Super Robot Wars 30 was announced during Nintendo Japan’s E3 presentation, and didn’t warrant a mention in the Western show because it was assumed by everyone, myself included, that it was never coming to the West. Wrong!
To be fair, I had reasons to assume this. In the series’ 30 years of existence, only a handful of its games had ever been officially released outside of Asian markets, all of them in the mid-2000s, and they were part of the Taisen spin-off series (though some of the SE Asian releases did feature English translation for enterprising importers).
But hey, for the series’ 30th birthday publishers Namco Bandai have pulled out all the stops and will be releasing the latest game globally on Steam. It’ll be out on October 28, and here’s an English-language trailer (according to the Steam Store page the game’s audio will remain in Japanese, and the game will just feature English subtitles and menus):
If you’ve never played the games before, or even come across them, Super Robot Wars is a tactics series where many of Japan’s most beloved giant robot/mecha characters are thrown into battle together. Over the years it’s featured characters from Gundam, Mazinger, Macross and Neon Genesis (just to name a few) all in the one place. This time around it’ll feature units from:
Super Electromagnetic Robot Combattler V
Mobile Suit Gundam
Mobile Suit Z Gundam
Z-MSV
Mobile Suit Gundam Char’s Counterattack
M-MSV
Mobile Suit V Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam NT (Narrative)
Heavy Metal L-Gaim
The Brave Police J-Decker
The King of Braves GaoGaiGar FINAL
The King of Kings: GaoGaiGar VS Betterman
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion III - Glorification
Code Geass Lelouch of the Re;surrection
Getter Robo Armageddon
Mazinger Z: Infinity
Mazinkaiser (INFINITISM)
Magic Knight Rayearth
Gun X Sword
Majestic Prince
Knight’s & Magic
SSSS.GRIDMAN
Note that this doesn’t apply to the game’s Switch version, as only the Steam edition will be released globally.
DISCUSSION
For the curious- this series is basically the Japanese equivalent of all those Nicktoons games.
The quality of the games themselves range from mediocre to decent and whether or not you enjoy them depends almost entirely on how many of the featured properties you grew up watching.
Lots of fun stuff for fans of these shows, sort of just a half-baked SRPG (filled to the absolute brim with nonsensical proper nouns) for everyone else.