Gundam is one of the longest running anime of all time. The first episodes date from the late 1970s, and still to this day more and more spin-offs keep appearing to enlarge the legend of the most prominent series in the Mecha genre of anime. Its militaristic theme of a world involved in a never ending war where weapons aren’t wielded by soldiers, but instead wielded by all-powerful giant robots piloted by soldiers has shaped the entire genre upon its debut.

Of course, like any popular and long running anime series, Gundam has also prominent games to its name through several generations of consoles. In this particular case, they aimed for a one-on-one fighting game using several of the most iconic models of the time, which help us realize how much the series has changed and improved over the decades. This was also one of the first fighting games of the series, though surely the most prominent for the sequels and spin-offs it would later inspire.

GRAPHICS: 9

While the game is quite simple in terms of graphics, they still have a good design to them. Menus and cutscenes are almost out of consideration for their minimalist design, so the only real thing here are the stages and the character sprites. The stages can also be seen as minimalist but still display a nice design, like the “Acguy Factory” where we see detailed copies of the character sprite all over the background. Character sprites are greatly detailed as well, specially with the damage system that shows them breaking down and losing layers of armor as their health depletes. If it had a bit more detailed cutscenes, and little improvements to the menus could also be done like we saw on its sequel, the rating for Graphics would be perfect.

SOUND: 7

To keep up with the minimalist nature of the game, the music is just a vague tune played on the background. The music never plays a prominent role besides menus and cutscenes, because in-battle the heated action almost makes it unable to be heard.

Besides the music, the rest of sounds were great. The speaker’s voice was nice, not using useless notes like in Pokemon Stadium and staying serious and formal in all its quotes, barely changing for very specific cases like that “You’re gonna die!” used in Neue Ziel’s Heavy Tackle and Psycho Gundam’s Psycho Blast Upper. Battle sounds were also good, though keeping up once again with the minimalist nature of the game they end up being quite repetitive despite the varied kinds of weapons used.

ADDICTIVENESS: 6

The game only includes two playable modes. One of them is actually quite short, though it’s true that it allows for several characters to play as and that can keep you glued to it. The second one is basically the free battle mode, facing off against a friend or a computer with one of the 20 characters available. Using them all requires skill, and mastering their moves requires playtime. If you have the drive to fully unlock the game’s secrets then you have a long way ahead.

STORY: 4

This game is an amalgamation of many Gundam series and even movies. Therefore, a new plot has been introduced for this game to justify all the characters present, even if there are different incarnations of the same person at different ages of their lives.

Apparently, the seemingly ending wars of the Gundam universe have really come to an end. However, some people just can’t throw away their mobile suits, and so our main character Heero Yuy sets off on a journey to eliminate all remaining mobile suits. Little does he know that the war is truly never ending, for there’s always someone plotting in the darkness to rekindle the flames of rebellion.

That’s how I would sum up the game’s story, and while it does sound quite good, the story is very short. Some random battles against whatever mobile suit we encounter, the always preset boss and sub-boss battles and that’s all. A single run can take you easily 10 minutes, so basically this is more an Arcade mode other fighting games have.

DEPTH: 5

We’ve already seen that the story is quite short, but still it provides some depth. That’s because to unlock all fighters, and thus truly beat the game, you need to play the story mode with all characters and in varying degrees of difficulty. It still doesn’t mean a great depth, but at least demands mastery over all starting characters without allowing you to focus on a single one to set as your main, something you can only do for the harder difficulty levels.

DIFFICULTY: 9

The controls aren’t hard: guarding, attacking, flying… Just pressing some buttons in the correct order allows you to move freely around the stage to defeat your opponent. Some maneuvers are more complicated, not only to learn but also to use effectively, though no fighting game in the last decades is exempt of them.

The real difficulty relies on unlocking all characters. In order to do that, you’ll have to clear the story mode at least once in the hardest difficulty and without being defeated. It’s not something unique to this game, but we have to admit that bosses and sub-bosses can be a pain to deal with. Psycho Gundam can block in the middle of attacks even if it doesn’t flinch and its attacks have an absurdly big range, while the final boss Hydra Gundam has a fully impenetrable shield coupled with the mightiest of offenses. The sub-bosses Neue Ziel and Big Zam aren’t that troublesome, the former will drive you to a corner with its massive size and relentless attacks while the latter will damage you heavily just by walking if you’re too careless as to not be guarding.

As you can see, not the most pleasurable scenario to face the big burden of clearing all fights without a single defeat. True is that the reward isn’t very high, just characters to use for 2-player battles and nothing else, but still the required effort justifies the rating.

OVERALL: 7

Quite a good game, as loyal to the anime as an amalgamation like this game can be, but also too minimalist for its time. True is that it was first released in 1998, not making it outside of Japan until at least two years later, but by that time games were starting to be much more complete compared to this one. Still a nice experience, and personally I’m still waiting for a sequel of this game for modern consoles because there are lots of new Gundam models we could use.

POSITIVE

-Wide character roster. It may or may not be fully loyal to the anime or movies because some pilots seem to be off (and some models are said to not be what they’re announced as), but still the variety is noticeable in their weaponry and also design. Other anime-based games have rarely shown the ability of including characters from a lot of their spin-offs, so this variety is and will always be welcome in this kind of games.

-Intuitive gameplay. Most combinations are shared between all characters, and while each attack may behave differently it makes mastering all characters relatively easy compared to memorizing determined inputs for each character.

NEGATIVE

-Story mode. It’s not actually a proper story since characters from all timelines join together, and also the story mode is just an arcade mode. It lacks any kind of adventure, and while the plot could work out well the mixture of characters makes die hard fans confused as to where to place this game in canon.

-Minimalist nature. Seems like the budget for this game wasn’t excessively high considering how minimalist everything looks. A very simple main menu, just a pose from the main character for the story mode besides the dialogs, almost unnoticeable music, repetitive sounds… It’s almost as if the game was made for a generation earlier, considering Gundam games had been around for some 15 years by the time this was released and this wasn’t the first fighting game of the franchise many of us would have expected a bit more.