Gundam Games General Thread

General thread for games based on the Gundam franchise.

I think my favorite of the bunch that I ever played was this beauty on the PS2.

Also why in the name of god was this never released in the states?

It's SunDai. Most of their things never make it outside of their homesoil.

I am shocked that this thread died after only two posts. Oh well, time to pitch in.

Of the various Gundam games out there, I only played three. Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 already has its own thread, so I'm not going to dither about it here.

Next was Gundam vs Zeta Gundam, basically a massively beefed up version of what referred to. Or to be more exact, it's two games, Federation VS Zeon plus AEUG VS Titans, packed into one game. However, it's actually much more than that: instead of just playing through the OYW or the Gryps Conflict as a nameless pilot, GvsZG's campaign mode has the canon characters go through a variety of alternate timelines diverging off canon at various points. For example:

• On Kamille's canon route, preventing Four from dying at Kilimanjaro unlocks an alternate route where Four defects to the AEUG, pilots the Super Gundam alongside Kamille and ultimately saves him from Scirocco's Mind Rape.
  • Completing this route unlocks Amuro's OYW route, where he has the opportunity to prevent Lalah's death. Doing so unlocks an alternate Gryps Conflict where Amuro is one of the AEUG's founding members and his rapport with the organization gives the AEUG a head start when compared to canon, allowing them to defeat the Titans without suffering a Total Party Kill. In fact, successfully repelling the Titans' assault on Von Braun in another timeline split weakens the Titans enough that the AEUG captures Gryps and wipes out the Titans early, allowing them to concentrate on Axis and claim total dominance over the Earth sphere. Oh, and Kamille gets the ZZ Gundam.
• On Jerid's canon route, having Lila survive makes his ending slightly better. Having Mouar survive too unlocks an even better ending, which in turn unlocks the OYW routes of the three Titans pilots who canonically fought there. Having Lalah surviving in all three results in the Federation acquiring Zeon's Newtypes and Newtype research, allowing the Titans to create stable Cyber-Newtypes to bolster their efforts with. Just like in the AEUG routes, it is possible to wipe out the AEUG early in Operation Apollo (which the AEUG canonically foiled) and go all-out against Axis.
• In the Axis equivalent of these routes, Garma, Ramba Ral and Dozle all survive the OYW and make it to Axis, giving Axis sorely needed manpower and resources it lacked in canon. On this route, Axis returns to the Earth sphere early and takes the place of the AEUG. Oh, and in this route, Kamille and Amuro are with the Titans. Oh, and Char has a red Hyaku Shiki.

And then there are the main attractions of the game: the special scenarios.

• Completing all three factions' total victory routes unlocks an alternate ending to the OYW, where Lalah survives the battle of Solomon. In the battle of A Baoa Qu, Amuro and Sayla engage Char and Lalah in a two-on-two but during the shootout, Sayla is killed by Lalah. Amuro promptly flips the fuck out and kills Lalah in return. With Amuro and Char now having deadly grudges against each other, Char takes command of Axis and, upon returning to the Earth sphere seven years later, promptly starts Char's Counterattack ahead of schedule. In the meantime, Amuro has taken Kamille as his pupil; however, while the two are trying to stop Char and Haman from dropping Luna II on Kilimanjaro, Haman kills Kamille. So in the final showdown over Axis, Judau is now Amuro's wingman instead.
• Completing all three factions' total victory routes also unlocks a route where Kamille's parents are killed in the crossfire at Green Noah. Kamille being Kamille, he flips the fuck out, jacks the Gundam Mk II and goes to town on Char and co. for starting a battle in the middle of a city. And after the battle, Kamille joins the Titans. Highlights of this route include Lila being a mentor figure to Kamille, the Zeta Gundam having kickass black-and-green Titans colors and Kamille repeatedly picking a fight with Amuro amidst massive Shinn vs Kira vibes.
• In a side branch of the Newtype-research-accelerated Titans route, Amuro finds out that Lalah is enjoying the hospitality of the Augusta Newtype Labs and transfers there as a test subject himself, resulting in the two joining the Titans. One highlight is Kacricon warning Amuro to watch his altitude during the pre-Jaburo reentry battle, only for Amuro to remind him that he's a OYW veteran and knows this stuff already.
• In yet another special scenario, Garma and Dozle personally leading Zeon's invasion of Earth in the OYW unlocks a branch where M'Quve successfully holds on to Odessa, allowing Zeon to launch a counterattack and take Jaburo, forcing the Federation to sign a cease-fire treaty that heavily favors Zeon. During the next seven years, the Federation conducts a secret arms buildup aimed at launching a counterattack, codenamed Project Zeta. Zeon eventually discovers what's going on and it's the OYW all over again, except with Zeta-era technology. Highlights include Ramba Ral's famous No Zaku line while he's in a Marasai, the Black Tri-Stars riding Psyco Gundams (yes, plural), Dozle himself having his last stand behind the controls of the Psyco Gundam Mk II and the White Base crew flying around on the Argama.
• A side branch of this has Char hold off on offing Garma until Project Zeta commences and he's been in Garma's good graces for long enough that nobody suspects him. Unlike in canon, however, Char is court-martialed, found responsible for Garma's death and is dishonorably discharged from the Zeon military. However, he promptly assumes his Quattro identity, joins the Federation military, becomes Amuro's wingman and successfully kills off the rest of the Zabi family.

This game is fricken' awesome. The only problem I have with it is that the AI completely disregards the fact that friendly fire is always on, resulting in situations like the one in the Youtube Let's Play by aulddragon, where he lost the same mission six times in a row due to his AI wingman repeatedly getting teamkilled by his One-Hit Kill Wave-Motion Gun.

The third Gundam game I ever played was MS Saga: A New Dawn. I'm not exactly an RPG fanatic, but I love the sheer number of customization options available. I mean, GM with a Gouf's shoulders and a Dom's legs? And it gives massive stat boosts as well? Hell yes.

And I'd really like to see a fanfic/novelization of this. Been thinking of making one myself, but I feel I don't know enough about the characters to do it.

Also, did anyone else here dabble in Gundam mods for non-Gundam games?

edited 25th Nov '15 12:12:43 PM by amitakartok

Funny to see this thread bumped.I got Journey to Jaburo in the mail yesterday. The other Gundam gaems I own are fed vs Zeon, Crossfire, 0081 Battlefield Record, Zeonic Front, and DWG:G 1/2 and Reborn.

The controls of JTJ are... something.

MS Saga is easily my fav Gundam game right in front of Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2.

If only the English version of MS Saga didn't have that terrible terrible voice acting. Boy I would love a PS 2 classics for it though but that will never happen seeing how it was the worst selling Gundam game ever even in Japan.

You know... I've been considering making a Gundam turn-based strategy game for over a year now. I don't have any graphical resources like sprites and such (aside from what I can rip from the internet), but the coding I'm able to do by myself.

I'm also writing the game to be moddable to some extent, mostly in the form of adding new MS types. You could theoretically add any mecha into the game if you write its class and slap it into the proper folder.

I only have a very basic framework of the game engine done so far, written in Java. Do you have any ideas regarding stuff like damage calculation and such? Until I have a better alternative, I'm using the SPECIAL system's DT/DR armor model, for the simple reason that that's the only one I know the inner workings of.

In regards to the OP's question as to why Mobile Ops: The One Year War never saw release stateside, I'd guess it might have something to do with the lackluster graphics, or maybe poor review scores. Because just as pointed out, the gameplay does seem to have similarities to the Battlefield franchise, which would only help with it's P.R.

...But then again, just as pointed out by another troper, maybe the game genuinely was good but never saw release due to being released by a company that never bothers with foreign releases. In fact, there's a ton of Gundam games out there nobody's ever heard of which may have the chance to become smash hits stateside, but because Japanese companies don't want to take the risk or think arcades are dead they see no reason to create a port.

Gundam games not Dynasty Warriors Gundam will never hit the west anymore sadly, they really view the franchise as dead in the west sadly.

I don't expect the next DWG game, if it ever is made, to make it over as well.

edited 27th Nov '15 5:56:12 AM by Memers

That's why I'm saying we should take matters into our own hands. As much as Sundai C&Ds would allow it, anyway.

Speaking of which, can you guys name existing Gundam mods/total conversions for non-Gundam games? The ones I already know of are:

• The Gundam Century mod for Starcraft, a mishmash of 0083-era and CCA-era. I once tried to run a Let's Play of this, but ran out of motivation early on.
• The Xenoforce mod for C&C Generals, goes from OYW-era to CCA-era, with some Wing and SEED thrown in for good measure.
• Furthermore, I know there are multiple mods for Homeworld 2, but I haven't played any of them yet. There's one for UC and one for SEED (albeit this one is only in Chinese yet).

edited 27th Nov '15 8:01:54 AM by amitakartok

Man, after watching more footage of it, I'm peeved Lost War Chronicles is one of the ps2 Gundam games that didn't come to the west

I need my first-person guntank ;-;

To that, I can only say one thing. Hire a tutor and learn Japanese.

I've been doing that for two months and have now gotten to the point where I can read hiragana, so I've been considering taking a look at what the Japanese market has to offer. I'm especially interested in getting Alliance vs ZAFT II.

<learns that Gundam vs Zeta Gundam and MS Saga A New Dawn exist>

<can't find any copies of either for less than $35 and $50 USD respectively>

<is not employed>

<sobs more pathetically than Kira Yamato at his angstiest>

edited 27th Nov '15 10:05:50 PM by EvaUnit01

I played SDGO for about a year before it went down. I hear there's a second game coming out? That'd be nice. I don't get to do a lot of crazy PVP with the broteam these days.

While most people say MS Saga's story is pathetically weak and clichéd, it has its moments.

It was nice for what it was, A true Gundam RPG that pretty much was designed to use all the tropes for good and bad.

If it wasn't for that terrible terrible English voice acting and the utterly predictable yet broken AI it would have been the best Gundam game ever made.

Bonus points for it having Sydney blown out of the water and those huge water ways in the middle of South America.◊ The only traditional RPG I have ever played that had all of Earth as a world map. Of course its set so far into the future that even Turn A is in the distant past.

Its such a shame my PS 2 is borked I would love to play it again.

edited 28th Nov '15 4:06:24 AM by Memers

As far as Gundam Games go, i would really like to Play one of the G Generation Games (wich are Super Robot Wars-Style strategy Games with lots of Mobile Suits to collect.)

Necro time? It's been a big week for Gundam-loving gamers.

Extre VS Force is getting localized! Also, two new games have been announced: SD Gundam G Generation Genesis and Gundam Breaker 3.

I'm a bit annoyed that the VS Force announcement comes just late enough that I can't cancel my Play-Asia pre-order of the Japanese version. Still, I'm glad to see another Gundam game come over and maybe open a chance for more. Guess I'll just enjoy this one early and wait just a bit post-release for future games.

I've been playing G Generation Overworld a good bit lately, so I'm looking forward to Genesis despite the lineup being solely early UC.

I love the Gundam Breaker series and it looks like Barbatos and more customization are in the new one. Not much else to say about these two games right now, I guess.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. 2 is coming to Japanese arcades later this year, and it looks to be an actual sequel rather than another Updated Re-release.

I feel increasingly shafted about Gundam Versus not having any sort of plot or narrative or... anything. Previous Vs. games had not only story modes but often had cool "what if?" scenarios.

Then Dragon Ball Fighter Z comes out with its actual "story mode" and "original character" and "characters interacting with each other" and I'm just like "oh... wow. That sure is neat. Shame Versus couldn't have any of that."

You think you're getting the short end of the stick?! What about us Gundam fans who've been waiting for a videogame to come along that focuses on the more grounded and tactical combat found in the first Federation-Zeon war? Everything for the last several years has been either in the vein of a fighting game or Dynasty Warriors ripoff. Where's my 2018 version of Zeonic Front or Operation: Troy, dammit?!?

Heck, even some of the stuff from Iron-Blooded Orphans would fit pretty well in a tactical or squad-based game.

Wheres my sequel to MS Saga A New Dawn damnit!

...can I have a remake of Gundam Wing Endless Duel?

What changes would you like to see in a hypothetical sequel?

Me, I'd start with arms and shoulders being interchangeable between left and right. You would not believe the sheer frustration I had of some ranged-only arms coming only in the right arm version.

Also, I wouldn't tie melee capability exclusively to the right arm for the same reason: why should mounting a Guntank right arm make you unable to attack with that Z'Gok left claw?

edited 16th Feb '18 2:56:42 PM by amitakartok

Everything modular would be a start, yeah. Make kit bashing actually useful, only one time in the game do you find a better part from a suit you can’t have yet so aside from that Dom legs you can toss on a GM it’s pointless.

Make the enemy AI less predictable, improve leveling with some customization, make a part customization system that adds stats and skills so that old parts could last longer than the base suit leading to more kit bashing.

Isn't there supposed to be a new Gundam title coming out that allows players to mix-and-match parts to the extreme? Granted, it's an action game instead of an RPG, but it certainly does match the description of what you guys are describing.