When it comes down to it, giant humanoid robots have to be the least tactically sound instruments of war to emerge from the imaginations of the science fiction community. Unlike tanks, they can be felled with a well-placed tree, tripping like a toddler with untied shoelaces. The weaponry is often placed in easily destroyed locations like the appendages, meaning that there are simple approaches to disabling a giant robot. Somehow, though, an entire genre has emerged around these unwieldy beasts, and I think we can all agree: mecha are pretty freaking awesome.


Introduction:

The word mecha is loan word from the Japanese word meka, which is itself a loan from “mechanical.” In the Japanese usage of the word, any mechanical creation is a mecha, but in English, mecha is generally reserved for humanoid mechanical armors that are human-piloted. Many anime are based around the premise: Voltron, Robotech, Gundam, Patlabor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and on and on. The possibility of humans essentially transforming into 20-40 meter avatars of destruction is clearly an appealing idea to disgruntled teens on both sides of the Pacific.

The unusual prevalence of mecha in Japanese cartoons and comics makes sense because the origins of the genre are on that soil. Although influenced by the giant robot of Tesujin 28-go of Mitsuteru Yokoyama’s manga, the piloted mecha phenomenon was founded by Go Nagai in the manga Mazinger Z. From there, the genre evolved into the creation we see today.

Before turning to the games featuring the genre, it’s interesting to note how mecha anime has become the genre of choice for many bildungsromans. The previously immature protagonist, through some circumstance, ends up taking control of an entirely new body with new powers of destruction–hello, allegory for adolescence. Any fan of Robotech can attest to the evolution of Rick Hunter from inexperienced hothead into a seasoned warrior in the seat of his veritech fighter. And then there are the ensemble casts of young protagonists who cope with the tribulations of teenage-life all while saving the world: Power Rangers, Voltron, Evangelion . . . And don’t even get me started on the pure, vitriolic angst of Gundam Wing.

If watching fictional characters destroy city blocks in giant machines can fuel anime franchises, you had better believe that it form the bedrock of many different video game franchises.

Xenogears (1998):

At the beginning of Xenogears, the protagonist Fei tries to defend his village from an attack of Gears (read: mecha) by climbing into an abandoned Gear nearby. He has some success in his effort until he see his best friend die. Then things get a little hazy, he goes berserk and when he wakes up from his spell, he finds he’s destroyed his village. Normally in an RPG, the protagonist just gets banished, but Fei goes that much farther. The first disc of the game follows Fei through an extremely convoluted storyline. Just as a suggestion of the bizarre metaphysics involved in the plot: Weltall, Fei’s gear, is referred to as “The Slayer of God.”

Players experience turn-based combat in both Gears and on foot as the compelling and baffling story pulls them along. Widely regarded as one of the great RPGs of the PlayStation, the game devolves when the player hits Disc 2. As soon as Disc 2 is inserted, the game becomes a series of slide shows occasionally interrupted by a dungeon crawl and a boss fight.

It maintains a worthwhile 84/100 at Metacritic, and it is the foundation of the Xenosaga series. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a sales flop in North America. According to some unreliable data, it may have sold only a little over 100,000 copies here.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995):

When I was growing up, I lived in a Mac household, and while that was all well and good for getting my Warcraft and Wacraft 2 fixes, it just didn’t it for Mechwarrior 2. To understand my obsession with MechWarrior (and MechCommander), you have to understand that I was obsessed with the universe of BattleTech. While other geeky kids were rolling dice at the behest of a Dungeon Master, I was painting tiny metallic figurines and playing at mock-war on a hex map. I, to my chagrin, read almost all of the novels put out by FASA. So, when MechWarrior 2 came out, far more publicized than its predecessor, I actually bought Virtual PC just to be able to play the freaking game. It was virtually unplayable on my family’s Mac unless I eliminated all textures and reduced the graphics down, essentially, to wireframes, but I still played through that entire game.

As a ‘Mech pilot, you had classes of ‘Mech at your disposal: light, medium, heavy, and assault. For MechWarrior 2, you were given the choice between two Clans in the Refusal War. Unless you’re a lore geek like I am, that really isn’t so important, but what it did was give players the best, most advanced ‘Mechs then available in the BattleTech universe. Later installations in the game gave players the classic ‘Mechs that the Inner Sphere used to fend off the invasion of the Clans like the bruising assault-class Atlas ‘Mech, but MechWarrior 2 was focused on the high-tech invaders of the known universe during an internal scuffle.

The game is astonishing because it’s like being in a flight simulator for an imaginary vehicle, and it was released thirteen years ago. You were even able to customize your ‘Mech with new weapons and armor scavenged from the battlefield. All of the technical acumen that went into the game created a full, vivid experience for the gamer.
More than any other franchise (like Shadowrun or Earthdawn), the BattleTech universe was the reason Microsoft purchases FASA Interactive Studios. Although they have since jettisoned the studio, they milked the franchise for two reasonable hits: MechAssault and MechAssault 2. Each was enjoyable arcade-style fare, but they were gross bastardizations of the complexity and depth of the MechWarrior series.

MechWarrior 2 received two expansion packs as well and was given the Origin Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game 1995. Right now, Smith & Tinker, a venture-backed company, owns the rights to the universe.

Oh please be working on an MMO. Please.

Armored Core 4 (2007):

The Armored Core series is one of those solid contenders in the mecha combat genre that always seems to lag behind the big boys. In one of those common dystopian themes, war has destroyed the nations we know today and left in their places corporations with standing armies of giant mecha. I have never been tempted by the game, but the continued existence of the franchise attests to its success.

The fourth in the series, released for the current generation of consoles, received some of the best reviews of the series. Unfortunately, that only means a Metacritic score of 67/100.

The same studio that produced Armored Core 4 also produced Chromehounds, a much better received game that doesn’t condescend to players.

Front Mission (1995):

Look: another Square game. Front Mission‘s mecha are called wanzers, which, honestly, sounds kind of dirty. At its soul, Front Mission is a wonderfully complex strategy RPG. If not for the presence of the wanzers, it might be easily dismissed as a FF: Tactics or Fire Emblem clone, but Front Mission allows the player to customize their wanzers to their own specifications given the machines a sense of personality. They aren’t simply machines: they’re your machines.

Through the beginning of 2006, the Front Mission series has been modestly successful, especially given the smaller audience of a hardcore strategy game, and has sold over three million games.

Virtual On (1995):

Outside of The X-Men Arcade, I doubt there are few machines that I pumped more quarters into than Virtual On. In its arcade form, the game was extraordinarily simple: you controlled a single mecha, a Virtuaroid, as you squared off against another machine. The art style is definitely in keeping with its anime inspirations. The mecha barely remain on the ground for more than a few seconds because most of the combat occurs in the air. The intense one-on-one combat, particularly against a human opponent, is made even more intense because the machine is controlled through two control sticks. The player uses particular directional combinations to access special moves for whichever Virtuaroid he happens to be using.

I don’t know if there really was a plot in the arcade game because I spent most of my time sweating and glaring at the guy sitting next to me as I dropped another few quarters into the machine.

There are have been four installations of the game, and all but one of those games was re-released on consoles.

Steel Battalion (2002):

Steel Battation may very well have been the greatest mecha simulator to come to gaming consoles, but the world would never know because it cost almost $200. The controller was the main driver of the price with an MSRP over $100. Utterly absurd.

It was a complete bust on the market, selling only 42,000 copies.

Awww. Maybe I should pick up a discount copy.

Conclusion:

As long as teenagers want to blow things up in giant mechs, this genre will churn out sequel after sequel. Let me reiterate an earlier point: please please please, make a MechWarrior MMO.

What is it about the early 90’s that sets my gamer’s heart aflutter? Is it the 16-bit palette? Is it the MIDI sound? I’m not entirely sure, but if you put a carpal tunnel-inspiring SNES game pad in front of me, I’ll probably go weak in the knees. And one of the first games to ever get me excited about the system was the classic, irreplaceable The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The creation of Shigeru Miyamoto, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was the third installment in the Zelda series. In addition to the huge graphical upgrade provided by the SNES, Link to the Past also wisely eschewed the baffling side-scrolling style of its immediate predecessor with its return to the overhead perspective of the first game. By the time Link to the Past had come out, the Zelda franchise was already popular with the growing gaming population of the world, and in some ways, Link to the Past managed to define the series with its excellence and sense of adventure.

To this day, I still get a thrill when the theme music plays and the pieces of Tri-Force spiral into place on the opening screen.

Like so many RPGs that followed, Link to the Past began with a sleeping hero with no understanding or awareness of his destiny. As far as opening sequences in the 16-bit era go, the first mini dungeon might provide the best introduction to gameplay mechanics possible. Within that small dungeon, the player becomes acclimated to many of the mechanics of the game. Of course, as with any Zelda game the mechanics evolve as Link gains access to more toys, but the fundamentals are established early.

As with many Zelda games, Link has to rescue Princess Zelda, but it’s not from Ganon in this instance. Instead, it’s from a wizard who is planning to free Ganon from his magical prison. So, you know, it’s basically Ganon by proxy. In this case, Zelda isn’t the focus on the game at all. Sure, she gets kidnapped again after Link has gathered up all the pendants he needs, but she’s just the MacGuffin.

To be perfectly honest, playing the game again, the structure is rather grating. Link always has to collect 3 or 7 items from 3 or 7 dungeons to unlock the next part of his adventure. Who can forget the seven descendants of the sages that sealed up Ganon that Link must rescue in the Dark World? Such vivid personalities they all had… no, wait, they were all MacGuffins. The player, though, doesn’t pay attention to the repetition because the dungeons are so well designed and so engaging. Each one offers a new challenge and a new experience. Plus, the player always got a new toy to play with in the course of every dungeon.

Putting aside the collect X doodads nature of the game progression, the world that Link could explore was incredibly open. The fourth wall was never broken because the barriers placed in front of a player were part of the game. If the game didn’t want you to get into a certain area, it put one of the really heavy 8-ball looking boulders in front of you that you could only lift when you got the Power Glove. In this way, by limiting access without making it rigid, the game guided the player through the objectives laid out.

Long before I ever had a chance to play the game, long before I ever had a Super Nintendo, I was obsessed with getting the opportunity to play the game because Nintendo Power published a comic about the game. It had just enough style and just enough panache to excite a soon-to-be comic nerd like myself.

When I was young, during the SNES period, I had to play all of my video games in the basement. It was a basement in a small town outside of Chicago, and although it was half-furnished, it was still very much a basement. Concrete walls and pipes that dripped. The whole shtick. Let me tell you, it got really really cold in there. But I would spend hours in that basement while the temperature dropped to the low teens outside playing through A Link to the Past with my numb hands clutching that game pad.

I think the greatest testament to the game was that when I knew I was close to beating the game, I would actually get up early on school days–since my mom wouldn’t let stay up late to play–and sneak down into the even colder basement to play A Link to the Past. I managed to beat the game just as my mom was calling me up to go to school, so I wasn’t able to watch the ending. Not that the ending was all that impressive or really much of a denouement at all, but it was a reward for victory. So I came home from school that day and immediately beat the game again.

I know there have been great Zelda games since this one, and I know they may define Link more for other players, but I will always think of Link first as a wee little elf with a wee little shield shot from a top-down view as he cavorts his way between Hyrule and the Dark World. I can’t be the only one because between the original SNES version (4.61m) and the GBA re-release (0.33m) the game has sold almost five million copies in its lifetime. Not bad for a young elf, eh?

While we in the gaming community often bemoan the proliferation of sequels and franchises from companies seeking to make a quick, uncreative buck, there is something to be said for the finely tuned game experience that can emerge from a sequel to a beloved game. If you would dispute this point, you could look toward the first-person shooter market and observe the refinement of Quake II over its well-loved predecessor or observe the many critics who prefer The Godfather, Part II or The Empire Strikes Back over their respective first volumes. Such is the case with Myth II: Soulblighter. As wonderful as the original was, Myth II was the pure distillation of real-time tactical beauty with refinement and class. Or, as much class as you could pack onto a battlefield stained with blood and ichor.

In contrast with many other real-time war games of the time, Myth II had no component of gameplay dedicated to the creation of units or towns. When the original came out in 1997, it was a refreshing alternative to the monotony of unit creation found in WarCraft II and Command & Conquer. Rather than controlling a small group of peons and workers to build a miniature town that then allowed the player to create units for battle, Myth focused on the battle straight away. At the beginning of each mission, players were given a specific number of units, and those would be the units that they had to fight with for the entirety of the mission unless an element of the script introduced them to more units.

Units were precious in Myth II. They were not disposable in the way of so many RTS that came before. When any of the units were damaged, it was a big deal for the player. The team at Bungie heightened the sense of attachment to units by also allowing the units to gain experience during combat. If a player were a super tactician in the single player campaign, he would be able to keep many of his upgraded, experienced units as he moved from mission to mission, and they would perform significantly better than the rookies in the campaign.

Make no mistake, the game was dark and gritty. The single player story was conveyed mostly through a series of journal entries from an anonymous soldier in the battles against the invading Fallen Lords. Where there was barely any story to speak of in WarCraft II, the single player campaigns of Myth and Myth II were actively entertaining. Betrayals, when they occurred, were painful. The fact that the player controlled a small collection of units increased the sense that he was insignificant in the face of massive changes in the fantasy world.

But, really, what made Myth so great, and what Myth II improved upon, was the shift in focus away from real-time strategy to real-time tactics. Strategy is the domain of generals and warlords while tactics are the domain of corporals and sergeants. It is war on the small scale. And on that small scale, small decisions matter. In Myth II, it is not simply a matter of outproducing another player in a multiplayer match. It is about the proper employment of troops. There is no brute force solution in the game. There is no teching to Frost Wyrms or Chimeras. You have X number of units, and you had better damn well keep them alive.

Two aspects of the game add considerable depth to the tactics a player can and needs to employ over the course of game: height and space. By that, I mean that Myth occurs in a 3D map where the height of a ranged unit can affect how far the projectiles reach. And, as for space, the units in the game cannot overlap, so the formations are integral to survival. A player can effectively create a wall of stronger melee units to shield the ranged units behind them. And yet, thanks to the powerful physics engine, each of the projectiles from those ranged units, be they arrows or spears or body parts, can actually hit friendly units. Thus a player has to consider how to properly place his archers to allow them to attack the enemies units without damaging his own units too badly. How about a nice hill? Well, that will work for a while, but what if the opponent sends a small contingent of fast melee units up to the hill and scatters the archers to the four winds? Point and counterpoint. Thrust and parry.

If the game only had melee units and archers, it would still be incredible, but there are also a number of other units that make the game particularly memorable. Dwarves are explosive-lobbing freaks who can potentially destroy an entire army that is packed together too closely. As a result, players tend to scatter their units when they see a dwarf approaching, but they also have satchel charges that they can drop. The canny Myth player will have a fast but weak ghol pick up the charge and run into the middle of an army and have an archer fire flaming arrows at the poor ghol until he explodes into tiny, colorful bits with the opponents army. If it sounds suspiciously like a suicide bomber… well… you probably won’t like the wights. Those units can only attack once. They are slow, and they attack by stabbing themselves in the chest unleashing a gaseous explosion that kills the wight anybody nearby.

The multiplayer options were deep. Here’s a brief–ha!–rundown from Wikipedia:

• Body Count: The player or team that deals the most points of damage within the time limit wins.
• Capture the Flag: Each player or team has a flag at their starting location. If the flag is ever lost, even for a second, the player is eliminated.
• Last Man on the Hill: A flag is in the middle of the map. The winner is the player who controls the flag when time runs out. If multiple players contest the flag, the game goes into sudden death, and the first player to get uncontested control of the flag for five seconds wins.
• King of the Hill: A flag is in the middle of the map. The player is credited for every second that he controls or contests the flag. The winner is the one with the most time when the game ends.
• Territories: Several flags are scattered across the map. The winner is the one who controls the most flags when time runs out. If any flag is contested, the game goes into sudden death.
• Flag Rally: Several flags are scattered across the map. The winner is the one who tags all the flags first (where “tagging” means taking uncontested control.)
• Steal the Bacon: A ball is in the center of the map. Any unit can move the ball by running into it, and clicking directly on the ball will cause the unit to follow it and bump it roughly in the direction the unit is running. The ball can also be blasted around with explosives. The winner is the player who controls the ball when time runs out. If the ball is contested, the game goes into sudden death.
• Captures: Like Territories, but with balls instead of flags.
• Scavenger Hunt: Like Flag Rally, but with balls instead of flags.
• Balls On Parade: Like Capture the Flag, but with a ball instead of a flag.
• Assassin: Each player gets an assassin target, usually a helpless Baron but sometimes more powerful units. If the assassin target dies, the player is eliminated.
• Stampede: Each team has one or more flags and a herd of animals or peasants. For each animal that reaches an enemy flag, the animal is teleported away and a point is gained. The winner is the team with the most points when all the animals are dead or safe, or when time runs out.
• Hunting: Dozens of computer-controlled wildlife units such as deer and hawks are placed on the map. For each animal killed, a point is scored. The winner is the one with the most points when time runs out.

Impressive, right? My particular favorite was Steal the Bacon on the evocatively named map “Gimble in the Wabe.” If you don’t get the reference, well, maybe it’s time you read a few poems.

So far, though, most of this praise could have applied to the original game just as well as to Myth II. What made Myth II stand out was the inclusion of a map and tools editor that spawned an entire community of avid developers. People used the physics engine in the game to create entirely new games that had nothing to do with the fantasy environment of the series. I confess that I even spent a large number of hours designing my own units and maps for my friends and I to play on.

The community was so keen on these tools that after Take-Two purchased the rights to the franchise, the company immediately released (or re-released, really) Myth II with a load of community mods as Myth II: Worlds. One intrepid developer even fashioned a mod called Blue and Grey about the American Civil War.

Unlike other games I have enshrined in my heart, I don’t think I’m particularly good at Myth II. That’s not to say that I’m atrocious at the game. It’s more that there are so many of the elements of the game that it’s impossible to achieve mastery. At least, it was impossible for me. That’s what kept me going back to the battlefield, and that’s why I still occasionally fire up my old copy of the game blow up a wight or two.

Or perhaps I just really like gratuitous amounts of violence and gore. That’s what my therapist thinks.