While still squarely in the franchise's Early-Installment Weirdness era, 64 moves the series forward in subtle ways. Rather than reusing the Original Generation character creation system from Super Robot Wars 4, players choose one of four premade characters separated by gender and mecha "genre"; each character has their own unique mecha and rival character. Combination Attacks are introduced, allowing particular units to perform team-up attacks when placed adjacent to each other. While Universal Century Gundam is still present and plays a major role in the story, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is much more prominent than in previous entries, down to the game borrowing its Alternative Calendar. The heroes start off as freedom fighters attempting to save the Earth Sphere from the rule of the Dancouga and SPT Layzner antagonists, rather than a Federation force hamstrung by bureaucracy from their superiors.
Series in Super Robot Wars 64 (Debuting entries are in bold)
- Aura Battler Dunbine
- Blue Comet SPT Layzner
- Demon-God of War GoShogun (requires Super Robot Wars Link Battler)
- Getter Robo
- Getter Robo G
- Shin Getter Robo
- Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still
- Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3
- Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 (requires Super Robot Wars Link Battler)
- Mazinger Z
- Mobile Suit Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
- Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (requires Super Robot Wars Link Battler)
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (The mecha show up only as secret Mid Season Upgrades)
- Six God Combination Godmars
- Super Beast Machine God Dancougar
- Super Electro Robo Combattler V
In the year After Colony 191, Side 3 declares itself the Principality of Zeon and launches a war of independence against the Earth Federation government. After six months of fighting, the Federation emerges victorious. Unfortunately, things only gets worse from there, as the Muge Empire appears and launches a full scale invasion of Earth. Weakened by the war against Zeon, the Federation is no match for the alien invaders. With their space forces routed and roughly 70% of the Earth's cities burned to the ground, the Federation formally surrenders in December, and humankind is subjugated by Muge.
Now, in the year After Colony 195, humankind begins to fight back...
Tropes appearing in Super Robot Wars 64:
- Adapted Out: Despite Stardust Memory's plot still being involved, both the GP-01 and GP-01 FB are not in the game, thus forcing Kou Uraki to pilot other Universal Century mobile suits before getting the GP-03.
- Alternative Calendar: This game uses the After Colony calendar from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.
- Anachronism Stew: As usual when it comes to Universal Century Gundam. The UC Gundam plot starts with the very beginning of Zeta Gundam and ends with Char's Counterattack, with characters from the original series, 08th MS Team, and 0083 hanging around.
- Char Clone: The trope is taken to logical conclusion when Zechs works with Neo Zeon and Char Aznable to start the colony drop of Axis.
- Colony Drop: The Devil Gundam fuses with Axis to create Devil Axis, which threatens to crash into Earth.
- Combination Attack: 64's lasting legacy on the Super Robot Wars series is introducing special attacks that are unlocked by placing specific units adjacent to each other.
- Crapsack World: Earth was taken over by the Muge Zolbados Empire.
- Demoted to Extra: GoShogun, Zambot 3, Vigna Ghina, the F91 Gundam, EZ-8 Gundam, Apsalas II and their respective pilots are the only characters that show up from their respective series. Daitarn 3 at least gets its supporting characters.
- Enemy Civil War: Treize defects from the OZ/Titans alliance and creates his own faction. Drake, the Black Knight and Todd also defect from Byston Well.
- Fish out of Water: According to Katz, Brad rarely goes outside of his training method, so he gets awkward in normal situations.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Due to an oversight, the player loses Daitarn 3 for the majority of the game if they take the Oz Route with a Real Robot protagonist. The only opportunity that the player has to reacquire the unit is to take the Muge Space route five stages from the end of the game, since Daitarn 3 is a Required Party Member in that particular stage.
- Heel–Face Turn: Gale, Aina, Kyral Mekirel, Todd, Rose, Marg, Aina Sahalin, Elpe Puru, Puru 2, Mashmyre, Kyara, Rosamie, Four and Allenby will join the player's army if the requirements to unlock them are met.
- Face–Heel Turn: Quattro Bajeena becomes Char Aznable and becomes leader of Neo Zeon during the game.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: The rival characters if you convince them and Anavel Gato in a certain route.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Musashi sacrifices himself to take down Avi Ru.
- Karmic Death: Shapiro Keats gets one at the hands of the woman he used and abandoned.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: Dijeh SE-R to Gundam Mk-III if the player takes a certain route to Nu Gundam for Amuro. Getter Robo to Getter Robo G to Shin Getter Robo for the Getter Team. Svanhild to Rathgrith Custom. Soldifar to Ashcleef. Gundam mk-II to Zeta Gundam for Kamille.
- Old Save Bonus: Vigna Ghina, Gundam F91, GoShogun, and Zambot 3 are only available if the player links to a copy of Super Robot Wars Link Battler. In turn, this process is required to unlock Ramba Ral, Master Asia, Grendizer and its cast, and the 64 originals in Link Battler.
- Shout-Out: The Valkyrie Series are a rather clever one. While they're physically based on the title mech of Fang of the Sun Dougram, the name "Valkyrie" harkens back to the Macross series. Where have we seen those two together before?
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: The main five Gundams from Gundam Wing lose any investments from the player in the transition to their Mid-Season Upgrade versions — except if they are fully upgraded beforehand, in which case they go straight to their Endless Waltz versions. For that matter, the Endless Waltz versions have fewer weapons than their TV equivalents, and any upgrades to weapons that don't have an Endless Waltz equivalent are lost.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: In a first for the series, battle animations utilize fully-3D backdrops. However, mecha are still rendered using static 2D sprites.
- Story Branching: With the possible exception of Super Robot Wars 30, which has no "routes" in the traditional sense, this game has the most intricate series of route splits in the entire franchise. After the first third of the game (which itself has different opening stages for the Real Robot and Super Robot originals), the player is offered a choice between joining Oz or staying independent, a decision that affects all but the final five missions of the game. The Independent route, if chosen, almost immediately offers another choice to stay on that route or change to the Absolute Pacifism route. The Pacifism route ends with another decision that merges the player back into the Oz or Independent routes. In a game where a single playthrough consists of roughly 55 missions, there are only fifteen stages that remain unchanged regardless of the player's choices.
- Truer to the Text: This is the first SRW featuring Mobile Fighter G Gundam to include the entire Shuffle Alliance, with previous games only featuring Domon, Rain, and Allenby among the heroes.
- A Twinkle in the Sky: Simurgh Splendid's "Bloody Howling", should it do enough damage to defeat its target, carries the enemy off into the horizon while leaving behind a twinkling star.
- Villain Team-Up: The Titans decide to throw their lot in with the Organization of the Zodiac, while Neo Zeon allies itself with Prime Minister Wong.
