crumble and Chomp!" was a computer game published by Epyx in 1981 for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, and TRS-80. Later, there was a version for the Commodore 64, the home computer that took the world by storm in 1982.

CC & C was designed by Jon Freeman and J.W. Connelley, according to its original manual, which you can view here in PDF format. According to the magazine ad copy, players would get to "terrorize and destroy four of the world's largest and most densely populated cities in over 100 possible scenarios. From Tokyo to the Golden Gate, you are the deadliest creature in the air, on the land, or in the sea."

There was clearly no fear of kaiju copyright infringement. According to Wikipedia, the playable creatures included Goshilla, The Kraken, Archnis, The Glob, Mechismo and Mantra, which was basically Mothra, which doesn't make any sense because Mothra is a peaceful monster.

The price of the game, per this advertisement, was $29.95, which equates to about $82 today, which is way more than a new copy of, say, "God of War" will cost you in 2018. Here's a look at the CC & C gameplay on the Atari 8-bit...



The game was generally well-received, it seems. Science-fiction author Jerry Pournelle (1933-2017) wrote in 1984 that "there's something exceedingly attractive about burning down and stomping the Pentagon flat, and in general making an even bigger mess of Washington than the politicians have." To read a good collection of memories and reviews of CC & C, check out this 2011 post on James Maliszewski's Grognardia website.

As for me, CC & C was a few years before my home-computer heyday. But Epyx released a similar game in 1986 called "The Movie Monster Game," and I remember playing that on my Commodore 64, when I got bored of Ultima IV and MicroLeague Baseball and just wanted to cause some mindless mayhem.