Let's Sperg Gundam abandonware and related vidiya - Giant killer robots and old vidiya, with some of the games being old enough to legally drive

[TheShirtLad]

Greetings and salutations, former habitual lurker here.
Decided to make a thread here, since i do enjoy old mech games, SD G Generation entries, Gundam Battle series, all that stuff. Having gotten into emulation over the span of late 2010s, i've been running on a steady diet of assorted pre-PS4 abandonware. Saw a thread for Overworld, so i thought, why not add one for the old entries in general.

On a related note, i have been working on a channel that covers a lot of the older entries, since such content appears to be rather scarce, save for a couple of GameFAQs guides. Started one on Odysee last year(https://odysee.com/@trickovec15:9), alongside a YT archive(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Djk01_6MH9WUoFGdvgh1A), where i cover quite the wide array of gundam abandonware in brief, weekly/biweekly entries. Be it a menu translation, a roster overview, a shitpost or an oddly specific guide, you can find a lot of them there.

Anyways, going back to the main topic, if anybody here wants to shoot the shit about those games, i'd be more than happy to join in, share some of my insights and the neat trivia that i found out about via excessive and autistic labbing(i.e. Gaza-C strats for Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam, EN charts for Gundam Assault Survive and so on).

Best regards,

-The Shirt Lad

 

[jertzog]

When did people start calling old console games "abandonware"?

 

[TheShirtLad]

When did people start calling old console games "abandonware"?

Good question. It's a somewhat arbitrary label for any software that's either discontinued or old enough for people to not get on your case, should you torrent it.
I'd say that games, such as Blue Destiny, Endless Tomorrow and 0081 Battlefield Record, (not to mention ancient PC releases like 0079: War For Earth and Return of Zeon) would fit into such a category.

 

[TheShirtLad]

Been pretty busy as of late, but i've done some substantial progress on a side project, that some of you might find interesting:
A master chart for the game Gundam Assault Survive and essentially a substitute for the JP wiki(https://gundamassault.wiki.fc2.com/), which is useful, but lacks in certain departments. Given the lack of EN documentation for the game, i chose to put my weaponizable autism to good use

Apologies in advance for the badly cropped screenshots, i had to zoom in quite a lot for it to be legible. Due to the sheer quantity, these are often just sections of each chart.
Finished sections:
-Main Roster chart: Complete(except for sub-flight system compatibility, but i'll get to that too). Contains the name, cost, rank, size, stats, unlock conditions and sortie parameters, alongside brief notes for every single playable unit. Yes, all 310(if i recall) of them

-Research chart: Complete. All the research plans, TP costs, unlock requirements and so on
I also listed a total sum of both sums and Tuning Points required to get all the research plans done

-Research chart: Complete. All the research plans, TP costs, unlock requirements and so on

-SFS(Sub-flight system) chart: Complete, alongside a sub-chart for related weapons

-Parts chart: Complete, all the upgrade parts are listed here with both EN and JP names(plus their designations in the game's EN patch). You wanna know what each one does? How does one acquire them? It's all there.

WIP sections:
-MS/MA Weapon chart: It's being worked on. Lists the full name, stats and almost everything one wants to know about each weapon(even stuff like the shooting guard mechanic and whether you can or cannot move while firing that specific weapon). All unit-specific weapons are listed up to the 0093/Char's Counterattack units(i'll probably finish that section soon, moving onto Extra units, such as Penelope and V2AB next)

-Level chart: Barely started, since there's a ton of stuff to translate and write down(anything from part drops to JP/EN names)

Sections i'll work on next:
-Secrets, Pilots, Unit compatibility, Special attack details, Melee attack details, Character creation

-Maybe a separate chart, if i feel like translating some UIs(like in VS mode and the game's Tips and Tricks tab)

When i eventually finish it, i'll make the master chart publicly available. Anyone can take a copy and do whatever they want with it, CC0 and all.

As always, take care

-TheShirtLad

 

[TheShirtLad]

A master chart for the game Gundam Assault Survive and essentially a substitute for the JP wiki(https://gundamassault.wiki.fc2.com/), which is useful, but lacks in certain departments. Given the lack of EN documentation for the game, i chose to put my weaponizable autism to good use

All right, chart update time:
I got the CCA roster done. All of the units in fact.

The only remaining sub-rosters, as far as the 'unit weapons chart' is concerned are the sub-rosters of U.C.123(Gundam F91), EXTRA(Sentinel, Hathaway's Flash, Victory, headless RX-78-2), SEED(Gundam SEED, pre-remaster) and 00(Season 1)

The chart should be of some use in its current state, so i attached the current, work-in-progress copy of it.
It's probably one of the first publicly available versions of the chart, so pardon the rather unrefined formatting.
Any feedback is appreciated.

-The Shirt Lad

P.S. The chart also lists the 'research plan' mechanic, which i did cover in a brief, 3-minute video entry
(YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocpagYEkag0 or its Odysee counterpart)
If you want to know how to get units like the Guncannon MP(White Dingo colors), Gundam Alex, Stark Jegan(CCA-MSV) and so on and you don't mind hearing my low-quality mic voice, it sums the whole mechanic up quite well.

 

[Cool Dog Returns]

Didnt gundam start in the 70s? soon enough it will be old enough to retire in some countries

 

[Harold Penisman]

Didnt gundam start in the 70s? soon enough it will be old enough to retire in some countries

Yeah, Gundam started in 79.

On a side note, remember Gundam Evolution? Turns out they will pursue legal action if you post data-mined content online.

Game was a blast when it came out, played the shit out of it even when it was in the network test. But not being able to unlock all the MS through f2p was them shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[Cool Dog Returns]

On a side note, remember Gundam Evolution?

Yeah, servers ran like shit, still do but now it takes forever to find a match

Shame cuz its a good game

 

[Harold Penisman]

Yeah, servers ran like shit, still do but now it takes forever to find a match

Shame cuz its a good game

Damn, from what I hear disconnects are still common even to this day. And back-fills were never implemented.

 

[Michael Wade]

All right, chart update time:
I got the CCA roster done. All of the units in fact.
Ver archivo adjunto 5126453Ver archivo adjunto 5126459
The only remaining sub-rosters, as far as the 'unit weapons chart' is concerned are the sub-rosters of U.C.123(Gundam F91), EXTRA(Sentinel, Hathaway's Flash, Victory, headless RX-78-2), SEED(Gundam SEED, pre-remaster) and 00(Season 1)

The chart should be of some use in its current state, so i attached the current, work-in-progress copy of it.
It's probably one of the first publicly available versions of the chart, so pardon the rather unrefined formatting.
Any feedback is appreciated.

-The Shirt Lad

P.S. The chart also lists the 'research plan' mechanic, which i did cover in a brief, 3-minute video entry
(YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocpagYEkag0 or its Odysee counterpart)
If you want to know how to get units like the Guncannon MP(White Dingo colors), Gundam Alex, Stark Jegan(CCA-MSV) and so on and you don't mind hearing my low-quality mic voice, it sums the whole mechanic up quite well.

My man. You are my new favorite Thread. I could go on and on about all kinds of gundam games. Particularly the Gundam Vs games. I was a legend on the old ps3 jap servers. Dont speak a lick of Japanese though. So it always sucks when I cant understand the plot.



I think my number one interests are always the crossover games. Particularly super robot wars Z, Another Century and the SUPER obscure Sunrise Eiyuutan series.

Everybody loves Z becouse it makes Char a badass and gives you the option to save everybody, but Eiyuutan has the distinction of having an insane amount of production value. We are talking actual art and voice acting of character's interacting with each other and characters like Amuro and Char getting Custom OG suits to use. Another century is great for allowing real time armored core style fighting.

An honorable mention would be super robot wars scramble commander 1&2 Those have the distinction of being a strategy game with actual to scale models. So you've got tiny gundams paired up with huge ass super robots and evas.




Otherwise anything plot heavy like 0081 and gihren's greed greed always interests me. Im always invested in the obscure and alt history settings of UC.

​

 

[TheShirtLad]

My man. You are my new favorite Thread. I could go on and on about all kinds of gundam games. Particularly the Gundam Vs games. I was a legend on the old ps3 jap servers. Dont speak a lick of Japanese though. So it always sucks when I cant understand the plot.

Thanks. It's always nice to see a fellow gundam game enthusiast, and a Gundam vs. enjoyer at that.
I remember labbing the shit out of the Gaza-C in Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam for the PS2 back in the day, since that one had quite a lot of gimmicks, such as gliding and out-of-angle quasi-freefalls in the MA mode.
Language-wise, i do know a little bit of Japanese, mostly phrases and such. Fortunately, while i suck at memorizing the various kanji, in lot of the games(like Artdink's Gundam Battle franchise or the G Generation series), they're either standardized, can be guessed thanks to the layout or can be roughly figured out and memorized via trial and error.
On that note, if i ever get to cover SD Gundam G Gen Portable or G Gen F, i should do a menu translation for it, since i did manage to somewhat memorize which thing does what.
(As an aside, if you want the most complete U.C. story campaign, G Gen F/IF is the most complete, featuring story stages for sentinel, rise from the ashes, sentinel, blue destiny, hathaway's flash, f90ff, f91, victory and crossbone, not to mention the various units from double fake, a ton of game-originals and so on)

I think my number one interests are always the crossover games. Particularly super robot wars Z, Another Century and the SUPER obscure Sunrise Eiyuutan series.

The crossover entries are pretty kino. Haven't heard of Eiyuutan, but i did enjoy the SRW series and ACE. I definitely want to get my hands on a copy of SRW Alpha Gaiden, since it does sport quite an interesting roster of units.

Otherwise anything plot heavy like 0081 and gihren's greed greed always interests me. Im always invested in the obscure and alt history settings of UC.

In case you haven't played it already, there's an EN patch for Gihren's Greed: Menace of Axis V. The base ROM should be up on places like romspure and vimm's lair and it's smooth sailing from there.
Side story-wise, there's more than a plenty of entries that would tickle your fancy. There's ACE-ish games that feature some neat lore stuff like Encounters in Space, Gundam SEED: Endless tomorrow, Climax U.C. and PS3's Unicorn (All four with a varied amounts of english in the menus. Nothing that a few minutes with Yandex Translate can't fix) Now there's also Lost War Chronicles, Rise From the Ashes, Formula Wars and the Blue Destiny trilogy on the shooter/action game front and Cross Dimensions 0079, a strategy game.
Can't really think of too many 'alternate U.C.' games ouside of Gihren's Greed and the PC-98 entries. Technically speaking, the Gundam Side Stories game for PS3 could qualify with its 'Missing Link' storyline as that one messes with the mainline canon to such a degree that it makes Thunderbolt blush. I'd say it should fall under as an alternate U.C. (There's two rom version of it, one JP[BLJS serial prefix] and one Cantonese[BLAS serial prefix], so having translation software on hand is always a good idea)

Have a nice rest of your day

-The Shirt Lad

 

[TheShirtLad]

Yeah, servers ran like shit, still do but now it takes forever to find a match

Shame cuz its a good game

Quite a shame indeed.
Bamco was dragging its feet on a GunEvo release for the country i reside in, so when it eventually came out, i only caught the tail end of the 'servers having any players at all' thing. The first week was a blast, then came the next Wednesday and my chances of getting the Zeon Remnants' Marasai without moving to JP servers were dead and gone.

 

[Michael Wade]

@TheShirtLad Thanks man.
Id play the G generation games but Ive only enjoyed the cutscenes without a translation. I did try a translation of overworld but I kinda got a little bored with the lack of significant story.

Alpha gaiden actually has a translation if im not mistaken. Personally as an early 2000s kid I thought the best roster was Z1-3, although V was pretty nice. The plot of D always intrigued me because that has char and other gundam villains teaming up to fight aliens.

Eiyuutan is great stuff. Sunrise World War basically had the roster for Super robot wars T and literally everything else Sunrise made up until 2004. It's 5 games in total I believe.

There are models in world war that were later ported over to the G-savior Ps2 game. (great game by the way, it has so bad its good english voice acting!) whole thing is a giant rabit hole Id recommend checking out.

One mystery that always bugged me was if sunrise world war had a cliffhanger or not. Ive never been able to get concrete confirmation from a Japanese source or see what the final ending even is. For the longest time people had no idea of this series' existence.




How does translation software work these days? Ive heard of it but It seemed primitive and difficult to implement when I first saw it. Can I just put in an emulator iso and play Super robot wars or can only certain games use it?

 

[Tequila Jong]

Gundam Battle Assault 2 on the Playstation is great. I used to be really good at it, but I'm really out of practice at fighting games these days.

 

[TheShirtLad]

Gundam Battle Assault 2 on the Playstation is great. I used to be really good at it, but I'm really out of practice at fighting games these days.

A great game indeed. If 0080 didn't sell me on the MSM-03C Hygogg by that point already, GBA2's blue noodle-armed rendition would singlehandedly do so.
Such a shame that GBA3, the SEED one went the wonky 3d route instead of just taking the units and movesets from the SEED/Seed Destiny Battle Assault game(in the same way GBA and GBA 2 took stuff from Endless Duel and Kidou Budouten) and building on GBA2's formula. Apparently, the U.S.-only release didn't help either.

 

[TheShirtLad]

How does translation software work these days? Ive heard of it but It seemed primitive and difficult to implement when I first saw it. Can I just put in an emulator iso and play Super robot wars or can only certain games use it?

That's an interesting question. In the context of the original post, i used the term as a catch-all for sites, programs and apps that you throw a screenshot into and it translates the thing for you.
As i emulate quite a lot, i often just screenshot the block of text and throw it into Yandex translate to get something that's 'close enough'.

That said, if there's either an integrated thing or an external program that just straight-up translates things for you in the way you describe it, i should definitely try and look into it at some point. I know that Brave Browser can sometimes translate entire JP sites, so it's likely that at the very least someone, somewhere is working on a similar thing for vidiya.

 

[Michael Wade]

That's an interesting question. In the context of the original post, i used the term as a catch-all for sites, programs and apps that you throw a screenshot into and it translates the thing for you.
As i emulate quite a lot, i often just screenshot the block of text and throw it into Yandex translate to get something that's 'close enough'.

That said, if there's either an integrated thing or an external program that just straight-up translates things for you in the way you describe it, i should definitely try and look into it at some point. I know that Brave Browser can sometimes translate entire JP sites, so it's likely that at the very least someone, somewhere is working on a similar thing for vidiya.

Apparently there is such a thing as real time translation software that can do it.

But there's also something that works akin to a Frankenstein where you have a phone emulator running on top of a recording of a game? Still pretty interesting.

 

[SlaanyChaser]

Is Custom Robo considered gundam?

 

[TheShirtLad]

Is Custom Robo considered gundam?

Not really, although it does fall under the 'related vidiya' part of this thread, given that it is an older title that features mechs.

 

[CuzinEd]

Weren't most of the Gundam games just weeb shovelware?

I never played any of them. Though I never watched Gundam since I don't do anime. If there were any on the Nintendo DS and or GBA I might have some of them on my DS piracy cart or my GBA Everdrive. I don't know if they are Gundam or just general mech games.

I did play some of the Front Mission games. I have the remaster or whatever it is on Switch.