One of the next Super Robot Chogokin from Bandai is one of our favourite super robots. That of the mighty Zeorymer. One of Yasuhiro Moriki’s most iconic designs, the mecha actually originated in a pretty pervy hentai manga by none other than Yoshiki Takaya (of Guyver fame). Though Moriki’s anime version has quite a different aesthetic, something that would go on to be used on the rather awesome looking RX-105 Xi Gundam. In gaming terms, Zeorymer is possibly one of the most poweful units ever to grace Super Robot Wars. Appearing in both J and MX it basically pwned pretty damn hard (and let’s not even talk about Great Zeorymer). Whilst there have been a few Zeorymer toys over the years, from Gigabrain and Yamato, they’ve all been pretty disappointing. This, on the over hand, will be properly good. For those that want this, it’s set for a February release next year.

The magnificent bastards at the Romhacking Aerie told me to drum up support for a possible Christmas release of their Super Robot Wars J translation, and when the 25th of December came and went with nary a sighting of Santa carrying a sack full of binary patch code, the caterwauling of fans crying out in unison caused such a disturbance in The Force that Jedi in a galaxy far, far away could feel it, to say nothing of the psychic pressure our more local Newtypes had to put up with.

However, it was all a ploy to teach us the true meaning of Christmas: being surrounded by friends and family and not by Game Boys. Now that Christmas is over, we can finally get back to ignoring our family again because, yes, the fan translation is now out. Carefully follow the directions included in the readme, which detail the patching procedure and suggest utilities to use if command-line interfaces give you the heebie-jeebies.

The release of Super Robot Wars games into English through fan translations are always marked as grand occasions, because although most fan translations deal with games which are unreleased in English, most of them still have the theoretical possibilities of release through either an updated version or a classic game download service such as the Wii’s Virtual Console. The Super Robot Wars games, however, have no such chance at release because of the legal issues surrounding them. They’re much beloved for their combination of multitudes of fans’ favorite mecha anime series into the same game, but this combination produces a legal snarl of epic proportions as different companies all claim ownership of the rights to these properties in the West, making negotiations prohibitively expensive at best and utterly impossible at worst. As such, make sure to enjoy the fruits of their translation labors.

We all know that in a perfect world, Super Robot Wars J would have been officially released in English. Its sweet, sweet combination of no less than 13 different anime series joining together to face evil in a strategy RPG set souls aflame. When it became clear that we did not live in this perfect world, however, and would be denied seeing this game’s release, a dedicated team of wizards and mystics set out to right this wrong, using the darkest and most forbidden of arts to scrape away at reality, tunneling into this hypothetical perfect world to extract an English copy of Super Robot Wars J from it.

Luckily, their Great Work is nearly complete, and a cornucopia of mecha tonnage is nearly ready to sortie. What they need for this Miracle is your help–your burning spirit–to pull the Veil of our Universe away for that tiny moment, just long enough to copy data over their 56k modem.

Clap if you believe in mecha fairy dust. Clap if you believe in love. Clap if you believe in never giving up. Clap if you believe in Space Lance.

Super Robot Wars J is coming, but only if we are first found worthy. You have been warned: prepare yourselves.

UPDATE: The translation group have turned back their hoods and have decided to make themselves known: when the translation is allowed out of its cage you may find it here. Keep in mind every minute they spend reading “but when, man, WHEN will it be done?” is one minute less they spend on the game’s release, and if possible restrain yourself from melting down their server through furious pressings of the reload button on your browser.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy that’s one of the most well known Original Generation (or OG) mecha from Super Robot wars to review. Specifically, the new Super Robot Chogokin Alteisen. In addition, to give the toy some context, we’ve also linked some gameplay footage of it in action at the end of the review.

There are few OG mecha from Super Robot Wars that are quite as iconic as the PTX-003C Alteisen, from its beefy shoulders to the almost Mellowlink-tastic Revolver Stake on its right arm. It’s always been an imposing and quite striking design. Meant as a next generation follow on to the successful Gespenst Mk II mecha, it turned out to be practically unusable due to its inherent balance issues (on account of its excess weight). As such it was piloted by ATX team member and the somewhat steely Kyosuke Nambu. When paired with the PTX-007-03C Weißritter, piloted by the suitably buoyant Excellen Browning, then the Alteisen’s firewpower was somewhat tempered by the Weißritter’s high speed precision.

The Alteisen is not to be confused the PTX-003C-SP1 Alteisen Riese, which was recently featured in the somewhat lacklustre Another Century’s Episode R. Instead, the original Alteisen has been strutting its stuff in the recently aired Super Robot Wars OG anime The Inspector.

This is why we’ve finally received a toy for the design and it’s also, in part, helped to start Bandai’s latest toy line; Super Robot Chogokin. This is a new and interesting venture on the part of Bandai, as it follows on from the success of the excellent Robot Damashii toys whilst incorporating the die-cast elements from the collector focused Soul of Chogokin range. What this means is that you get a smaller more manageable figure that still retains a very high production standard in terms of the sculpt and materials used. In addition, due to the Robot Damashii lineage, the new Super Robot Chogokin toys are very much meant to be played with (rather than just displayed like the Soul of Chogokin figures).

Considering this is the first real OG toy, it’s rather amazing to have it featured so prominently so early on in this new toy line’s life cycle. Especially as the Alteisen is merely a portent of a Super Robot Wars toy deluge to come.

Toy: Super Robot Chogokin Alteisen
Price: 4800 yen
Size/Weight: 7.8 x 19.7 x 7.0 cm / 360g

As designs go, the Alteisen isn’t exactly gimmick ridden but this toy is impeccably rendered. From the die-cast joints to the large amount of die-cast in the legs (the latter help give it a real weight and help with posing) it’s a very impressive figure for the money. The sculpt is nigh-on flawless and the paint job is surprisingly precise too. It’s like we’ve been given a smaller Soul of Chogokin figure for a fraction of the price.

The articulation is very thorough too and whilst the Alteisen isn’t really a design that’s one for ostentatious posing, as it’s a bit too bulky, Bandai clearly haven’t skimped on the joint engineering. The feet are also interestingly jointed around the ankles as well and allow the foot to be positioned independently of the leg itself, making for some interesting poses.

Overall then, this is a lovely toy of a design that has sorely deserved more service over the years. Considering how good this is for the money, we literally cannot wait to see the other mecha in the Super Robot Chogokin Range.

As part of Bandai’s increasingly infuriating Tamashii Web shop exclusives, they have finally announced that they’ll be releasing Soul of Chogokin Spec toys of both the Dragonar 2 and 3 units from Metal Armor Dragonar. Now, Dragonar has had somewhat of a resurgence since it was featured in all three of the PS2 Another Century’s Episode games (though it had obviously been featured in a multitude of Super Robot Wars games prior to that). Up and till this point however, Bandai had only released toys of the Dragonar 1, specifically two variants of the design; one with original proportions from the show and another that was stylised by Masami Ōbari. These new toys obviously seem to fall into the latter Ōbari stylised camp, not that we’re complaining. At present it’s not clear whether these toys will also sport the “lifters”, backpacks with wings on effectively, that were used in the show but we may see more options surface in the oncoming months. Both toys will be released in December, though you’ll obviously have needed to pre-order them online first. Personally, we’re holding out for the day when they finally release a Dragonar 1 Custom.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

The iconic PTX-003C Alteisen has finally been previewed in its new Super Robot Chogokin form over at GA Graphic. This design was one of Banpresto’s earlier original generation or “OG” efforts for Super Robot Wars and was apparently meant as a riposte to Capcom’s Blodia from Powered Gear and Cyberbots (though that information remains largely apocryphal). It was first featured in the second Compact game on the Wonderswan and then went on to reappear numerous times after that in both games and anime. This new toy, out in October, looks to capture the design rather magnificently and for the price of 5,040 yen it’s a bargain too. Considering that Bandai are using their prior Chogokin expertise on this new toy line, these toys could end up being rather special indeed.

The recently released Robot Damashii toy of the ARX-7 Arbalest from Full Metal Panic! has been covered over at R-Side. Much like all other Robot Damashii toys, the Arbalest looks suitably poseable and well sculpted despite the cheaper cost and smaller size. The Arbalest was featured in both Super Robot Wars J and W.

Interestingly, the mecha designer responsible for this design, Kanetake Ebikawa, also penned the titular mobile suits in the recent Gundam 00 (notably that of the Exia and the 00 Gundam itself). In addition, Ebikawa has helmed the mecha design for the upcoming PSP shooter, Darius Burst.

The thing with the Virtual On series though is that they’ve always been focused around human multiplayer. In that regard they are practically peerless. As to their singleplayer “experience”; it’s almost been an oversight.

Even Hajime Katoki’s mecha design was forcibly restrained for the various Virtuaroids, as the 1995 original had very stringent polygon counts which set the aesthetic. The first two Virtual On games in fact are almost exercises in functional minimalism.

Yet Virtual On, as a series, has had a remarkable amount of design-based progeny over the years but in the case of Oratorio Tangram such “offspring” would only be a few years away.

Cue Hideo Kojima…

Zone of the Enders (2001)

Zone of the Enders, or just plain ZOE, was a game set in the far off future in an O’Neill-esque colony in orbit around Jupiter. A force of mecha, known as orbital frames, infiltrate the colony in the hope of capturing a new experimental prototype orbital frame called Jehuty. As if the parallels with the original Gundam narrative aren’t striking enough: the game’s protagonist, a young boy by the name of Leo Steinbeck, stumbles upon Jehuty and is conveniently blown into its cockpit resulting in much mechanical ass kicking of the enemy forces.

Functionally, the control of Jehuty was uncannily akin to piloting a Virtuaroid. In that, Jehuty had two main modes of combat; dash based long ranged attacks and circular strafing melee attacks. However, unlike a Virtuaroid, Jehuty had no means to cross the distance between ranged and melee combat effectively.

In Virtual On combat was linked by fixed length dashes, which interconnected until the player reached a close enough range to swipe them with a melee attack. ZOE had an analogue dash function, which meant there was no functional linkage between ranged and melee combat. This was compounded in the original ZOE due to the slow speed at which Jehuty moved and initiated its attacks.

The only real functional progression ZOE had over Virtual On was the means in which Jehuty could circle strafe its melee attacks in a spherical fashion. Admittedly the bulk of ZOE’s combat was similarly planar to Virtual On but the melee attacks could operate properly in three dimensions: as you circled underneath or above an enemy orbital frame to slice them from behind. Unfortunately the speed at which Jehuty moved made this rather mundane. Doubly so when the enemy units could manoeuvre at a greater speed in some instances, ultimately rendering the melee combat almost random in terms of its effectiveness.

Irritatingly, the initial narrative in the first ZOE game was actually quite sketchy and the game ended in a manner almost cursory. I say irritating, as the over arching conflict and back-story are genuinely fascinating and, in my opinion, rather well wrought. Thankfully, the second game does help to cover the meat of the narrative in a more thorough fashion, though more of this later.

The focus of ZOE though was predominantly that of the singleplayer progression, so direct comparisons with Virtual On are only really valid in terms of the game’s core mechanics and not the over arching narrative (as Virtual On technically doesn’t have a gaming narrative, though there is an awful lot of print based literature for Virtual On but it wouldn’t be fair to include that here). ZOE was trying, albeit in a very clumsy way, to re-create an anime narrative that gamers could partake in and that is laudable.

In addition, Yoji Shinkawa’s mechanical design was and remains incredibly progressive. Arguably, Shinkawa’s artistic proficiency helped give a much-needed lift to the mediocre and dated gaming functionality.

ZOE was also memorably bundled with a Metal Gear Solid 2 demo, to the point that almost everyone bought the game for the demo rather than the mecha game with its name on the box. It was a shrewd move, as the sales would have been a useful bargaining tactic to make more games and allow Kojima et al to creatively “branch out” into other genres.

Anubis (2003)

Two years after the first ZOE, Anubis was released. This was quite a substantial improvement over the original game; both in terms of combat speed and functional variety, but it still suffered from the same issue between the two modes of combat.

Jehuty also had a greater array of weapons at its disposal now and a far more effective grab move, as you could utilise elements of the environment and even enemy units as impromptu melee weapons. Yet, the two elements of combat were still very much separated from one another. Even later in the game when Jehuty is upgraded to the point it can use a function called “Zero Shift”, that crossed the gap between the two elements of combat by teleporting the player to melee range almost instantaneously, felt very clumsy as it required no tactics to use effectively.

Anubis also suffered several silent revisions in Japan improving boss balancing and enemy squad AI until that culminated in a final “Special Edition”, which more elegantly solved the issue between ranged and melee combat by having more intelligent squad based AI. This forced the player to approach groups of enemy orbital frames with greater care and an intensified sense of spatial awareness. Even then this improvement only accentuated the brilliance of Oratorio Tangram, which a few years prior had managed to incorporated all these elements in a seamless whole.

Anubis also finally covered the bleak narrative in far more detail. Gone where the shonky CG rendered cutscenes and instead replacing those with traditional cel-shaded animation, which fitted the whole mecha anime influence more convincingly.

In all fairness, Anubis’ narrative was impressively executed. Not only was it very well written but it produced a functional context where Jehuty and the main protagonist, now by the name of Dingo Egret, really were the nexus that could turn the tide against the terrifyingly potent Bahram forces. Throughout the game there is an oppressive sense of foreboding that frames the action in a way that gaming doesn’t normally experience very often.

The only other mecha gaming series that comes close to this level of narrative is Armored Core but that has never been given an adequate localisation, mainly due to its subtlety most probably. Anubis is far more straight-laced in terms of its plot in comparison, so the subsequent localisation was more manageable.

Again, Shinkawa’s design work was breathtakingly executed. With a whole new graphical engine, using subtle elements of cel shading on some of the explosion effects and just a fantastic use of lighting, the mecha design was simply radiant. Even the brilliant useage of the Vic Viper fighter from Gradius as the basis for a transformable mecha was a stroke of genius. Thankfully, there is an excellent artbook available (as seen to your right) which shows the work that went into these designs and whilst Kojima bizarrely seems to take credit for the games (despite simply copying the core mechanics from Virtual On), it’s Shinkawa that should be given a greater level of creative credence. As he’s managed to encapsulate the real robot design mantra in a way that’s beautifully ethereal. Something almost no-one, bar Mamoru Nagano, has managed to successfully pull off.

Due to the lack of Metal Gear Solid demo bundled with Anubis, its sales were more inline with the game’s target demographic. Even in Japan it was very much a cult hit, doubly so abroad. This was unfortunate as Anubis was definitely a superior game when compared to ZOE but its actual popularity cast a more realistic shadow over the series’ future.

Zone of the Ending?

Despite the excellent Fist of Mars, which is a capable Super Robot Wars clone, the PlayStation 2 ZOE games leave a fair amount to be functionally desired.

Due to the barren landscape of mecha gaming outside of Japan, a large number of people fallaciously assume that games like ZOE and Anubis are without peers. That these games are even a pinnacle for the mecha gaming genre. Unfortunately, they aren’t. Functionally, ZOE still has issues that probably can’t be resolved (even the ACE games suffer from a similar, though less obvious, flaw). Kojima has sidetepped these problems by making greater emphasis on the narrative, to the point that an anime series has spawned from the games.

This is not to say that this isn’t a worthwhile endeavour, as gaming narrative is something that requires further development and it even fits well with the influences from mecha anime in this instance. Yet, you’re still controlling a mechanical avatar throughout the narrative and this is what ultimately constitutes the bulk of the game.

As such, it might be worth considering that the functionality should receive as much attention as the plot. At the very least hire Juro Watari and the remainder of the Virtual On team to do it properly.