Super Robot Wars 3 was the first Super Robot Wars for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and compared to its Nintendo Entertainment Systempredecessor, it's still quite good to date. 3 is the first title to introduced backgrounds during battles, pilot and units stats and upgrades for playable units. Additionally, 3 features the first of many animated titles outside of the "Holy Trinity" of Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and Gundam.Unfortunately, compared to anything afterwards, 3 pales in quality. However, most players are willing to forgive it for this because whatever quality it does have is evident in the obscene amounts of (very well done) Shout Outs to most of its series, ESPECIALLY Gundam.The main plot of 3 is the arrival of the "Inspectors", a Five-Bad Band hailing from the intergalatic Zuvorg Alliance who arrive and instantly pacify the Earth, deeming them too dangerous and a threat to the galaxy.3 is one of the few SRWs given a Fan Translation by Aeon Genesis. The patch is available here.
Tropes prominent to Super Robot Wars 3 are:
All There in the Manual: Partial subversion. You meet the Inspectors eventually and deduce who they are at any rate, but it's possible to wind up skipping their introductions and motivations speech, thus having no clue what their real motivations are for most of the game.
Canon Ending: There are three possible routes in this game - one where Anavel Gato decides it's the smart thing to join you, one where Inspector Mekibos decides to help you out via NPC for a scenario or two, and one where neither of these things happen. Super Robot Wars 4 establishes the Mekibos route is the canon one.
Degraded Boss: While common to the franchise as a whole, 3 elevates it to an art form. The same badass mooks who handed you your asses will be returning the favor a few scenarios later. This gets ridiculous when you realize this is S.O.P. to the ENTIRE GAME, with little to no variation, regardless of whether you're fighting the Divine Crusaders or the Inspectors.
In any scenario that isn't in space, the Getter 3 and its Daisetsusan Oroshi attack, once you acquire it, will annihilate anything. Plus, since the Getter comes with three sets Spirit Commands, it gives you access to pretty much all of them except "Love".
Enemy Mine: The only reason why most of the Divine Crusaders are willing to get along (despite fairly major series canon incompatibilities). In short, they all hate you. It is subverted somewhat by some internal power struggles, but considering the Divine Crusaders is run by the Universal Century Gundam Big Bads, that's not really much of a surprise.
Played straight with Anavel Gato on one route, who decides that the aliens are just too big of a threat to continue attacking you.
Excuse Plot: Daitarn 3 has no plot role whatsoever, especially since none of its story is utilized (not that most fans care, however). To a lesser extent, the Combattler V and Brave Raideen stories are rushed to make them available without plot attachments. Getter Robo and Mazinger Z are slightly better off, but most of their plot outside of a few scenarios is totally ignored, though Mazinger at least gets enough of its own plot in to be recognizable. Getter's main plot points are Musashi Tomoe's sacrifice and the Getter Robo G Mid-Season Upgrade: that's it. The Dinosaur Empiremooks are enemies, but none of the actual leaders like General Bat or Emperor Gore appear. Likewise, Dr. Hell is absent, as is Archduke Gorgon. The majority of the screen time goes to Universal Century Gundam, more or less.
Guest Star Party Member: Ryu and Hayato wind up being this in name only, only really being around for the early stages of the game. The developers didn't even program in more than a handful of spirit commands for them, seeing how they're always going to leave, and their stats seem to emphasize that the player should focus on using the other characters.
Sayla Mass also becomes this if the player meets the requirements for recruiting Char. Unlike Ryu and Hayato, Sayla has rather good stat gains and a decent spirit command pool.
Heel Face Turn: Gato and Char Aznable, among others, should you choose to recruit them.
Nintendo Hard: 3 is harder than the succeeding 4, due to its limited gameplay mechanics from a limited game engine. However, it's not as harder as Super Robot Wars 2. To be fair, part of the difficulty comes from having to finish the game in a limited number of turns to fight the True Final Boss, otherwise you could abuse the game over trick to power up and make the bosses run out of ammo. The principal factors of difficulty are you don't deal enough damage overall, Real Robots can be hard to hit for Super Robots to a point where you might need to use weaker, but more accurate attacks and lots of end game opponents have protection against (or even absorb) beam-based attacks. Oh, and there aren't enough powerful Gundams for all of the pilots the game gives you... well, on your side, anyways...
Original Generation: Lune Zoldark, the Valsione, the Inspectors and the Neo Granzon
Shout Out: Common to the series, but this title almost completely runs on this.
The level recruiting Lune (and the poison gas incident that pisses her off) are copied almost directly from this game and pasted into her debut appearance in Super Robot Wars Original Generation.
Villain Team Up: The DC is a patchwork of villains from across the Gundam spectrum, as well as the occasional Super Robot enemy.
Wake Up Call Boss: When Scirroco shows up for the first time, you'll be facing an opponent that is both durable and speedy, tougher than what you're used to fight. Even AmuroRay in the Nu Gundam is not guaranteed to hit him. If you don't get wise and use both the terrain and units that take advantage of barriers to even the odds, you will have an horrible time.
This also applies to one of the first bosses that can be run into in the game, Cima Gaharau's own Gerbera Tetra. While a pushover compared to Scirocco's later nightmares, the Tetra runs circles around everything you have and tends to evade almost everything while dealing incredible damage in return for what you have at the time, like the Proto-Getter or most of the early Gundam units given to the player.
Zerg Rush: 3 is notorious for sending huge waves of enemy mooks at you, almost to the point of absurdity. In one scenario, presuming you decided to be honorable to Gato and help him out, the game throws you a bone and he destroys a huge portion of mooks in a later scenario to make your job easier. It should be noted the Zerg Rush factor in future games is toned down to varying extents.
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