Introduction
From the outside looking in, the Super Robot Wars series may seem rather intimidating, and well, it is. The series has been ongoing since April 20th, 1991, with 48 entries and 10 spinoffs, and the games have their own respective timelines and lore; some are isolated entries, while others have two or three sequels. I swear, if you want to give yourself an aneurysm, I’d recommend searching up and trying to follow some of the full series timelines that fans post online. And that’s not even mentioning the references and appearances of the individual mecha anime series that appear in these games, some of which are very niche.
That said, as a series that I consider one of my favorites, I wanted to take it upon myself to review the lesser-discussed games that started said series. I see very little discussion of these first three games online, let alone reviews of them, so I prepared a special triple-feature blog post to shed some light on the unique mechanics of these games, talk about their significance to the overall series, and talk about how they laid the groundwork for the series we know and love today!
Preamble
First, though, some of you might be asking, “What the fuck is a Super Robot Wars?” For the uninitiated, Super Robot Wars is a long-running series of turn-based Tactical RPGs produced by Bandai Namco Entertainment, previously known as Banpresto. The games feature your standard turn-based SRPG mechanics similar to that of Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem and deviate very little from this formula. The series was originally a spinoff of Banpresto’s Compati Hero series, a crossover series featuring super-deformed versions of Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and Mobile Suit Gundam. The first Compati Hero game, SD Battle Ōzumō: Heisei Hero Basho, was a commercial success in Japan, prompting Banpresto to create a more mature-oriented spin-off game, Super Robot Wars, for the Game Boy and collaborated with the development company, WinkySoft, to do so.
Super Robot Wars got popular enough to warrant getting sequels. In particular, the fourth game, The Fourth Super Robot Wars—as opposed to the other entries in the Super Robot Wars series that aren't the fourth games—was meant to be the final entry. However, the growing popularity of the series prompted Banpresto to continue making games. Games in the series were produced at a rapid pace, and it wasn’t uncommon for two or three games to come out in a single year. The team continued to produce games consistently up until 2021, after the release of the 30th anniversary game, Super Robot Wars 30.
Super Robot Wars prominently advertises itself as a crossover series featuring mecha from multiple anime, games, and manga, although before recently the primary focus was anime. Across the 48 games, they’ve incorporated hundreds of different anime series into these games, regardless of how obscure or niche they might be. The games feature series ranging from Mazinger, Evangelion, Gurren Lagann, and Code Geass, to more unexpected additions like Magic Knight Rayearth, Cowboy Bebop, and Sakura Taisen. If an anime you’ve seen even remotely features a robot in it, it’s likely to have appeared in at least one Super Robot Wars game. In fact, during a livestream with the devs, it was revealed that the franchise had obtained a Guinness World Record for having "the most intellectual property licenses used in a role-playing video game series" at 274. For reference, the Smash Bros series includes around 230~ IPs, including fighters, stages, trophies, stickers, and items.
Image taken from Super Robot Wars 30
The plots of these games usually come together by getting the plots and characters from the original mecha series and combining them to form a central narrative. The series producer, Takanobu Terada, takes great care in depicting these series as accurately as possible. A lot of these games rely heavily on their story, and the story is usually portrayed through text-based cutscenes and dialogue boxes. Everything is portrayed very professionally, and the team takes great care to ensure there are no instances of characters acting inconsistently or anything like that. It’s very much a series by mecha fans for mecha fans.
Image taken from Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden
There are even a lot of anime writers and mangaka who see their series being depicted in SRW as a badge of honor or others who are directly inspired by the games to make their own series. For example, the visual novel series, Demonbane, was directly inspired by the Fourth Super Robot Wars, as the lead writer had fond memories of that game back in school. In his playthrough, when he got the Grungust, he named the original mech “Demonbane,” which he would then reuse for his own mecha series.
Similarly, the mangaka for Knight’s & Magic, Takuji Kato, also known as Isiyumi, was so thrilled that their series was included in Super Robot Wars 30, that they drew a ton of art of SRW 30 along with their characters and posted it on Twitter. It’s really cute.
Artwork by Isiyumi
Anyways, the development team behind Super Robot Wars is really dedicated to how they handle the characters and individual plots. One example of the team’s dedication is an old interview with Terada regarding the popular anime series Ginga Hyōryū Vifam. In the interview, he stated that, despite its popularity, the reason the characters from Vifam have yet to appear in an SRW game was due to the core themes of the anime. In Vifam, the anime is about a group of child pilots essentially learning how to survive without always having to depend on the adults in their lives. So, having that same child cast depending on adult characters from other Mecha series and fighting together as teammates would interfere with the core themes of the Vifam anime, which is a take I have a lot of respect for.
Now then, you may be wondering, “If this series is so popular, why haven’t I heard of it?” That’s because, out of the 50+ entries in the series, only about a handful of them have ever been localized into English officially, with another handful of the games having English translation patches. The reason none of these games reached our side of the pond officially had a lot to do with the licensing hell, as well as a company called Harmony Gold. The specifics can be a whole separate blog post in itself, but up until recently, the only officially localized games we got were the OG games on GBA which solely featured OCs.
With that out of the way, I want to talk about a few things. As I said earlier, I’m discussing the first three games in this review. This is mainly because I just don’t have enough to say about each game individually to justify writing three separate blog posts. However, this trilogy displays the evolutionary progression of how the stable mechanics in SRW came to be. By the time the fourth Super Robot Wars game was released, many of the mechanics seen in future games were essentially finalized. In contrast, the first three games are extremely different from the modern entries.
Speaking of the fourth game, it is also part of the Classic timeline of SRW. However, the reason it’s not included in this review is because I haven’t played it, at least not to completion. Though, I own a physical copy that I got at a local convention.
The main reason that I haven’t played it is because there is no fan translation for it. In fact, no version of the fourth game has a fan translation. I know some people don’t mind playing SRW games in Japanese since the menus and stuff are easy to remember and navigate, but I’m someone who’s invested enough in the story to prefer to play these games in English and understand what’s going on. However, there is an English patch in the works by Aeon Genesis. Even though it’s been in the “testing phase” for about half a decade, I’m sure it will come out sooner or later. Maybe around the same time that SRW Alpha 1’s fan translation is also complete, or when Oddity is completed… or Half-Life 3.
There is also an ongoing project to translate its remake, Super Robot Wars F for PS1,
but at the time of my writing this, that project has essentially only just started.
Super Robot Wars
Super Robot Wars was released on April 20th, 1991, exactly one year after Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light. The game was released on the original GameBoy and featured mecha represented in Super Deformed Chibi styles. The game was developed by Winkysoft, and the game design was handled by Masahiko Sakata, who also later worked on The Fourth Super Robot Wars. This first SRW game is one of the few standalone titles in the series. It’s also one of the two entries in the entire series to feature a multiplayer mode; if you own the game, make sure you get some link cables!
As the first game in any series, you’d naturally expect many differences between it and newer entries while also seeing much of the framework of how the series evolved. However, this game is kind of built different. If you held FE1 and Engage together and showed them side-by-side, I can easily see how both of those games are related to one another. But if you held SRW1 and SRW30 side-by-side, I’d think they’re from two completely different series. Hell, if you held the first game and the second game side-by-side, I’d also think they’re from two different series.
It’s weird to describe the very first game in the series as the “black sheep,” but this game feels and plays so much differently from later entries that I feel it’s important to mention. In any case, sit back and relax as I talk briefly about the very first Super Robot Wars.
Look, it’s one of the features!
Fan Translation
The translation patch was initially made by strag0, Hiroshi, and FearGaia. This patch only reached version v0.7, which was only about 15-20% completed with a lot of text being mistranslated or not translated at all. This project was later picked up by Aeon Genesis where much of the story, battle text, and menus were fully translated and released on May 20th, 2007. The only real issue is that unit names tend to be cut off in the unit selection screen by either other unit names or they just fall out the edge of the screen.
The full name of the Hyaku Shiki gets cut off by the F-91,
rendering the name as Hyakushi
Series Featured
For the first game in the series, they opted to include many of the anime series that are considered the founding fathers of the mecha genre. The first one being Mazinger Z (マジンガーZ, lit. Majingā Zetto, also known by some as Tranzor Z), a series written and illustrated by the legendary Go Nagai, and seen as the pioneer of the Super Robot genre.
Go Nagai grew up inspired by similar anime series such as Astro Boy and Tetsujin-28 and wanted to create his own robot anime. For a long time, he pondered various ideas but struggled to come up with anything that didn’t feel like a reskin of the two series. This changed one day when Nagai noticed a traffic jam and imagined how the drivers in the back would love to bypass it. From there, he came up with the idea of a giant robot that could be controlled from the inside, like a car.
This may seem trivial now, but back then, this concept was unheard of, and it was a formula adopted by every future mecha series. It added a lot of stakes to the tense fights and drew a lot of attention to the show. Originally, the main character, Koji Kabuto, was going to pilot Mazinger using a motorcycle, but because of the popularity of Kamen Rider, this idea was scrapped and later recycled for the Diana A mech.
Aside from this, Mazinger Z also introduced many aspects that would become staples of Super Robots in the 70s; such as a hotheaded protagonist, powerups they’d obtain during the course of the show, the Monster of the Week episode structure, and relying on vibrant toy sales. Even though the team and sponsors were worried at first, audiences loved Mazinger Z. It was one of the first series to combine the fantasy and sci-fi elements of older anime with the detailed artwork of modern anime. It incorporated aspects like detailed kaiju designs, as seen in popular toku series, but without the high production costs. The show was styled similarly to more adult-oriented shows at the time, like Lupin the Third. While it was aimed at kids, Nagai wasn’t afraid to push boundaries, and it included many stories that challenged its viewers.
In this first game, the mechs from Mazinger Z are joined by those from its sequel series, Great Mazinger, as well as the Mazinger Movie series.
The next series featured is Ken Ishikawa and Go Nagai’s Getter Robo (ゲッターロボ, lit. Gettā Robo), known as the first Gattai Mecha series. (Translator’s Note: Gattai means “combining”). As the first combining mech series, many of its themes revolve around the idea of togetherness and how our bonds with one another make us stronger. This series explores that well by featuring three renegades: Ryoma Nagare, Hayato Jin, and Musashi Tomoe, who are otherwise outsiders. However, through their shared desire to save the world and their willingness to bond with one another, they manage to pilot the three combat jets: Eagle, Jaguar, and Bear. These three jets then combine into three different giant robots: Getter-1, Getter-2, and Getter-3. Using the power of friendship and the Getter Rays, the titular robot fights to defend the world from the evil Dinosaur Empire and their Mechasauruses.
Personally speaking, while the Getter Robo anime was fine, I felt a lot of the edge was taken out compared to the manga. The manga shares many of the same themes as the anime, but the anime definitely seemed like it was toned down for a younger audience. Ishikawa’s manga portrayed the war as much darker and more brutal, showing people, both good and bad, dying in more gruesome and horrific ways. The main cast felt more like flawed heroes than your standard shounen protagonists, with Ryoma in the anime particularly feeling neutered compared to his manga version. The villains and story also felt subdued in the anime, ironing out many of the more political undertones.
However, the anime did have its merits, like fleshing out some of the characters more, such as Michiru Satome, and even giving the character her own mech, which is featured prominently in the Super Robot Wars series. Not to mention the impressive animations and beautifully animated fights.
Anyways, alongside Getter Robo, Super Robot Wars also features mechs from the sequel series Getter Robo G (also known as Starvengers).
The last series is Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam (機動戦士ガンダム, lit. Kidō Senshi Gandamu), also known as First Gundam, Gundam 0079, and Gundam '79. Gundam is known to many as the first Real Robot series, creating a distinction within the mecha genre between Super Robots and Real Robots. While Super Robots were essentially humongous one-of-a-kind mechs with fantasy-like abilities, Real Robots were more realistic mechs governed by realistic physics and technological limitations. A funny comparison I saw on Reddit once was that Super Robots were kinda like the Avengers, while Real Robots are more like G.I. Joe.
Anyways, Gundam was Sunrise’s last-ditch effort to make a popular anime or else they’d have to go back to doing subcontracting work. When creating Gundam, Sunrise looked to series like Space Battleship Yamato for inspiration for making a more serialized story rather than an episodic series like the Super Robot anime before it. Gundam, in general, was almost a subversive deconstruction of Super Robot anime, featuring its mechs as tools for warfare rather than heroes of justice. Rather than its villains being aliens from another planet, they were fellow humans with differing political beliefs. Combats and deaths were treated as traumatizing and horrific, with frequent moments of the lead character, Amuro Ray, displaying symptoms of PTSD.
Speaking of Amuro, in the original draft of MSG, Amuro was going to be killed off in the end, with Char essentially taking his role, but plans changed. Similarly, a particular character of note was also going to have a different death scene where he would be put at gunpoint and admit to assassinating the father of another character.
The series got off to a rough start; it had low ratings at first and many sponsors started to pull out. This resulted in the show being shortened from 52 episodes to 43 episodes. While the series wasn’t very popular with kids, it was popular with teenagers and young adults, especially with the movie trilogy and its Gunpla model lines. Many people started to come back around to Gundam and it rose in popularity, remaining popular even to this day.
This is a Gunpla model I built a few years back, ignore Dr. Mario and Sakura Matou.
In addition to the original MSG, the first Super Robot Wars entry also features Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam, Char's Counterattack, and Gundam F91.
Let’s Play the Game!
The story of this game is very simple; a vile space monster named Gilgilgun has taken over the Super Robot homeland. Gilgilgun was able to successfully take control of many of the super robots that inhabited the planet, but a small resistance group was formed to stop Gilgilgun and free the robots under his control.
Right off the bat, I want to mention two things: First, Gilgilgun was the main antagonist from the movie Great Mazinger vs. Getter Robo. Second, you might notice that this game doesn’t feature any pilots; instead, the mechs are treated as sentient beings able to talk to one another and react to attacks and dodging.
When you start the game proper, you have to select one of three teams you want to use for your playthrough: Team Mazinger, Team Getter, or Team Gundam. In my run, I chose Team Gundam because the Nu Gundam’s Fin Funnels are really handy. Once you select a team, you have to select a Team Captain, a mech that will be your lead mech and your Game Over condition.
You can apply five bonus points to whatever stats you wish. Though, for the most part, you’d want to focus your points into Power, especially with something that has notably long-range attacks like the Nu Gundam. Once you select your stat bonuses, you’re brought into the first map. In this map, and many of the maps of this game, your primary objective to clear the map is to take over all the forts scattered around the area.
These forts tend to have items in them that you receive once you take them, and the boss of each map will usually be standing on top of a fort.
Now, let’s explain the stats in this game. First, each mech will be one of three types: Land, Air, and Sea. This just describes what kind of terrain they excel in. Range is simply the number of tiles they can move. HP and EXP are pretty self-explanatory; HP is your Hit Points, and when it reaches zero, your mech dies. It is also important to mention though that this game does have permadeath, so try not to lose units too often. EXP on the other hand is the points needed to reach the next level.
SP is what allows you to use Spirit Commands, which are a bunch of different commands you can select before taking your turn. They each only cost 1 SP and replenish after each map. The catch is that only your Team Captain is able to use Spirit Commands, and the Spirit Commands they get are a set of three randomly selected ones when you start the game.
Attack increases the damage you do, while Defense reduces the damage you take. Speed simply affects your ability to evade attacks. Charisma affects your ability to persuade other mecha to join your team, while Loyalty affects your ability to not be persuaded by the enemy. Persuasion is essentially how you can get other units to join your team, and it almost works in a similar way to catching a wild Pokemon. If you move one of your mechs adjacent to an enemy mech, and select the Enlist option, you will try talking with the enemy mech and if you’re lucky, they may join your team.
The success rate of being able to persuade another mech to join you is shown in the following formula:
「
Success rate [%] = Persuasiveness - P. Resistance.
Persuasiveness = Charisma + Level * 10 + (Target maximum HP / Target Current HP) * 2 + Compatibility correction
P. Resistance = Loyalty + Level * 10 + Number of occupied towers * 10
」
Some things to note though, in the case where a unit has 0 loyalty, their P. Resistance will be 256, and won’t be affected by any other modifiers. In addition, because of a possible bug, for each fort you capture on the map, your persuasion success rate is decreased by 10%, which is kinda lame.
Furthermore, each mech has a different way of interacting with one another with some more likely to join if you talk to them with some mechs, but not with others, which is the Compatibility Correction, which I will provide below:
The Y-axis represents the persuading unit while the X-axis represents the persuasion target.
Aside from persuasion and spirit commands, some mechs will also have the ability to transform into other mechs. For example, Getter-1 can transform into Getter-2 or Getter-3, and the Zeta Gundam can transform into the Waverider.
For attacks, most of your units will have both a short-range attack and a long-range attack. Some may only have long-range attacks while others might only have short-range, but for the most part, a unit will have both. However, your long-range attack cannot be used if you have already moved in that turn. Speaking of moving, after you move your unit to a certain tile, you can’t back out or cancel the movement, you’re kind of just forced to end your turn if you selected the wrong tile.
After you take all the forts, you’re rewarded with a cute but corny ‘Next Episode’ teaser, before you’re taken to the the intermission screen.
In the intermission, you can save your progress, view stats, or “Power Up” your mechs, which just means that you can equip them with any weapon you found during the previous map.
Overall, the mechanics are certainly different from later games, but relatively easy to learn and get used to. The game can feel a bit repetitive, but it’s also really short having only 13 maps. The persuasion mechanic, in addition to having the choice of picking one of three teams to start with, is also a good way to incentivize replayability. The game’s mechanics lend themselves pretty well for multiplayer gameplay, and I’d go as far as to say this is probably the best way to incorporate PvP in an SRPG game.
On another note, a lot of the map and menu themes were just okay at best and grating at worst. The best music in this game, and for most SRW games, are definitely the battle themes. The battle themes in these games are renditions of the opening songs from the respective anime series, and even on a Gameboy, they sound great.
Both the mechs from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger use the Mazinger Z Opening theme. All the Gundam mechs use the theme "Tobe! Gundam!" And both Getter Robo and Getter Robo G use the Getter Robo Opening, though the Getter Robo G anime already used the same opening, so there’s no real reason to point that out.
Other Versions
While the second and the third games have received numerous remakes, this first game has only received one remake released on April 10th, 2014 on PSN and commonly referred to as Super Robot Wars HD. Aside from enhanced graphics, this game also included the new OC mech, Cybuster, which I will talk more about later. The game also added a second campaign, bringing the number of maps from 13 to 26. Additionally, now every unit has access to Spirit Commands instead of just your Team Captain, the only caveat is that your Team Captain starts off with 5 extra points in SP.
This game wasn’t localized into English, nor does it have an English fan translation, but since the story is so light, to begin with, there’s no real issue playing this game in Japanese.
The Second Super Robot Wars
The Second Super Robot Wars game came out eight months after the first game and it was released onto the Famicom. It is the first game that makes up the Classic Timeline (also known as the DC Wars Series), and despite the name, there is no connection between this game and the first one. At least, it’s implied that there’s no connection… most of the time… This was always a bit weird to me because they specifically mention that this is the second war that’s happened, and there are even brief mentions of the fact that they’ve defeated Gilgilgun during the previous war, but whatever. Though, while this isn’t super important, the Classic Series timeline goes as follows:
Super Robot Wars Gaiden: Masō Kishin – The Lord of Elemental (Part 1)
The Second Super Robot Wars
The Third Super Robot Wars
Super Robot Wars EX
The Fourth Super Robot Wars
Super Robot Wars Gaiden: Masō Kishin – The Lord of Elemental (Part 2)
The second game was developed by Winkysoft, with Jippa Hitokarage as producer. The game design was once again done by Masahiko Sakata, and the music was done by Shinichi Tanaka, who would later work on The Third Super Robot Wars and Super Robot Wars EX.
Before continuing though, I wanted to address a few things. For this review, I’ll be calling this game “The Second Super Robot Wars” and not “Super Robot Wars 2,” the common name among the English fanbase. Similarly, I’ll call the third game “The Third Super Robot Wars,” rather than “Super Robot Wars 3.”
Although it’s pedantic, the Japanese title of the game is translated as The Second Super Robot War (第2次スーパーロボット大戦, lit. Dai 2 Ji Sūpā Robotto Taisen), and later entries in the series make a distinction between "2nd" and "2." For example, there’s a later entry called “Super Robot Wars OG 2” and another entry called “Second Super Robot Wars OG,” which are both completely separate games.
Fan Translation
This game only has one English patch which was made by Aeon Genesis and released on December 24th, 2013, the night before Christmas. Despite this patch being older, it’s still of high quality, with next to no errors. The team consisted of Gideon Zhi, the project lead, text editor, and assembly hacker; TheMajinZeki, the text translator; Ryusui, who created the title screen graphics; and optomon, who made one of the optional patches.
The included optional patches can be mixed and matched and even work independently with a Japanese ROM. The first patch included is the Music Persistence patch. In later Super Robot Wars entries, when you attack an enemy unit or an enemy unit attacks you, the battle theme that plays corresponds to either the opening theme from the unit's respective TV show or a combat theme heard in that show. For instance, if a character from Getter Robo attacks an enemy unit, the Getter Robo OP will play during their combat sequence. Additionally, special boss themes will override the player theme, and in the case of the OG timeline, Elzam’s theme will override every theme.
To create a sense of momentum and get the player more interested in a particular series, in later SRW titles, the unit's battle theme will continue to play after the battle ends when you return to the map. In these classic games though, like most SRPG games, the theme stops playing as soon as the animated sequence ends, and the map theme would start over from the beginning, which meant that you'd only ever hear the beginning of these OPs.
As a result, this Music Persistence patch makes it so this game would continue to play the battle themes after the battle plays out, just like future games.
The second optional patch is the Gallant Char patch made by optomon. In Super Robot Wars and The Second Super Robot Wars, whenever a Gundam pilot attacks, the theme that plays is "Tobe! Gundam!.' A really peppy and uplifting theme that the fan translation team felt was out-of-place compared to the other battle themes, and the more gritter and militaristic tone of the Gundam series. The Japanese dev team seemed to agree, since in the third game, Tobe! Gundam! was replaced with the theme Gallant Char. Then in the fourth game, the different UC Pilots would receive themes that corresponded to their respective series. This patch replaces Tobe! Gundam! with Gallant Char to address this, and it sounds pretty nice in Famicom's sound font.
Series Featured
This game includes all the same series that were introduced in the first game; all the Gundam series, Mazinger series, and Getter series mechs appear once again. However, this game also includes mechs from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket.
In addition to that, Banpresto Originals were added to the cast of playable and enemy characters. The two final bosses, Bian Zoldark and Shu Shirakawa pilot the mechs Valsion and Granzon, respectively. The new playable character, Masaki Andoh, and his mech, Cybuster (also known as Cybaster, and rarely called Psybuster), also appear in this game. Additionally, Masaki’s theme, Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster!, plays as the title theme when you boot up the game.
After this game, Masaki and Shu would appear in several other Super Robot Wars games, with Masaki being the lead character of a subseries of games known as the Masō Kishin series.
Pictured: Cybuster and Granzon
Something that I heard online was that Masaki and Cybuster were included because the developers couldn’t get the rights to use characters from Tomino’s Aura Battler Dunbine. Aside from just the designs of the mechs themselves, the two series share other similarities. The setting of Masō Kishin, La Gias, is quite similar to Dunbine’s Byston Well, both being subterranean parallel worlds that people are randomly summoned to. Keep in mind, Mecha and Isekai weren’t two genres that commonly mixed back in the day. There’s also the fact that Elementals are powered by “Prana,” while Aura Battlers are powered by Aura, which is essentially the same thing.
Aura Battler Dunbine
This rumor was so prevalent that it wasn’t just something believed by the Western fanbase but the Eastern fanbase as well. It wasn't until 29 years later when Bandai Namco held a Super Robot Wars livestream, revealing the new Crossing Pilot event in the mobile gacha game, SRW DD. In this stream, Terada denied the allegations and stated that this rumor wasn't true at all. This completely shocked a lot of the Japanese fans on Nico Nico Douga, and even to this day, many Western fans are still skeptical. That said, Dunbine would eventually make its debut in SRW EX.
But wait, there’s more! In addition to the original characters added to the cast, a new series that isn’t advertised to you right off the bat is Go Nagai’s UFO Robo Grendizer (UFOロボ グレンダイザー, lit. Yūfō Robo Gurendaizā), also known as Grandizer, Goldrake, or Goldorak. It was originally pitched as a sequel to Great Mazinger and was seen as the third entry of the Mazinger Trilogy, but later seen as more of a spin-off series.
Grendizer hit Japan in ‘75 with moderate success, but it got off to a rocky start. Despite being the third series of the Mazinger trilogy, Grendizer was worked on by the team behind Getter Robo, while the Mazinger staff went on to work on the series, Steel Jeeg. Steel Jeeg aired the same day as Grendizer, and because of issues with the production of the Grendizer toys, it wasn’t able to make it to shelves for the holiday season, making Steel Jeeg the toy to have at the time. There was actually a lot of internal politics surrounding this, as well as around other early mecha anime, which I find really interesting. If you want to know more, I’d recommend watching MercuryFalcon’s video on the history of 70s Super Robot anime.
Anyway, a lot of the criticism regarding Grendizer back in the day centered on Koji being relegated to a mere sidekick and having a love interest who wasn’t Sayaka Yumi. This caused people to assume that Grendizer wasn’t very popular in Japan, but Go Nagai vehemently refutes this claim. Despite this though, outside of Japan, Grendizer was massive in other regions such as Europe, especially in Italy and France, where it was called Goldorak and Goldrake respectively. It was also massively popular in Arabic regions of the Middle East. Over there, it was first dubbed in Lebanon and shown on Lebanese TV in the 1980s. It was also featured on other Arabic channels such as Kuwait TV and Saudi Channel 1.
Image stolen borrowed from Reddit.
Grendizer was huge in those regions and still is to this day. It almost reminds me a bit of Voltron in the sense that it was a lot more popular in other regions than it was in its homeland. Like Voltron, Grendizer not only has a steadfast fanbase, but it also received a reboot, Grendizer U, which started airing on July 5th of this year.
This art is cool and all, but I can’t help but notice how long Sayaka’s neck is 😭
Let’s Play the Game!
Right off the bat, you may notice one difference between this game’s story and the previous game’s story—the fact that this game actually has a story that’s more than just “evil monster wants to rule the world.” This game’s story instead starts with Bian Zoldark, a scientist of unparalleled intellect. He came to discover an imminent threat of an alien invasion. He felt that the earth's forces were too ineffective to counter such a threat. With that, he began to build a weapon that could defend the world from this alien threat: the Ultimate Super Robot Valsion. However, even with the Valsion, Bian was sure that unless humanity could unite under a single front, we would be unable to repel the aliens.
Because of this, he established the Divine Crusaders, or the DC, a secret society with the purpose of uniting the world behind a single banner... by force. Among the DC, many familiar groups joined Bian and his ideals, including the Principality of Zeon, Baron Ashura and his army of Mechanical Beasts, the Dinosaur Empire, and the Hyakki Empire. The DC went around and captured the world's Super Robots with very few being able to stand against the immense destructive power and impenetrable defenses displayed by the Valsion.
However, despite the odds and much of the world under DC control, three robots managed to evade capture and began a revolt. The pilots of the Gundam, Mazinger Z, and Getter Robo, pledged themselves against the DC. Thus started The Second Super Robot War.
Now, if you’ve played Super Robot Wars OG 1, this story may seem familiar to you. This story was essentially reused for the first half of OG1, although it's a bit less fleshed out in this game. You never really see how Shu contributes to the story, there isn't much dialogue among the villains in general, and we have no real reason to believe Bian’s discovery. Not to mention, this game doesn’t do much to make Bian very sympathetic or compelling, although the next game does improve on this.
This game doesn’t do much to capture major character arcs and events from the respective series; it's essentially just an SRPG with mecha anime characters. It wouldn’t be until later entries that the more character-specific scenes and anime plots would be baked into the main plot of the games. Overall, this makes the dialogue pretty simple. Each pre-map dialogue sequence is only a couple of sentences before you start the map. I can see why some may view this as a downside since the story is a big part of the later games, but it has the side effect of making this game easier to pick up and play for me. Many modern SRW games have novels' worth of text to read between maps, and while it’s good for worldbuilding, sometimes when I don’t have much time, I want to pick up the game and play a map, not read a visual novel.
That said, while this is a bit late to mention, another difference between this game and the first one is that the mechs are piloted by actual pilots. So a lot of the aforementioned pre-map dialogue scenes will be between the different pilots and not just the robots.
This game plays very similarly to any other turn-based SRPG: you engage in battles where you move your units across a grid map in order to defeat your opponent. Unlike the first game, where you have to capture every fort on the map, most of these maps are rout maps. However, a number of the maps have more unique objectives. There’s a cool map later on where you have to destroy several different solar panels before the turn limit.
This isn’t the solar panel map, this was just a screenshot I had showing off a random map.
The maps themselves aren’t as barebones as the previous game’s maps but aren’t as thought out and elaborate as something like FE1. Furthermore, a good number of the roster can fly, so terrain can be bypassed quite frequently.
There are very few differences between how stats worked in the previous game and how they work in this game. One of the most obvious changes, however, is that the numerical values are mostly scaled up. Another obvious difference is the lack of a Charisma or Loyalty stat, as this game does away with the weird persuasion mechanic of the first game. Additionally, your ‘Pilot’ stat just tells you who is piloting the mech you’ve selected, though unlike later games, you cannot swap units into different mechs in this game.
As for the stats that received changes, SP and Spirit Commands are now available to your entire team and not just some arbitrary Team Captain. Speed still affects your hit rates and avoidance, but it also has the added property that if a unit is notably faster than their opponent, they can do a follow-up attack, but you will only really see this around the late-game, or if you encounter very fast enemies early on like Char Aznable.
HP is the same as it is in the first game, however, this game lacks permadeath; units who die on a map will be revived for a small financial penalty at the end of the map.
Certain mechs like Aphrodite A or Methuss, rather than a short-range attack,
have Repair, which just heals an adjacent ally.
Moving onto the second page, each unit consistently has two attacks; a short-range attack and a long-range attack. Like the first game, long-ranged attacks cannot be used if you already moved your unit in that same turn. Additionally, when you have the particular attack selected, the game will tell you how much attack that weapon has against the different terrain types: Sky, Land, and Sea.
During the game, Masaki will join you in the Cybuster, and he has access to a powerful attack called Cyflash, which does damage to every enemy within a six-tile radius of the Cybuster. It’s your only real AoE attack, and since every attack in this game can be used infinitely, it’s very broken and very funny.
Masaki unleashing the power of the Cybuster
Speaking of Masaki and the Cybuster, your first introduction to him is in Scenario 6. There is an army of Sentry Beams guarding a base that you’re supposed to enter, and Masaki spawns on a later turn, uses Cyflash to wipe them out, and enters the base in a scripted event. This particular event is referenced in Super Robot Wars OG1, however, something funny that I like to do is have Kamille in the Zeta Gundam, transform into the Waverider, and fly him up to that area before Masaki spawns. The beams all have 0% hit on him, and Kamille is fast enough to double the Sentries, it’s a goldmine of EXP.
Additionally, the Spirit Commands have been expanded greatly. Each pilot has a personalized list of spirit commands they learn upon leveling up, and these commands can only be used before moving. They range in terms of usefulness and can be something like healing a negligible amount of HP to yourself or adding 10% to your hit rate to something like doing damage to every enemy on the map or warping another unit to another tile.
Image taken from Akurasu.net
Rather than the Pokémon-esque persuasion system of the first game, your method of gaining new units in this game is more akin to that of a traditional Fire Emblem game. Many units will join you automatically, but a few of them have specific requirements that have to be fulfilled; sometimes it’s simply talking to them, like having Koji talk to Minerva X; other times you may have to reduce their health to below 30% and then talk to them, like Kochoki from the Getter Robo series.
I like Kochouki as a character, but I can see why others may not. In this game, her mech, Mecha Kochouki, has pretty good stats and she has decent Spirit Commands. So even if you don’t plan on using her long-term, I’d still say it’s a good idea to recruit her and Get ‘er Robo.
Another change to note is that while there is no permadeath, if you lose your battleship, White Base—and later the Argama—you will get an automatic Game Over. The White Base, piloted by Bright Noa, is your primary battleship in this game and can be used to dock other units. Docking them allows them to heal a small amount of HP between turns, and you can also take advantage of the White Base’s flight to get otherwise low movement units over a specific location faster. In terms of combat though, White Base is a few steps below any of your other mechs.
In between maps, you no longer have the ability to ‘Power Up’ your mechs. During these intermission scenes, you only have the option to save your data or move on to the next map. Additionally, you can see the average level of your party.
Additionally, this game also has shops and items… which I completely had no idea about until very recently when I was doing research for this article. The reason I didn’t know there were shops is because they’re kind of hidden. They aren’t like locked away behind some random obscure tile or anything like that, but unless you knew the shops existed before going in, you wouldn’t really think to look for them. Most of the items just provide simple stat boosts though.
Image taken from Akurasu.net
The game features a lot of unused items and, more interestingly, other unused data. Like this completely unused mech called the Normandia, which seems to be an original mech introduced in this game. It never appeared in any other SRW game, and the details surrounding it remain a mystery.
My theory is that possibly the Normandia would have taken the
place of White Base as the battleship.
There are also a slew of unused pilots and portraits, most of which are portraits of characters who appear in the third game like Sayla Mass, Kai Shiden, Maria Fleed, and Emma Sheen. Some characters who don’t appear in the third game though are Routina Levin from Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam, and two unknown characters named Dan Geppetto and Hook, who seem to be OC characters and never appeared in future SRW games. They are assumed to be the pilots of Normandia.
The Rejects: Routina, Dan Geppeto, and Hook.
This game also features an unused debug map. When loading up the map, it lacks player units, and no win or loss conditions, and the only unit is a pilot-less Medea that never moves. How is this related to the review? Well, it isn’t, I just thought it was neat.
On the topic of the maps though, one criticism I have with a lot of them is how they are made to artificially take longer than normal due to their reliance on reinforcements. I kinda wish they would just have a ton of enemies on each map to begin with, instead of just spawning half of them in as reinforcements. There are a lot of times when there are one or two enemies left on a map, but before you can kill them, a hoard of twenty reinforcements will show up and cause the map to take much longer than you had expected. In fact, every scenario aside from 1, 5, 16, 19, and the last one 26, features enemy reinforcements prominently, I checked.
In the first game, the only songs I really enjoyed were the battle themes, and my opinion hasn’t really changed for this second game. Again, most of the battle themes are just the OPs from the original anime series the characters come from, and Shinichi Tanaka did a fantastic job at rendering these themes in an 8-bit format.
The original battle themes like Valsion!, and Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster!, are some of my favorite songs in the game, and I often catch myself humming these songs from time to time. Hell, the Cybuster theme alone is a good reason to warrant using the Music Persistence patch.
Other Versions
This second game was remade for the Gameboy as The Second Super Robot Wars Gleam, or SRW2G in 1995. They made some changes to the story, added new stages, and modified the graphics, lifting a lot of them from the third and fourth Super Robot Wars games.
The main combat system was changed to match SRW4, and weapon upgrades were included instead of having the item shop. Units from Mobile Suit Victory Gundam and Mobile Fighter G Gundam were added, as well as a few units from the Mazinger Movie Series. Lastly, the Banpresto Original character Lüne Zoldark with her mech, Valsione, was also added, but I will talk about her later.
In 1999, SRW2, 3, and EX were remade for PS1 and bundled as Super Robot Wars Complete Box. This version massively improved the graphics and music. It also improved the game balance and adjusted the battle system to be more in line with Super Robot Wars F. The second game was then released on PS1 as a separate game later that year, and in January 2021, it was released digitally on the PlayStation Store Network.
In 2004, The Second Super Robot Wars was ported to the Gameboy Advance. It was given as a bonus to 2000 people who purchased Super Robot Wars GC. This version is a direct port of the Famicom game, the only thing to note is that this game has an English fan translation as well.
This is what happened when I tried booting my ROM.
The Third Super Robot Wars
As the third game in the Super Robot Wars series, the second game in the classic timeline, and the first game on the Super Famicom, we have the Third Super Robot Wars! The Third Super Robot Wars game was released on July 23, 1993, and being on new hardware, it was a huge step up in many technical aspects. The roster size and amount of maps were vastly expanded, many new mechanics were implemented, and the graphics and music were vastly improved, with this being the first game to feature backgrounds in battles.
This game actually happened to be the first SRW game I played, and even to this day, it’s one of my favorites in the series. I’d personally rank it up near Der Langrisser and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem as some of my favorite games on the Super Famicom, and it’s the only SRW game I’ve ever played more than once. Sure, it has its downsides and quirks, but I hope the way I explain all the chaos and charm accurately portrays the enjoyment I had with my playthroughs of this game.
Fan Translation
This game has two notable fan translations; one from Aeon Genesis released on December 25th, 2002, and a second one also by Aeon Genesis on June 24, 2019. My first playthrough of this game was in 2017, so I initially played with the first patch. Later down the line, in 2019, when the new patch was released, I did a second playthrough using that patch in anticipation of the fourth game’s English patch which was also announced at the same time.
The first patch was one of Aeon Genesis’ earliest works, and it shows. I wanted to talk a bit about this first patch because aside from the understandable lack of polish, the patch itself is also just really funny in general. You can actually tell the difference between the old patch and the newer patch through the title screen, as the new one, which I posted above, has a slightly different font than the old one posted below.
Work for this patch started back in June of 2000 when a user named Akujin dumped the script and translated it. Then the following winter, Gideon Zhi inserted the translated text into the ROM. There were a few issues, like implementing combat dialogue, modifying the chapter titles, and the compressed graphics like in the title screen, but through skill and perseverance, the patch was completed. An extra 512K of blank space was added to the ROM to accommodate the new script, and the method that the game uses to find its text was reprogrammed to make use of the new space. In addition, they expanded quick-status and unit select windows during maps.
There are some understandable errors, such as text leaking out of text boxes, the occasional typos, and slight mistranslations. For example, the ‘Getter Robo’ is called ‘Getta Robo.’ But the more entertaining hiccups come in the form of the hilarious name translations: Sayaka Yumi’s name is rendered as ‘Sayaka Kyuu’ and Hayato Jin is called ‘Hayato Kami.’ Which, I guess if we're being fair, those are just alternative Kanji readings, and it's not like there were a lot of official translations of these series at the time anyway. Hell, we didn't get a good Mazinger Z sub until somewhat recently.
There’s also Mushashi Tomoe’s signature move, Daisetsuzan Oroshi, just being translated as “Blizzard.” Which technically isn’t wrong; Daisetsuzan is a mountainous area in Hokkaido and Oroshi just refers to strong winds on a mountain. It was probably changed just because of the space, and the large text font, but I just find it to be a really boring name change.
I think one of my favorite quirks of this fan translation though is the fact that one of the enemy attack quotes is “Fuck you!!”
The newer patch from 2019 fixes many of the errors present in the original patch. In particular, the text font was made smaller to fit more text in a text box, the chapter title graphics were revamped, the text was retranslated from the ground up, and the soldiers, unfortunately, do not say “Fuck you!!” anymore.
The Third Super Robot Wars shares the same engine as Super Robot Wars EX. According to Gideon Zhi, it was relatively easy to port much of EX’s code to 3 with little difficulty, as they had previously released an English patch for Super Robot Wars EX a few months prior.
In addition to Gideon Zhi and Akujin, this newer patch received assistance from TheMajinZenki, Fei, and Mugi. Additionally, like the second game, this game also includes an optional Music Persistence Patch.
Series Featured
Every series featured in the first two games reappears in this third installment. In addition, Great Mazinger is piloted by Tetsuya Tsurugi by default instead of just being piloted by Koji, and Getter Poseidon is now piloted by Benkei, instead of Musashi. Pilots and mechs from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket formally make their debut, as well as those from Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory.
As for brand new series, we have the late Tadao Nagahama’s Chōdenji Robo Combattler V, the first part of Nagahama’s Robot Romance Trilogy, featuring Chōdenji Robo Combattler V, Chōdenji Machine Voltes V, and Tōshō Daimos, three Super Robot anime series created by Saburo Yatsude, a collective name for the staff at Toei. The trilogy was notable for telling complex human stories instead of merely having a monster of the week format, although, I would argue that Grendizer served a similar role.
Combattler V was another Gattai Mecha series (Translator’s Note: Gattai still means “combining!”) which featured five pilots, known as the Battle Team, as they battle against the Campbellian Empire from a distant planet. As popular as Getter Robo was, one of the biggest criticisms leveraged at that show was the fact that its design lent itself extremely poorly for toys that were able to replicate its transformations, you can sell the individual Getter planes and the individual robots, but you couldn’t actually have them transform the same way they were able to in the show. Combattler V circumvents this by designing the toy first, figuring out how it transforms, and then replicating that in the show.
From my own personal experience, the show was very captivating, and definitely one of my favorites amongst a lot of early 70s mecha anime. The protagonists were alright, but the villains really carried the show, in particular, Garuda and Miya, and I often found myself more interested in what Garuda had going on more than I did compared to the main protagonists. At least, until around episode 27, after that point, the quality of the show kind of drops, but I digress.
Miya and Garuda are both really great.
The next anime featured is Yoshitake Suzuki’s Yūsha Raideen, Raideen The Brave, Reideen the Brave, Brave Reideen, or Heroic Raydeen… its name has a lot of translations. Yūsha Raideen was Sunrise’s first attempt at a Super Robot series and was the first Super Robot series that challenged the small monopoly of Super Robot series that was Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, and Getter Robo, which were all animated by Dynamic Productions.
On the staff that worked on the series was Yoshiyuki Tomino, who directed episodes 1-25, and would later be known for creating Mobile Suit Gundam, and Tadao Nagahama who directed episodes 26-50, and would later be known for creating the above-mentioned Combattler V series and The Rose of Versailles.
Compared to other series where the mecha was created by renowned scientists, Raideen stood out as it was the first series where the titular robot was a robot-like god sent by an ancient civilization. Aside from that, Raideen was also notable for its ability to transform into a bird-like jet for aerial combat, something that was heavily advertised in the toy line.
Goddo Bādo Cheeeeeeenji!
The last new series is Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3 (無敵鋼人ダイターン3 lit. Muteki Kōjin Daitān 3), also known as The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3, a series created by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino. Coming from the notably dark series, Zambot 3, and earning himself the nickname Yoshiyuki “Kill ‘em all” Tomino, Daitarn 3 was notably more lighthearted and comedic. With Tomino in general, it wasn’t uncommon for him to create more comedic series, such as Xabungle, ZZ Gundam, L-Gaim, and King Gainer, and he’d frequently flip-flop between tragic stories and comedic ones.
The show follows the protagonist, Banjō Haran, the sole survivor of his family fighting against a cyborg race called the Meganoids who killed his family. From there, the series is a pretty slapstick and batshit episodic series which is a play on Western spy series, comic books, and popular movies.
Daitarn was the last show directed by Tomino before Mobile Suit Gundam, which kind of leaves it as the lesser-known cousin overall. The series didn’t do as well as Zambot 3 either, and Sunrise wasn’t in a good place afterward. From what I’ve heard from other people though, the show is pretty decent and I may watch it sometime in the future, it’s tone is definitely up my alley.
The show seemed to be well received enough to include Daitarn 3 in multiple Super Robot Wars games though. Not only that, but the games tend to feature Banjō Haran as a very prominent character in those games, notably Alpha Gaiden.
Anyways, this game adds a lot of new Banpresto original characters, but the most notable one is Lüne Zoldark, the daughter of Bian Zoldark, the final boss of the previous game. She’s a tomboyish girl who was a member of the DC but was away during the second game training on Jupiter. She pilots a customized Valsion mode called the Valsione R, which is designed to look like an anime girl.
Like Masaki, Shu, and their respective mechs, Lüne and Valsione are recurring units within the series, with Masaki x Lune being a personal favorite ship of mine.
Let’s Play the Game
The story of this game begins six months after the second Super Robot Wars. After the war against the DC, the world was left in shambles and chaos, rendering the United Nations powerless. Consequently, the United Nations was replaced by the Earth Federation, and the members of White Base were reunited and tasked with maintaining peace.
Earth seemed to stabilize for a bit, but then cases of disappearances of federal troops began to occur. Londo Bell, the player corps based on the organization featured in Char's Counterattack, was ordered to investigate. Initially, it was believed that the remnants of the DC, now known as the Neo-DC and led by the Zabi family, were responsible for these disappearances. While the Neo-DC is seemingly up to no good, a new threat is mobilizing and preparing to launch its own attack on Earth. Spoiler alert: Bian's predictions from the last game turned out to be true.
Banpresto ad for The Third Super Robot Wars in the July 1993 issue of Newtype Magazine.
When it comes to the gameplay, many returning features and mechanics from the second game were expanded upon greatly while also adding several brand-new mechanics. The biggest thing that was revamped is the way stats work, so strap in, this explanation may get a bit long.
Firstly, this is the first game to include a separation between pilot stats and unit stats; you gain pilot stats upon leveling up by getting enough EXP in battle, while unit stats are only increased by upgrading your mech in between maps using the money you gain during the maps. Like the shift between the first and the second game, between the second game and this third game, stats are also scaled to be much higher.
When it comes to unit stats, under the unit’s name, it may or may not have a couple of passive skills or abilities, like the ability to transform, the ability to use an I-Field, or fight with a Beam Coating. A unit will also have HP, Move, and a terrain Type, which we’ve seen in previous games. What’s new is that a mech will also have Terrain points ranging from 1 to 7 which describes how useful a particular mech is in said terrain. In later games, this is changed to a letter grade. A unit will also have “Armor,” which is just a fancy-fancy way of saying Defense.
A unit will also have a Limit stat, which is the maximum amount of hit% your mech can have before being reduced by enemy avoid—you want to upgrade this frequently. Lastly, EN or Energy is a stat that depletes whenever you move or use certain weapons, and you regain a little bit of energy at the start of each turn. If you manage to reach 0 Energy on a map, you won’t be able to move or use certain attacks until you have enough energy. I like to think that the Energy stat was included because many people were of the same mind as myself where they’d constantly spam Cyflash with Cybuster.
As for your pilot stats, you have the pilot’s name, Level, Spirit Points, and Attack, which are all stats we’ve seen before. Aim is your pilot’s personal hit rate without taking into account any enemy avoid. If your Aim stat is orange on the stat screen, then it is above whatever your unit’s Limit is, meaning that in combat, your hit rate will just be whatever your limit is.
Control affects the amount of damage the pilot can inflict as well as the frequency of performing critical hits. Meanwhile, Reaction will affect your hit and evade. Additionally, if you manage to reach 130 Reaction, your pilot will be able to move twice in a single turn... which is a funny mechanic, to say the least.
Will refers to how much Willpower your pilot has; it increases marginally whenever you perform an action and is useful for performing certain powerful attacks. For example, if a pilot, in their respective anime has some kind of Deus Ex Machina attack that they typically only use once at the end of the episode to save the day, that will be translated in these games via having a high Will cost.
Then there's Intuition, which also affects hit and evade, however, this stat is fixed for each respective pilot and doesn't increase through level-up.
Like the last game, a unit will have a number of spirit commands they can perform which is listed below the core stats.
Lastly, like the mechs, the pilots also have their own respective Terrain rankings ranging from 1 to 7. These are added to the unit's rankings for your overall terrain adaptability.
Any weapon with “All” or “Map” just refers to Area of Effect attacks.
The last page on the stat screen is your weapon stats, which are very straightforward. You have Attack, Range, Hit%, and Ammo. Additionally, you have numbers telling you how Terrain affects said attack, with some attacks being unable to be used in or against mechs in certain terrain. You also have the Energy Requirement and the Will Requirement. Furthermore, like the last two games you cannot use a long-range attack if you've already moved in that same turn.
And with that, you have each of your unit’s stats and abilities. It all seemed complicated at first, at least it did to me when I first played, but once you understand how the stats work, it’s really easy to just pick up and play.
Something worth mentioning is the fact that since pilot stats and mecha stats are separated in this game, you’re able to mix and match units into different mechs aside from just their canon ones. It’s a really nice added feature that allows the player to try out new builds and setups and is one of the many factors that encourages replayability. The only real stipulation is pilots that use combining mechs, like Getter Robo or Combattler V, cannot swap out of their mechs. Furthermore, the pilot has to be from the same series as the mech they’re swapping into, so Amuro Ray can only swap to mechs from other UC Gundam series, and Sayaka Yumi can only swap into mechs from Mazinger, Great Mazinger, or Grendizer, for example.
The only real exceptions to this rule are the pilots of the Bluegars, Chikara Jinguji, Rei Asuka, and Mari Sakurano. All of these pilots are supporting characters from Yūsha Raideen, however, later on in the game you get the mechs Gargantua and Pantagruel which they can pilot, but Gargantua only appears in Combattler V, and Pantagruel is technically an OC mech based on Gargantua. I assume it’s probably just a reference because of the shared staff of both anime or the fact that Bluegars are unusably bad when it comes to combat, so they wanted to throw the player a bone with the option to have them pilot something else.
Gargantua
Mari joins in about scenario 16, and she joins at level 1, with the only mech she could use for a long time being the Bluegar. I benched her and the other pilots from Raideen in my first playthrough, however, for whatever reason I was determined to use her and train her as a mainstay as part of my team in my second playthrough. I had to rely on a lot of loading battle saves more than I’d want to admit because Bluegars get one shot… a lot. Not to mention that the weapons are quite weak, and they have very low hit rates, and an elephant would have an easier time dodging attacks….
Trust me though, this was a completely sane and normal thing to do, and I did have a sadistic level of fun trying to train her up, and by the time I reached the end of the game, she was about on par with my other Super Robots.
Speaking of Super Robots, while the distinction between Real Robots and Super Robots has existed since the first game, this is the first game you’ll really notice the differences. Super Robots tend to have much higher defenses, HP, and attack but low hit and avoid. Meanwhile, Real Robots will have notably high hit and evade. Something that’s a bit funny about these early SRW games though is the fact that, UC Gundam is the only Real Robot series included for a while, so Real Robot vs. Super Robot, in this game, just translates to Gundam vs. Not-A-Gundam.
That said, some Super Robot pilots can function somewhat like Real Robot pilots while piloting Super Robots. The most notable one is Maria Fleed, who is one of the few Super Robot pilots that can reasonably reach a Reaction of 130 and achieve double-move status before the end of the game. In my run, I took advantage of this by having her pilot the Great Mazinger.
Speaking of double-move, I should address the elephant in the room. One of the main reasons people are turned off by this game, but also why I love it, is the difficulty. It’s one of the few Super Robot Wars games where difficulty plays a significant role. It’s not as bad as something like A Portable, but the enemies, particularly the bosses, are ruthless and straight-up don’t give a shit.
By the time you’re about two-thirds into the game, every Real Robot mech will be able to double-move, while every Super Robot will surpass the viewable amount of HP, which is 9999. They’ll all appear with “????” HP, deal tons of damage, and have a crap ton of defense. Most of the late-game bosses will frequently have both double-movement and extremely high HP, Attack, and Armor. In fact, in my second run, I had attempted to play the Secret Final Map, and fight the Super Boss that appears on that map… I couldn’t beat them…
Despite that though, I really like how this game doesn’t pull its punches, and the lack of permadeath or anything like that still keeps the stakes relatively low. I feel that the game is pushing me to learn its mechanics, conserve my SP for the right moments, make up my own strategies, use the White Base, and develop tactics to properly beat the game. And when I clear a map, I feel like I’m sticking it to some sadistic game dev, and overcame a large challenge. I feel the same way about games like FE12, though FE12 is much much more difficult than this game.
The old patch translated his name as Astonazzi
And while I’m at it, like the second game, units who are defeated in a map must be repaired in between maps for a fee.
Also in between maps, you have the option to Upgrade your mech, which gives you the option to boost the Limit, Max HP, Armor, or Max Energy of any mech in your hangar for a hefty fee. Transfer allows you to swap pilots into different mechs. And Recycle allows you to sell one of your less useful mechs for a sum of money.
One mechanic in the newer SRW games that was absent in the first two is the option to chose between countering, defending, or attempting to evade an attack on enemy phase. This game introduced that mechanic, but it’s slightly different. You can’t actually select your counter-options during battle, and it has to be chosen in the system menu under “Orders.”
Also in the system menu is the option to play the game using a mouse, which I didn’t know of until just now… Neat!
Anyways, speaking of which if you’ve played OG1 or Alpha Gaiden, you may be familiar with Battle Masteries, small achievements you can fulfill during a map that will give you a Battle Mastery Point if you succeed, like “killing [X] boss before he escapes,” or “beating the map in [Y] amount of turns.” This game doesn’t exactly have Battle Masteries, instead, the game tracks your total turn count and you can obtain certain rewards for reaching certain maps under a specific turn count. For example, there’s a character very late into the game who can only be recruited if your total turn count is 350 or less.
As for the maps themselves, I find them to be greatly improved from the previous game. Many of them still rely on reinforcements, but in this game, they feel more integrated into the map design and story, making sense to spawn rather than artificially extending the map. The maps are also quite a bit larger, so you’ll need to use White Base and Argama more often, which would be nice if White Base was any good in this game. In the second game, White Base wasn’t amazing in combat but could still hold its own decently well. In this game, however, it’s a complete joke when it comes to combat.
There are also a lot of maps in this game, notably more than in the last two games combined. There are about 62 maps in total, but you’ll only play around 35 of them in a standard run due to route splits, branching paths, and turn requirements. Super Robot Wars games are known for their numerous route splits and alternative paths, and being the first game to introduce this mechanic, it really went all out, featuring 12 branching story paths throughout the game. If you do opt to play this game more than once, unless you play the exact same way every time, it’s unlikely that you’d have multiple identical playthroughs.
The dialogue and text in this game, albeit being about as simple and straight-to-the-point as the previous game, is still really endearing and a joy to read. The dialogue does a great job of shifting between being serious and cheesy and sometimes memetic.
This screenshot was from 2019. I don’t know why, but I had set my nickname as Mike Hawk at the time.
A lot of the dialogue between the protagonist characters is interesting, but I find some of the dialogue between the villains to be an actual joy to read, especially the leaders of the alien invaders known as the Inspectors. They are definitely a cast of characters, and I was actually quite ecstatic to see them reappear in OG2.
In the previous games, the only parts of the OST that I really enjoyed were the battle themes. However, in this game, the map themes definitely took a step up and are unironically really nice to listen to. They still aren’t as great as the battle themes, but listening to the map themes in this game isn’t grating at all, and the added variety of map locations helps, as there are many more map themes to listen to.
As for the battle themes, they sound great on the Super Famicom, and the original themes are songs I frequently go back to and listen to, especially "Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster!" and the "Violent Four" themes.
One thing that confuses me, though, is that in the second game, Grendizer had its own theme that played during battles, "Tobe! Grendizer!" However, for some reason, this theme was removed in this game, and now Grendizer just plays the "Mazinger Z" OP in battles.
While I don’t usually pay attention to graphics in these games, the sprite art in this game was a definite highlight. Each pilot portrait is made with so much personality and pizzazz that you don’t even need to watch the original anime series to get a general feel for what the characters are like. And the sprite art used in designing the mechs is very eye-catching and stunning. Even the Real Robots, which are designed to look a bit more boring and realistic in comparison to Super Robots, still look nice and vibrant in this game, and they mesh well with the general aesthetic of the game.
This game doesn’t have the amazing high-budget animations or battle scenes that last for about a minute like later games; the animations are basically just still-shots, but they’re still really pretty and have their own charm. Speaking of charm, a little charming quirk of this game is the fact that every mech that is controlled or piloted by an AI is represented using a portrait of Haro from the Gundam series, which is always funny to me.
Even trivial aspects like the menus, maps, background environments,
and the overall UI all look so good!
With all that said, I do have some criticisms, with my main one being how the little popup menu works before a battle starts. In modern SRW games, when you choose to attack an enemy unit, a window pops up telling you information like the name of the attack and, most notably, your hit rates.
This game does show you this information, but the difference between this game and later games is that in modern games after this window pops up, you can press A again to confirm the action or press B to cancel out. In this game, you can’t back out, and the battle starts after a few seconds. So what happens is you have a unit attack an enemy, see that “Oops, I have 0% hit on them,” and then you can’t cancel out of the battle.
In the first two games, you couldn’t see hit rates at all before battle, but hit rates in those games were relatively higher in general, so you usually had to pay attention to hit rates less. In this game, certain enemies, particularly UC Gundam bosses, typically have very high avoid, and the fact that this game shows you hit rates but only in this little popup window feels like a middle finger. Ultimately, though, by the end of the game, you’ll develop a feel for how accurate attacks should be without having to manually calculate it or anything.
Other Versions
As I mentioned with the second game, that game, this game, and Super Robot Wars EX were compiled and released as Super Robot Wars Complete Box, for the PlayStation 1.
Later on, the game was released as a standalone remake in June of 1999. Every improvement and change that applied to the second game’s remake also applies to this third game.
Fraw Bow’s portrait is adorable. You don’t typically see her much outside of brief
cutscenes with White Base though.
Conclusion
If you couldn’t tell, I like the Super Robot Wars series a lot. While my love for the series isn’t as strong as my love for Fire Emblem or Langrisser, it’s still a series I hold close to my heart. When I first played The Third Super Robot Wars back in high school, I knew next to nothing about mecha anime, and got into it as an adjacent to Fire Emblem, since it was another turn-based Tactical RPG, but featured robots instead. However, seeing all these unique characters and mechs duke it out in this coherent narrative piqued my interest a lot. I played other games in the series and got into a lot of older mecha anime series, some of which became my all-time favorite anime, like Martian Successor Nadesico, Full Metal Panic, or Combattler V.
When I think about it, I had a similar experience as I did when I first played Super Smash Bros and discovered all these cool and interesting Nintendo properties. In that case, my interest in that game involved me getting invested in Mother, Fire Emblem, Kirby, and so on.
I’d personally recommend the Super Robot Wars series to anyone with even a surface-level interest in mecha anime. However, recommending these specific titles is a bit more difficult. If you’re part of the single-digit number of people who enjoy older SRPGs like myself, I’d definitely recommend checking them out, especially the second and third games. They can serve as good introductory titles, allowing you to experience how the series evolved firsthand, rather than reading some dipshit’s review on a blog post online.
If these games are "too old" for you, the next recommendations I can give for getting into the series would be either Alpha Gaiden or Original Generations, either the GBA or PS2 version. Alpha Gaiden is a fan favorite, featuring a lot of mechs from popular series, with intuitive and easy-to-understand gameplay mechanics, and a compelling story. While the OG series contains strictly original characters, which is nice for anyone who is intimidated by the abundance of mecha anime they may not be familiar with, it offers a really solid story. OG2, in particular, has a nice difficulty that’s challenging enough but not as sadistic as The Third Super Robot Wars. Though honestly, almost any entry can be a good introductory game except for A Portable. I just mainly stick to recommending the ones available in English since not many people who visit this page know a lot of Japanese.
As always, I appreciate anyone who had the patience and curiosity to read through this entire post and listen to my thoughts. Normally, I'd have something insightful or funny to end this post with, but this time, I don't, so uh… have a good night...
Sayonara!
References
I don’t normally add references to my blog posts, let alone my reviews. But Super Robot Wars is a series with a vast history and individual lore with each anime series included, so I wanted to provide some further reading and videos for anyone interested.
Super Robot Wars Wiki. (n.d.). Unparticipated works. Retrieved from https://srw.wiki.cre.jp/wiki/%E6%9C%AA%E5%8F%82%E6%88%A6%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81/%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7
DualShockers. (2020, August 21). Super Robot Wars Terada Cybuster Dunbine. Retrieved from https://www.dualshockers.com/super-robot-wars-terada-cybuster-dunbine/
Mutual Images Journal. (2020). Super Robot Wars. Retrieved from https://www.mutualimages-journal.org/index.php/mi/article/view/9-2/69
The Cutting Room Floor. (n.d.). Dai 2 Ji Super Robot Taisen (NES). Retrieved from https://tcrf.net/Dai_2_Ji_Super_Robot_Taisen_(NES)
Aeon Genesis. (2007, May 20). SRW1 Project. Retrieved from https://aeongenesis.net/projects/srw1
Aeon Genesis. (2013, December 24). SRW2 Project. Retrieved from https://aeongenesis.net/projects/srw2
Aeon Genesis. (2019, June 24). SRW3 Project. Retrieved from https://aeongenesis.net/projects/srw3
Shinta. (2021, July 3). Shinta Reviews: An Introduction to Super Robot Wars [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16yETTUVes
Super Robot Blueprint. (2019, July 21). Super Robot Blueprint: Yuusha Raideen '75 (v2) [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/73kMjv1wJ7M?si=LY9fcEwWvLzwX0Cg
Super Robot Blueprint. (2021, December 5). Combattler V '76, Super Robot Blueprint [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/CPDR8gZ-Mok?si=bNocS8cGLquWelhX
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