For several years now, I've been fascinated by the Super Robot Wars series. Like Front Mission, it's a strategy RPG series in which you take control of mecha units. However, Front Mission is deadly serious, political, and although it deals primarily with piloting giant robots, it's as realistic as could be reasonably expected. Super Robot Wars is more like watching a mecha anime from the 80s, although that doesn't make the storyline any less valid. At least in the case of the two Original Generation titles for Game Boy Advance, the plot and characters are actually really fascinating--if not incredibly campy. With upbeat, memorable music and over the top graphics and animation, Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (as well as its sequel) left quite an impression on me and made me wish that more of the series was available in America.
Unfortunately, there is a pretty big problem with releasing titles from this series outside of Japan. The two Original Generation games were at most mildly successful, but in the end that has very little to do with why more titles from the series aren't available here. The traditional formula for a Super Robot Wars title is that of a crossover. There are games like Marvel vs. Capcom that are available in America but the fact that only two major companies are involved cuts down on the complexity of localization. In the case of Super Robot Wars, the average game includes characters and mecha from dozens of different anime series, some of which have been dubbed or subbed officially into English--but even so, securing the rights for all these titles so that a game in the series could be released in America would most likely be an absolute nightmare. All this for a title that in all likelihood would only appeal to a very niche audience.
It's not difficult to understand why Atlus hasn't chosen to attempt localizing more games from the series here, but it's pretty sad all the same. I absolutely adore the gameplay. It's somewhat similar to Fire Emblem, except each unit the player controls is a robot of some kind, most of which have one pilot--but some of them have many pilots, all of which have a set of abilities at their disposal. Pilots level up and learn new skills and gain statistics that affect their combat performance. The robots can be upgraded in a number of ways with cash as well and outfitted with special parts that augment their performance.
I loved Original Generation and its sequel and I'm really grateful Atlus chose to release them here. In fact, I'd love if Banpresto decided to put out more titles with all original characters--not because I'm opposed to the crossover concept but because I'd like to see more official English translations! Super Robot Wars games tend to have an extremely high amount of text, so I imagine localization is challenging. This is also why there aren't many fan translations available out there, although there are a few. Thanks to Aeon Genesis, fan translations exist for the first three Super Robot Wars titles on Game Boy, NES, and SNES respectively. I haven't played them, but I think I might one day just for the sake of completion. Their gameplay is most likely a lot more basic, but I think I could still have fun with them.
They've also translated Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden and I have played a few hours of it. It's actually quite good, but the fact that it is the second game of a series is disheartening to me. As silly as it might seem, I do care about the plot in these games. I can only hope someone decides to translate Super Robot Wars Alpha, but considering the aforementioned massive text in all of these games, I'm not going to hold my breath.
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