Super Robot Wars and Mecha Game General sperging thread - A meta thread for discussing all this robot vidya game stuff

[GethN7]

While I still plan to do the SRW games threads, this is something a meta thread for sperging about SRW, SD Gundam, Gihren's Greed, and all the mecha nerding that can possibly be done in general concerning how the robot anime were adapted to vidya game format.

Going to start with some information that will amuse @Jaimas and @Cubanodun should find interesting.


Super Robot Wars "Classic Series"

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The Classic name is applied to following games: SRW 2, 3, EX, 4/F/Final, Masoukishin, and any remakes and ports of the same.

SRW1 is not part of this, but I'll cover it anyway, as the Classic games essentially take what it started and build on it.


SRW1 - This was a weird game. There are no humans, the mecha are considered alive, and they are all beating the hell out of each other simply because some alien asshole decided to pit them against each other.

This barely resembles what is considered an SRW game, more of a curiosity really, and it featured a weird and frankly confusing "recruit an enemy mech to your team via trying to persuade them to switch sides" mechanic.

It's for original Game Boy, in English, I suggest hunting it down and giving it a whirl, just for the educational value.

Got an HD remake for the PS3 as a tie in bonus for SRW Z3 that just put it in color and had the same basic mechanics.




SRW2: This game is when Banpresto decided to revisit what they founded in SRW1 (mecha crossover game) and add humans to the mix and hang a story on it. The story is basically a guy named Bian Zoldark warned the world aliens would attack, no one listened, so he declared war on the world to make them give a shit.

That's basically it, and this was where the earliest form of the SRW engine got it's basis, featuring human pilots, dialogue scenes between stages, a prototype form of the Seishin/Spirit Skills, terrain having different effects, and the earliest and most rudimentary form of animation.

Was originally released for the NES, got a GBA re-release that was basically a port, both are in English. Got a Gameboy port a few years later that added G Gundam and Victory Gundam, but it's non-canon.

@Jaimas, you'll laugh hard at this: since they were still more concerned with making the game engine as opposed to plot, it's got the Zeon guys working with the Titans and the Dinosaur Empire and Dr. Hell are also working with them all under the banner of Bian Zoldark's Divine Crusaders, and the only thing really holding them together is shared hatred of the good guys.

About the only consistent plot thread from this that was retained was Paptimus Scirroco tried to take over the DC, Bian caught him, and Shu Shirakawa (who debuted here with Bian and Masaki) told Scirroco to not let the door hit him on the way out.



SRW 3: The aliens Bian mentioned finally show up, but you spend most of the game also fighting the Neo-Divine Crusaders, which Gihren Zabi and his family took over from Bian and used his corpse to smokescreen their interplanetary domination plans by claiming to represent what he fought for.

Still has the same weird mix of guys who should have no business being allies working together being allied since they all hate you basically, but they do follow up on Scirroco being pissed he got thrown out of the DC and wanting revenge, one route even makes him the final boss in a souped up version of Bian's machine from SRW2.

Lune Zoldark debuted here, and Shu was the canonical true final boss like in Alpha Gaiden.

Also the first game to let Anavel Gato join you if you went on a certain route, and the stupid love triangle from 0083 was resolved with Gato telling Kou that Kou's current girlfriend was his ex-girlfriend, they parted amicably, and he just wishes Kou the best with her if he joined.

This game introduced more Super Robots to the mix, generally minus most of their plots, and it also introduced the early form of unit upgrades seen in later games, and the seishin skills and passive pilot skills were refined into an early form of the modern game versions.

Translated into passable if slightly wooden Engrish, but it's perfectly playable for the SNES.




SRW EX: This game was technically the first Masoukishin game, but it's set after SRW3, which presumes the ally cast and a fair chunk of the surviving villains fell into a portal to the Masoukishin world of La Gias and were forced to join forces with different Masoukishin characters introduced like Masaki, Lune, and Shu.

Nothing too revolutionary happened this game aside from the art style being an early version of the cleaned up style later games in the series would gravitate towards.




SRW4: This game is basically when the game engine assumed the early form it would be for the rest of the series. Weapon upgrading was added, the art style received further polish to be less cartoony, and they introduced the idea of original characters you can pick from at the start, the Gespenst, Huckebein, and Grungust debuted here, and Gilliam Yeager (a character from a side project called Hero Senki) made a cameo here, his unit in that game was the Gespenst prototype, more or less. Resolves the alien plotline introduced in SRW3, you just fought their advance team in SRW3, they send their full forces after you this game.

The story writing also assumed the prototype of the style used from Alpha onwards, where they tried to make it be more coherent, allied enemy forces made way more sense (no aliens working with humans they'd otherwise shoot in their own canons or Zeon and Titans being buddy buddy), and they remade SRW 4 (for SNES) for the Playstation and Saturn, adding voiceovers, better music than the chiptunes they had been using, and adding in a lot of extra series (and dropping some others) in an attempt to flesh out the plot a lot more.

The PS1 SRW4 (aka F/F Final, because they had to split it into two discs due to all the added HQ voices and music) engine was later used to made modernized ports of 2/3/EX, which were added to the PS1 Complete Box collection, which updated their mechanics to be more like SRW4.



Masoukishin: The Lord of Elemental: The first all original SRW game, and the only one where they had mechanics that Disgaea players recognize like terrain height and unit direction playing a game mechanic role.

Winkysoft and Banpresto partnered up to do this game and a lot of the weirder engine design choices not retained for SRW Alpha onwards were their idea.

Covers the backstory of Shu Shirakawa and Masaki Andoh in much more detail, and is the first game in the Masoukishin line of games, which I'll cover another time.

This game is partial canon to SRW Classic, Alpha, and Original Generations timelines as well.


Got a Nintendo DS and PSP port, though only the original SNES version is in English, though game mechanics are identical across them all, all they did was modernize the art a little in remakes and change the scripts ever so slightly.

 

[GethN7]

Interesting once off games made around the "Classic" Era or close to it.


Shin Super Robot Wars: This is a very weird experiment in moving away from the "superdeformed" mecha rendering and trying to instead use realistically proportioned art, as in, completely realistic proportions. It's an idea they have yet to fully repeat for a few reasons:

1. It's more expensive to animate.
2. The game had the UGLIEST UI of any game in the franchise trying to accommodate the artstyle.
3. It honestly looks weird, as some of the Super Robots look very off model since it's clear the designers were desperate to make their whole forms fit onscreen, resulting in some terrible art.

Needless to say, they never returned to using this idea ever again.

In other respects, the game feature a prototype of the Balmarians who would show back up in SRW Alpha and allowed the Devil Gundam to be the Final Boss, one of the last Classic Era-ish games to let a non original character be final boss for awhile.

It did, however, have the saving grace that, if you are a fan of Ken Ishikawa's Getter Robo art, they slavishly copied his style as opposed to the more standardized Getter art used in all other entries of the SRW franchise.



SRW 64: This was the first time they tried to go for full 3D battle cutscenes, although it was more a 2.5D look. It wasn't shit for an N64 game, but they clearly were still not sure what they were doing entirely.

The story is in many way a prototype of many concepts SRW A would later use, but SRW A would redesign everything introduced here anyway. It also featured Zakus being piloted by original characters briefely for the first time in the series, even random OZ goons from Gundam Wing would use them early on, which is odd, they rarely do cross piloting from other franchises in that manner save for special cases like letting Scirroco pilot an original unit in SRW 3 as the final boss.

It was also the first game to feature a crude form of interactivity with a Gameboy Color game, SRW Link Battler, where using GBC data from that unlocked units in the N64 game.



SRW Link Battler: SRW meets Yu-Gi-Oh, more or less. Wasn't terrible for a card game, but it was kinda a niche title.



Super Robot Spirits: Saved my favorite one for last. Banpresto tried to make a FIGHTING GAME based on SRW for the N64.


IT'S SHIT.

No, seriously, they clearly had no idea what they are doing. The animations are janky, the story is nonexistent, the hit boxes are crap, and it's clear they had never developed a fighting game in their lives.


After this bombed so bad it wasn't funny, Banpresto quietly pretended it never existed.

 

[Frank D'arbo]

What's the GOAT mecha game?

 

[XYZpdq]

What's the GOAT mecha game?

probably PS2 Votoms or Steel Battalion

 

[GethN7]

Fun trivia about this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikaru_Midorikawa


He's the man who does the voice of SRW character Masaki Andoh and is Heero Yuy in Gundam Wing, but some funny Super Robot Wars stuff people may not know.

He is THE ubersperg fanboy of the franchise.


He has admitted if ANY character he voices in any series depicted stars in an SRW game, he will play the shit out of it and main his characters into the ground, and he has even help bug test several games during development.

He is also beloved of the SRW developers because he loves the series SO MUCH he will often do extra voice acting FOR FREE.

Japanese voice actors like him come at a steep price for their services, and he's pretty well known, but he will often waive paychecks and overtime pay to do extra voice acting, entirely because of his love of the franchise.

In fact, he got the MOST voiced lines in battle in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 because he was so pumped to voice Heero Yuy especially, and it got to the point he even has voiced battle lines against characters you wouldn't otherwise expect Heero Yuy to EVER speak to simply because Midorikawa-san is just that damn willing to sit for hours in the voice acting booth for his favorite franchise, often without expecting a dime.

 

[Agent Wet]

I seen some gameplay of Super robot spirits and yeah it looks like shit but I love the idea of seeing the series as fighting game like a 2D fighter or at least a 3D fighter similar to tekken .

By the way I found this commercial for the game while I was looking for gameplay.

 

[GethN7]

Now to cover the SRW Compact/IMPACT games


SRW Compact: Released for the Wonderswan. Had no original characters.


SRW Compact 2: Split into three games due to size. Was where Kyosuke Nanbu/Nambu and Excellen Browning debuted. The original foes known as the Einst are from this game. Also for Wonderswan.


SRW Compact (WSC): An enhanced remake of the first game in color.


SRW Compact 3: Introduced the Shura, a race of warriors who have a creepy amount of Fist of the North Star with some Dragon Ball Z Saiyans inspiration. Their main character, Folka Albark, he's basically Kenshiro from Hokuto no Ken in a giant robot.


SRW IMPACT: IMPACT was a distillation of most of the Compact games into one megagame for the Playstation 2, using a cleaned up version of the engine from Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden.

It was the first PS2 SRW game, and it's notable for the following.

1. It's LONG as hell, over 100 stages.
2. The Shura were cut out and the Einst are the main focus as part of the plot streamlining.
3. All future portrayals of Kyosuke and Excellen use what this game established as a base.
4. It is one of the few SRW games that cannot be emulated properly due to some weird issues. It will crash after the first level so far in PCSX2.

 

[GethN7]

Some cool trivia about rules SRW has to follow for adapting mecha shows and manga.

Given Super Robot Wars aims very hard for a Teen level rating by default, this means if they adapt a rather adult level property like the more gritty versions of Getter Robo, the gorier bits are generally omitted, easy enough to do given the format is half visual novel, half SRPG.

Sometimes, this does mean they have to do more, like New Getter Robo was adapted with most of it's plot to SRW NEO, but to make it fit better, the cast got watered down from the nigh lunatics they were into their milder counterparts from the less edgy Getter series, which is understandable, as most of the other series adapted were far more kid friendly.

However, this does not otherwise stop them from adapting anything they get the license to, but they have one rule they can't break.

They cannot adapt any series that was outright pornographic.

Generally, this isn't an issue, there are very few mecha shows they do adapt that were basically porno level explicit, but this resulted in two series they had to use watered down adaptations for because they had little other choice.



1. Hades Project Zeorymer: The original version was a manga that was pornographic, with an utterly unlikable hero, a really, really dark plot, and it was so edgy you could shave with it. The anime was basically most of the same plot with the adult bits removed (albeit they retained some references to the original regardless), and that's the version adapted for SRW MX and J.



2. Deus Machina Demonbane: The original version was a porn visual novel, though it received a cleaned up PS2 adaptation, and it had a cleaned up anime incarnation as well.

The latter two were the primary sources mined for the first 3DS SRW game, and having played the original visual novel, not a bad idea, honestly, it was pretty easy to excise nigh all the porn without hurting the plot in any significant way.



It's notable that for some series, they HAVE pushed the envelope pretty hard, like Neon Genesis Evangelion, but they always stop short of anything you'd need an adult ID to view.

 

[GethN7]

Now to cover the Masoukishin sub series.

We already covered the first game, and none of the successors really changed up anything save modernized graphics and going for a isometric 3D in HD look.

The plots are also easy to sum up:

Masoukishin 2 (Revelation of the Evil God): The demon Shiva Volkruss you tried to put down in the first game just refuses to die. Adds some clarity to to the first game and closes up some dangling plot threads from the first game.

Masoukishin 3 (Pride of Justice): Volkruss is at it again, but this time they explored the geopolitical situation of La Gias in somewhat more detail.

Masoukishin F (Coffin of the End): The final game in this subseries, this time they put Volkruss down for good this time.

The Masoukishin games are known for the following:


1. All original casts.

2. Having engines that fork off the first Masoukishin game instead of the more modernized SRW engines based on that used in Alpha Gaiden for the other SRW games, meaning terrain height and unit direction, among many other features Disgaea fans would recognize, remain prominent gameplay mechanics.

3. A high fantasy meets technology plot, with an emphasis slightly more on the former than the latter. This is in contrast to the other games, where there will be some fantasy elements, but it remains pretty far into sci-fi territory to a considerable extent.

4. Character designs are often more ridiculous, especially for women, than even the most ridiculous SRW game. Two of my personal favorites are a Coffin of the End character whose breasts are so huge that even in her official art work she can't stand upright due to their mass, and at least one other woman who looks like she stepped out of those Japanese porn games/anime with tentacles and dickgirls.

They do have some silly male designs, but the ladies are generally the more "Ok, now you're just getting absurd".


Added note, there is an anime that is very loosely based on this series, but really has no direct relation to the original sources save similar ideas and concepts.

 

[GethN7]

Some trivia concerning miscellaneous once-offs and spinoffs for PS2 and related systems:




Super Robot Wars MX: This game introduced the "Favorite Series" mechanic, where you can pick your favorite series at the start, and mecha and characters will gain bonus EXP/money and can further upgrade their units past their normal stock limits.

Also was one of the first games to relegate the UC Gundam stuff to being supporting characters while the other shows carried the plot, rather well done if you ask me. Shares a lot of common series with IMPACT, was intended to be a sequel at one point, but this was dropped sometime during development, though they do share a lot of assets regardless.

Had a plot that would give Terminator fans a lot of deja vu, only the SKYNET analogue wasn't exactly evil per se, but it's creator, well, that's a different story.

Was ported to PSP with the Favorite System allowing choosing three series instead of one like in SRW J, and to pad out the easy difficulty of the original, they made some later game bosses really bad HP sponges.



Super Robot Wars GC/XO: The only title for Gamecube and later ported to Xbox. Both featured full 3D battle models, which were slavishly re-used as assets in SRW OE later on.

@Jaimas, you'll be interested to note the One Year War played a massive role in the plot, and due to the characters falling into a time warp to another dimension and not escaping until much later after a certain point, it featured OYW Amuro later meeting Zeta-era Char and Lalah Sune survived to join the AEUG. The final boss level had the EFSF going full good guy and helping out with actual NPC reinforcements (that were pretty useful) in taking the villains down.

Kinda helps the plot kept kicking the Earth Federation in the balls and humbling their usual hubris to the point that by the end of the game, they were quite enthusiastic about helping you out as opposed to their usual passive aggressive bullshit. The Titans never got a chance to form as well, which also helped, and the AEUG instead became part of the EF forces to help them fend off multiple invasions instead, with Char more than happy to help them because Zeon post OYW went even more retard than usual and the EF had become much less shitty due to their usual arrogant bullshit getting beaten out of them.

It also had an interesting mechanic where you could damage mech parts on units to cripple and capture them, which meant if you crippled something like a Gouf and captured it, you could then have a UC Gundam character pilot it later. Of course, enemies could do this to YOU, meaning you had to be careful not to let the enemy cripple your units too hard even if they didn't die of it.

This allowed you to save Bernie Wiseman from Gundam 0080 by crippling his unit and capturing it, though if you ever fought in stages against Zeon forces, he would not be deployable. This would be revisited in SRW OE as well.

It also featured stages you could go back to and replay, which allowed for leveling and money farming, as well farming for more units, which you could use or sell.

Was one of the few SRW games to let you capture and use the Apsaulus III from 08th MS Team for yourself.

Also, the secret item the villains were obsessed with was basically shaped like a Gamecube/Xbox, depending on which version you played, and when they adapted the story to SRW OGs The Moon Dwellers, they referenced both versions by calling the item in question the "X-Cube"

The Xbox version was a flop even though it was basically the same game because Xbox sold like ass in Japan, though it was one of the first SRW games to have an online multiplayer mode.




Super Robot Wars NEO: The only Wii title, and what SRW OE for PSP uses as it's game engine base.

Unlike other games, even maps and units on maps were in full 3D, and units could be knocked off elevated terrain, incur damage by being smashed into other units due to damage impact, and other mechanics. Also featuring animated walking around on said maps due to this. UC Gundam was absent, only Gundam representative was post-series Domon Kasshu from G Gundam, and while elements of the show did play a role in the plot (traces of the Devil Gundam were still lying around, Domon was trying to find and make sure they were all gone), there was hardly any Gundam influence in the crossover otherwise.

The game engine, did, however, introduce two issues:

1. The balancing made Super Robots edge out reals in usefulness. SRW OE fixed this somewhat.
2. You had to grind your ass off to keep units up to par, as lower level units would get mauled by higher level ones since the level number imposed a difficulty handicap independent of mecha and pilot stats, a mechanic SRW OE annoyingly retained.

It was still a good game, but the game engine could have been better.

 

[Antique Rice]

Robot Alchemic Drive gets no love.

 

[XYZpdq]

I was really disappointed that the PSX SRWs (and presumably beyond) didn't support mice. I played that translated SFC one with a mouse because it supported it and ever since I've had no patience for plunking through the menus with a controller.

 

[GethN7]

Now to cover the SRW Alpha series.

Alpha 1: Based on a "what if" to the Classic series, where Bian Zoldark was listened to instead of ignored. Kinda helps that the One Year War was interrupted seven years prior to the plot by the SDF-1 Macross crashing through the Feddie and Zeon fleets and landing on South Atalia Island.

This seven year interval resulted in the Divine Crusaders becoming a R&D tech base for the solar system in general, and thus good guys from day one.

It also featured many lessons learned from earlier games on storywriting, and unlike the classic series, the writers went to extreme lengths to make the crossover make sense, though to make over seventy years of Gundam history fit into one game required some creative canon torture.

Winkysoft, which had worked with Banpresto on the first Masoukishin, also worked on this game, and some of their weird balancing decisions carried over, resulting in goofy shit like some foes becoming nigh invincible early on if their WILL got too high, and the Skill Point system used in many later games was in it's infancy and had many weird aspects that were poorly understood, and it was even possible to LOSE skill points based on the most arbitrary bullshit.

Due to the two companies having a falling out towards the end of development, Alpha 1, which was intended to have a definitive ending and lead into Alpha 2, instead had a more open ended ending and set the stage for interquel game Alpha Gaiden.

Animation was better than the earlier games, but still kinda rough in spots.

A Dreamcast port of this game was made with somewhat better graphics and some minor new additions, but it was otherwise the same game.

It was rumored this would have been the first game to see a US release, as all licenses in the game were owned by American affiliates, but Harmony Gold said no to use of Macross (due to owning the rights to Robotech, it's American bastardization and thus part ownership of Macross distribution in America). It's also the ONLY game, thus far, to ever make extensive use of the ORIGINAL Macross plot, and thus allow use of the original Macross battleship as a carrier.



Alpha Gaiden: The Fallout New Vegas to Alpha's Fallout 3, it was a hacked version of Alpha codebase wise that served as an interquel between Alpha 1 and 2, tying up loose ends from Alpha 1 so as to make Alpha 2 start with a clean slate save for a few elements directly retained for Alpha 2 Alpha Gaiden deliberately left hanging.

It added support attacks to the game code for the first time, as well as the Xabungle 'Bazaar' system, with the "blue stones" of that series as acquirable in-universe currency, much like Xabungle used them, to purchase machines and parts.

The codebase was somewhat rushed, given the game was released barely a year after Alpha 1, resulting in some buggy engine mechanics, not to mentioning retaining a sizable amount of Alpha 1 assets since it was built atop of Alpha 1 code and many assets were reused.

The codebase was finally cleaned up by SRW IMPACT.

Animations saw a massive boost in quality for the new series introduced, and it also introduced an early version of animated pilot cut-ins with animations, including 'boob jiggle' for ladies.

The only Alpha game devoid of a player centric protagonist choice as well.



Alpha 2: The first PS2 Alpha game, it uses a further modified IMPACT engine with a new "squad system" to put up to four machines into a "squad", allowing them all to jointly attack and support one another, and it also cut down on the amount of units rendered onscreen for both allies and enemies.

The Squad system was bit rough around the edges, resulting in some balance issues, some hilariously skewed in the player's favor if you knew how to abuse the quirks of the system. It also had some annoyances like requiring constant reorganization of the squad nigh every level. By Alpha 3, they generally worked the bugs out of this mechanic.

Any remaining Skill Point bugs since Alpha 1 were fixed (Alpha Gaiden had a few minor quirks in the code for a few levels, but was still much better than Alpha 1).



Alpha 3: The final game in the Alpha series, it was the peak of the Alpha series, featuring a record 30+ licensed and original properties in the game, a record not broken until the Z series.


Graphics got a major cleanup since Alpha 2 (using lessons learned from SRW MX), and it had the most stable and well tested code of all the games in the series.

(@Jaimas, get a stiff drink, reading the below will make you want one)

About the only bad note of the game is that instead of following up on Zeta Gundam with Gundam Sentinel (as code and asset fragments since Alpha 2 indicated had been planned), they shoehorned Gundam SEED into the game despite the fact the game universe had been firmly established as UC Gundam/After Colony mix, resulting in massive changes to the plot, which by this point involved galaxy wide threats with the rather paltry planetary threat of ZAFT oddly wedged inbetween them.

It also featured all sorts of canon issues many fans took issue with,like Yazan Gable somehow surviving to work for Muruta Azreal (even though he should have been perma-dead by the end of Alpha 2), UC Gundam political plot points like the Antarctica Treaty were screwed up (pretty serious on this point, given how nukes play a central role to ZAFT's issues with OMNI, the Earth Federation's notional successors, even though both they and the Federation still seem to exist simultaneously), and basically, even fans of SEED really hated how it was added to the plot. It also led to some goofy as shit pacing issues where you had to use a dimensional transporter called a Cross Gate to ping pong between Earth and other parts of the galaxy to deal with the SEED plot, then go deal with the galaxy level threats when the SEED shit finally fucked off.

It later was discovered the director of the Alpha series was a big SEED fan and told continuity integrity to fuck itself so he shove it into the plot.

That stupidity aside, some GOOD ideas from this did result anyway, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion's Shinji Ikari, of all people, telling SEED era Kira Yamato to grow a pair of balls (showed how Shinji had matured from a pussy to a badass in his own right nicely since Alpha 1) during Kira's early anime spate as a sobby little bitch. If you played as player character Selena Recital, you even got a fun mini villains campaign where you got to play as Rau Le Creuset and the ZAFT team that captured the SEED Gundams, and Masami Obari (creator of Dancougar) got inspired to create a game specific upgrade for the titular machine using the showdown at ORB stage (prior to the SEED cast leaving Earth in the show afterwards) as the springboard for introducing the Final Dancougar upgrade, an idea SRW J would retain.

They also let a SEED character survive an easily avoidable canon death scene, an idea which, strangely, SRW J did not retain despite similar circumstances allowing it to be avoided.

One last good idea was giving Muruta Azreal his own racist, bloodthirsty subordinate to serve as his proxy until he revealed himself later in the plot (Miwa Sakimori from Daimos in Alpha, replaced by General Colbert from Tekkaman Blade in SRW J), which allowed the SEED plot to keep his involvement on the down low until the plot deemed his presence to be proper for the plot while still allowing most events he manipulated in the background to proceed as the source dictated.

Aside from all that, the game was still awesome regardless, and was regarded as the peak of the franchise until the SRW Z series topped it.

 

[Kiwi Jeff]

Reading these just has me hoping that Ideon returns to the series at some point

 

[GethN7]

This is more about a mecha anime than mecha vidya games, but since the subject is related, hell with it.

Super Robot Wars D adapted Season 1 of The Big O (albeit loosely, they only used the first season), but it was when used in SRW Z1/2/3 that they used both seasons and actually gave the series something resembling an actual ending.

The original anime was an open-ended mindfuck that threw Batman: The Animated series level character designs (it was an admitted inspiration of the creator), The Truman Show, steampunk styled mecha, and a lot of "what the fuck is even real anymore?" into a blender, resulting in a damned good mecha anime that still blows people's minds.

Interestingly, the main theme is apparently in copyright hell (the first season OP anyway) due to really drawing from the well of the music of Queen and the Flash Gordon theme, and the only time SRW ever used it was as a chiptune remix in SRW D when you use Big O's best attack.

Otherwise, they are forced to use the admittedly decent substitute of "Sure Promise", the theme that plays when Big O shows up to kick some ass.

They also really followed how the show implied Roger Smith and R. Dorothy Waynewright had romantic feelings for each other and often have her be Roger's subpilot of Big O, which she basically was anyway towards the end of Season 2.


However, the show had some mindfucky shit even SRW didn't really clarify, so the below is a clarification some of the more confusing bits and cool tie-ins SRW exploited nicely:


1. Banjou Haran and Roger Smith work together great in SRW Z, and since Banjou is basically James Bond with a giant robot and Roger Smith is Bruce Wayne/Batman in a giant robot, it's probably the closest we'll ever get to their source inspirations working together.

2. SRW loves trolling the shit out of Roger because he's supposed to be a negotiator, but instead of being able to talk shit out most of the time, he has to use his big robot to settle shit, and sometimes the negotiations are doomed to failure regardless, like when the Hyakki tried to negotiate with the Saotome Labs to get in and tried to make Roger Smith the middleman.

SRW Z3 finally threw the poor bastard a bone and let him actually beat a stage by literally talking the boss out of ending reality.

3. The show had a lot of Christian themes that the source and SRW tend to not go into, so I will.

3a. "Cast in the name of God, ye not guilty" is the phrase every pilot of a Megadeus (the name for mecha in Big O) sees before they can even make it do anything on the start up display, and it's based on how executioners would have their tool of execution blessed before they did their jobs to clarify they were not guilty of sin, they were doing their job by punishing one worthy of death on the behalf of God.

3b. Megadeus is some slightly bastardized Latin that literally means "big God", but more accurately means that the machines in question are incarnations of the will of God.

3c. Schwartzvald from the show was a big Thomas Hobbes fanboy, which is why he worked with the Ruina of SRW D, as they basically were trying to reinforce Earth being a shithole and he had a huge "we're fucked as a species" shtick going. The episode featuring the "Leviathan" mecha was a reference to Thomas Hobbes book as well as the biblical inspiration from the Book of Job, which was described as a massive sea creature. Hobbes also proposed the theory humanity is shitty by default, and we put government in place over us to rein in our own shitty impulses, which aligns with how Schwartzvald in the show kept ranting (not without reason) the people of the show were generally doomed, indolent sheep who were slaves to our own vice and folly.

3d. At one point in the show, Roger Smith claims hes not anyone's servant, in reference to why he pilots Big O, and the character who claims he is says he should die for heresy (the English translation muddles the point slightly), but since the Megadeus he pilots is an incarnation of the will of God, if Roger claimed he followed no orders from above, he would be claiming to be above God.

3e. SRW Z was a bit confusing on where Paradigm City (the setting of the show) was located on purpose. SRW D put it somewhere in Europe, which is inaccurate, as it's clearly New York City under a different name in the show (one character clearly references the Hudson River at one point), but SRW Z made it's location purposely unclear because it's basically a pocket dimension, much like how in the source Paradigm City and it's outlying environs seem to be the only source of human habitation, and SRW Z explained it's basically where time and space reset themselves after we fuck shit up too hard, and it was partially created to experiment with giving people a chance to play out history again in the hopes they won't screw up as hard the next time, and Paradigm City was intended from day one to be the testing ground for this concept by the powers that govern the multiverse.

This actually makes a LOT of sense of the open ended, confusing as hell ending and is part of the official 'ending' given the show in SRW Z, which, allegedly, recycles some concepts intended for the original ending of the show (it was left more open ended pending a Season 3 they never got around to making apparently). It also ties into the whole Christian themes, specifically the creation of a new Heaven and a new Earth mentioned in the Book of Revelation, that the source made reference to throughout the show.

3f. The overarching villain of the show, Alex Rosewater, on top of being an inverse parody of Roger Smith (he wears white and is not good, while Roger wears black yet is good), he's also an amalgam of the antichrist imagery mentioned in 3rd John and the conqueror on a white horse mentioned in Revelation, as Rosewater is given power over people, institutes a false peace which he then breaks faith with the people he was supposed to assure it to after awhile, is victorious most of the time even without using a weapon (and for the longest time his own weapons when he does get them don't work, like the bow with no arrows mentioned in Revelation), and proclaims himself to be a God like figure while at the same time only having power over a Megadeus because it gave him that power (and it also destroys him in the end).

SRW Z would also take the whole bit from Revelation where the armies of the Earth would band together under the evil one towards the battle of Armageddon by having Rosewater incorporate technology from the other villains in the game under his own banner than sic it on the good guys in the finale of the Big O plot, which is resolved after most of those same villains are defeated towards the end of the first game.

This is also around the point in the show his desire to be a god that surpasses all others shows up, much like how the evil one in Revelation had a similar motive.

 

[Kiwi Jeff]

I haven't played any of the SRW with Big O, but please tell me Beck shows up

 

[GethN7]

I haven't played any of the SRW with Big O, but please tell me Beck shows up

Every time.

You even get to use Beck the Great RX3 sometimes.

 

[GethN7]

Interesting notes on how SRW games do face and portrait art.

While clearly doing traces of the original art most of the time from whatever source the games derive their licensed properties from, the game still try to make the art not clash too horribly, so while each series retains it's own unique look, they all tend to use the same basic hand drawn style.

A few of the older games, like Shin SRW, they tried to make things look more unique, but it's more expensive to do that than to standardize the character art to use the same art style, which makes it less expensive to draw and animate. It also makes it easier to recycle the art for later games.


Another thing people might have noticed, especially those that played SRW Z, they REALLY toned down some of the more ridiculous aspects of Gravion's art.

Gravion was directed by Masami Obari, and he clearly recycled some of the art style from the hentai anime Angel Blade which he also directed, meaning we had jiggly tits out the ying yang, visible nipples on every female outfit, and absurdly proportioned women in general.

The character Mizuki Tachibana hit every single one of these notes in the original source, which would have been really straining that Teen rating, so her portrait art shifted her bust line down, cutting off just at the part we could have seen her tits through her outfit, her cleavage was reined in somewhat, and her proportions made her look less like it would have been impossible for her to stand upright, and having seen the original, I approve, she looked way less ridiculous.

Some of the other female characters also had visible nipple pokage on their outfits removed in their portrait art.

 

[XYZpdq]

Interesting notes on how SRW games do face and portrait art.

While clearly doing traces of the original art most of the time from whatever source the games derive their licensed properties from, the game still try to make the art not clash too horribly, so while each series retains it's own unique look, they all tend to use the same basic hand drawn style.

A few of the older games, like Shin SRW, they tried to make things look more unique, but it's more expensive to do that than to standardize the character art to use the same art style, which makes it less expensive to draw and animate. It also makes it easier to recycle the art for later games.


Another thing people might have noticed, especially those that played SRW Z, they REALLY toned down some of the more ridiculous aspects of Gravion's art.

Gravion was directed by Masami Obari, and he clearly recycled some of the art style from the hentai anime Angel Blade which he also directed, meaning we had jiggly tits out the ying yang, visible nipples on every female outfit, and absurdly proportioned women in general.

The character Mizuki Tachibana hit every single one of these notes in the original source, which would have been really straining that Teen rating, so her portrait art shifted her bust line down, cutting off just at the part we could have seen her tits through her outfit, her cleavage was reined in somewhat, and her proportions made her look less like it would have been impossible for her to stand upright, and having seen the original, I approve, she looked way less ridiculous.

Some of the other female characters also had visible nipple pokage on their outfits removed in their portrait art.

And now we have the mobile game with the titty monsters.

 

[GethN7]

And now we have the mobile game with the titty monsters.

You'll need to be a tad more specific than that, I can think of a few games that would fit that requirement.