SD Gundam World: Gachapon Senshi - Scramble Wars

a.k.a. SDガンダムワールドガチャポン戦士スクランブルウォーズ / SD鋼彈世界: 扭蛋戰士混亂大戰

published by Bandai in 1987-11-20, developed by Human, running on Famicom Disk System

type: action/reflex, strategy, turn-based
genre: Science Fiction, Manga
series: Mobile Suit Gundam
perspective: bird's-eye
player options: single player, hotseat

languages: jpn

Personal review

"SD Gundam World: Gachapon Senshi - Scramble Wars" is the first Gundam game in a series featuring super deformed mecha characters. It is also one of the very first strategy games for the Famicom. At the start of the game you have the options to the one of ten different maps, the computer opponent and the starting size of your armies. A two-player option is available as well. Well, being a Gundam fan I was excited about checking out this game and to see how Gundam strategy games started out. But I was rather disappointed in the end. There are a few major issues. First of all the special combat mode. I was surprised to find out that combat takes place on a battlefield as a 1 vs. 1 action sequence. That alone isn't bad, but this battle mode is much too difficult, everything is much too fast and frantic. The second issue is the overly long time the computer opponent needs to make its moves. It resembles chess games on higher difficulty levels. This makes the strategy part a very slow affair. And sadly there is no connection between the ten maps. You can freely choose them at the start. There is no campaign and story mode. Considering Bandai would release a couple of sequels to this game it must have had some success in Japan, but it was no fun for me, at least in one player mode. In 2-player mode the two major flaws are not relevant and suddenly it becomes a well balanced strategy/action mix.