(Cast, Super Robot Wars MX)
An Introduction to Super Robot Wars
So, what is Super Robot Wars?
Super Robot Wars (SRW from now on) is the siren song of the merchandising culture. SRW is that time when Spiderman and the plastic army men were besieged on top of a dresser by evil Power Rangers and Transformers until your mom came in the room and said to get ready to go. SRW is a plane made of chainsaws dogfighting a cyborg dragon who is covered in flames. It is the world's greatest fanfiction, burned onto your digital media of choice. It's a game about robots who punch each other. SRW is everything and nothing, simultaneously, a work of art expansive yet simple in scope. It is Samuel L. Jackson, if he sweated dark chocolate for the masses as he fought monsters made of sirloin steaks.
...So, what is Super Robot Wars?
It's a turn-based strategy RPG, similar to games like Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Front Mission, etc. The main draw, however, is that the characters, mecha and plots are drawn from every conceivable mecha anime. All of them. For serious. Even if the creator said they didn't want them in there. (Five Star Stories, caused by a mix-up in programming) If it's animated, has giant robots in it and it's from Japan, it's probably been in at least one SRW game. Representatives from Gundam, Mazinger and Getter Robo are all but guaranteed to show up in every game, which would be awesome enough were it not for all the rest of the shows that get into it, and for the characters Banpresto has made up in the process.
Fortunately for mecha fans, there's been lots and lots of SRW games. The first one came out in 1990 for the Game Boy, and it's still going strong - two more are coming out by the end of the year, with Gurren Lagann, Code Geass, Gundam 00 and Eureka Seven being the headliners making their debuts in the latest game (SRW Z2: Hakai-Hen, the first of two parts for Z2; released in May).
There's been three main series (original, Alpha, and Z), a dozen stand-alone handheld outings, and spin-offs into action RPGs (OG Saga), Gundam VS-type action (Another Century's Episode), and games that only use the characters Banpresto has made (Original Generation), as well as a couple anime of varying quality. If you're trying to get into the series, you've got lots of options...maybe. (More on that later.)
Plots are chopped up from the anime they're from and tossed into a huge, awesome salad. Multiple end-of-the-world situations are in play at any one time, with various groups struggling for control. Most events are based on the shows they're from (or the iterations of them released most recently), often with little twists and kinks to them to get them to fit into the rest of the game (read: make them more awesome). Characters derided for being wusses man up, and plot points that didn't make sense are beat into submission until they do. If you don't know much about the shows the characters are from, though, you'll get lost pretty fast. It's the price you pay for the awesome, really.
Action is predictably over-the-top, with characters screaming out their attacks, huge destructive laser blasts, physics-defying melee combo attacks, etc., etc. HP for characters and damage done by attacks is regularly in the thousands, and the final bosses' HP is often in the low millions. There is a mecha you can get that is made out of three other robots, which then picks up a fourth and uses it as a gun. It's that kind of game, and it's every mecha fan's dream.
Also, JAM Project does the theme songs.
Sounds awesome. How can I play it?
Err...that's the catch. With all the companies with mecha in the games, along with their distributors in other countries (or lack of distribution), it would be an incredible mess to figure out who gets what cut of the sales in other countries (and that's before the whole Macross/Robotech thing gets brought up). These games are going to stay in Japan, so unless you mod your system and lern2Japanese, you're not going to be able to play them.
You're kidding me.
Well, there are a couple loopholes in that whole thing. Once upon a time, Banpresto scraped up all the characters they had made for the games and put them in their own SRW games, known as the Original Generation series. These were released as Super Robot Taisen*: Original Generation and Super Robot Taisen: OG2 in the US, for the GBA at the end of its lifespan. They're awesome, and since they're not from any other show, you don't have to watch a whole lot of other anime to figure out what's going on. Also, it is even more awesome than the other games, just for the sheer audacity of it all. (Unfortunately, Japan kept a PS2 extended remake of both games for itself.)
*There was some possible legal conflict over the name Robot Wars, involving the almost-as-cool combat robot show, so they changed the name. Taisen or Wars, it means the same thing, and it's still awesome.
The semi-related action-RPG Super Robot Taisen: OG Saga came out for DS in the United States, but it's quite a bit different from the rest of the series, and the sequel never got exported.
Also, less legally, a couple of the games got fan-translated, the video game equivalent of fansubbing. These include SRW 3 (SNES), which I can't recommend because the translation was rather salty and the game itself kinda sucks, SRW 4 (SNES), which I haven't figured out how to get working, SRW Alpha Gaiden (PS1), which is awesome incarnate, and more recently, SRW Judgement (GBA), which I just heard about so I have no idea about what it's like. Treat these like fansubs - you're probably breaking copyright laws to patch them, so I can't give any advice about getting them.
tl;dr: it's like Fire Emblem only with giant robots and it's so cool and why haven't you played it yettttt oh right they're all stuck in Japan
C'mon, I can't be the only one who's played these things, or heard of them, or something? They're kind of a big deal in Japan.
