So, something I've been mentioning, but never fully explained is Super Robot Wars (SRW), a long established series of video games about to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. These first appeared on the Game Boy platform, but has since appeared on numerous consoles of Japanese origin. Its a cultural staple, although licensing issues have largely prevented it from having any impact in the West. Typically, these are Strategic Roleplaying Games, played on a big map, taking turns, with a vast unit variety. I mean, think about it. There's a great many giant robot styles, reflecting a different technology level and artistic approach. SRW can and always will find a way to make a mecha and its pilot distinct. This leads to the series' biggest effect on the discourse, the categorisation of mecha into “Super Robots” and “Real Robots”. In these games, Super Robots are big, cartoony, heavy hitters that stride into combat soaking up damage. Real Robots however are more sensible and rely more on dodging. However, its not the machine that's important, the pilots have their own special abilities which have a huge effect. And there's usually a character creation element too, so the nominal protagonist is to your tastes. What I'm saying here is that there is depth.
Of course, the main appeal is fan pandering. The series as a whole takes the same approach to crossovers and characterisation as Lego does. Characters are recognisable, although the art style tends towards the “super deformed” style, with their backstories intact, but any obvious sources of contradiction are glossed over and ignored. If anything, there's a fan-pleasing sense if humour to events, as jokes get made and "mistakes" of the source material get corrected. Did your fave die tragically? The odds are one of these games will let you fix that. Imagine for a second some kind of massive spy B-movie, featuring James Bond, The Man From Uncle, two different iterations of Charlie's Angels, Jason Bourne, John Wick, The Fast & The Furious, Atomic Blonde, and Austin Powers. Imagine Blofeld meeting Doctor Evil and discussing scalp care. Imagine James Bond, any Bond, teaming up with the Angels. Imagine someone saving Daisy. That's the appeal of a Super Robot Wars game. Its your favourite character appearing on the map, their theme music playing like a wrestling promo, the voice actor delivering the battle chatter, and kicking arse along side your second-fave, with the personalities just bouncing off each-other. It is, simply, amazing.
While a Super Robot
Wars games may not offer any great innovations in the realm of
Strategic JRPGs, this is only because it has been around for a very
long time, and set a few conventions. These games can be very
refined, with examples from decades ago having the kind of quality of
life features that honestly surprised me. Even the attack animations
that so characterise the franchise, can be turned off for the sake of
time. There are however two broad problems. The first is the barrier
to entry, because, as mentioned, these have remained Japanese-only
titles almost exclusively. The only real exception are the two Super Robot
Taisen games, aka Japanese for wars, two obscure western
releases on the Game Boy Advance featuring original, rather than
licensed, characters. This leaves an interested player with the
choice between fan translations, or tracking down the Asian Switch
release of Super Robot Wars T, which has English text, but no Western release. I've used
pictures here from the SRW GC game, via fan translated emulation,
which is an older example, but fairly representative of things. The
other broad problem is that any SRW game takes a bloody long time to
play, which ain't great if its featuring a series you don't like. You
get lots of content, but a lot of text too, and they usually don't
offer much outside of combat. Although the sense of humour really is something else...
Then something happened that caused me to rewrite the ending of this article, and bring it forward. Super Robot Wars 30 is
due this year, and will be on Steam. Against all odds! Woo!
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