|
Lovers of tactical titles who have somehow not stumbled upon the two Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation titles for the GBA are hereby admonished by me. These two titles are deep, dense, difficult tactical stuff. Certainly their plots are also labyrinthine and involve an awful lot talking about Huckebein and Gespenst robot models, but some people will doubtless enjoy them all the more for that while the rest of us can enjoy all the machinations of the other things happening.
There is a reason only these two Super Robot Taisen titles have been released in English, however. It has nothing (presumably) to do with the quality of the series, since these games have a high overall reputation. It has everything to do with legal issues. The Original Generation titles sidestep that by having only characters not under another copyright appear, but aside from the PS2 redo of the two Original Generation games and its as-yet-unreleased Gaiden sequel every other title has appearances from characters and robots of literally dozens of series. Some of them are obscure and unlicensed outside Japan, but others (many permutations of Gundam, Evangelion, Rahxephon, Macross, and more) have been licensed for English distribution. And not by the same company, which translates into an enormous legal quagmire that would be fallen into by any company daring enough to try localizing more Super Robot Taisen titles.
This is something of a shame, since there are a LOT of Super Robot Taisen games and very few of them have any chance of ever legally appearing in English. The NES had one, the original Game Boy is where the series started with a trio of titles, the SNES got plenty, Saturn got two, Dreamcast one, PS1 and PS2 plenty, the N64 got a genuine RPG that had to stay in Japan as did the GameCube, and now the PS3 and Xbox 360 have editions scheduled for release soon. Along with the GBA which has four further titles in the series, the DS which has one so far, and the PSP which has so far just gotten a port but will probably get more material soon. Long story short: this is one of, if not THE, biggest batch of Japan-only games that RPGamers should feel quite unhappy about missing out on minus importing.
Going into exactly why these games are enjoyable is the job for a review (conveniently enough I have done such a thing for this very site on behalf of the two Original Generation titles....) The likelihood of legal representatives giving the go-ahead for further releases of non-Original Generation titles is rather low, but hope can stay alive. Atlus just might decide to grant PS2 users the Original Generations title, and after a quick Youtube visit by me the remaking is comprehensive (not exactly a comprehensive study, but interesting). Based upon hearsay and my own dip into the pool, these are games not to be ignored. Except for RPGamers who do not desire deep, dense, difficult tactical titles. These games will only infuriate such players.
|
RSS feed
iTunes
