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Review: Gundam Wing Endless Duel [SNES] |
I can imagine the bored groans of Japanese Gundam enthusiasts when reading “Bandai announces new Gundam fighting game for the Super Famicom!” See, “Bandai”, “Gundam”, and “fighting games” hadn’t been a recipe for success in past years - hell, “Bandai” and “Gundam game that isn’t a turn-based strategy game” typically didn’t bode well either.
Bandai attempted to combine the success of the epic giant robot anime war story with the popularity of Street Fighter II clones with a pair of arcade fighters, Mobile Suit Gundam - Kidou Senshi Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam EX Revue, which can be categorized under “crap” and “maybe approaching decent”, respectively. Another attempt, Mobile Fighter G Gundam for the Super Famicom, was pretty stinky - a shame, considering the particular animated incarnation of Gundam it was based on had kind of a 90’s fighting game feel to it. In 1995, another Gundam series aired, this time telling the tale of five magnificently handsome young men descending from space colonies in five nigh-invincible Mobile Suits (the giant robots) to rape the hell out of an oppressive militaristic Earth government. That brings us to Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, another fighter for the Super Famicom released at the twilight of the system’s life in 1996, only this time Bandai had the brains to hand the project over to another developer, Natsume.
Now, when you think “Natsume”, the first (and possibly only) game that comes to mind is Harvest Moon, but they’d made another licensed property fighter for Bandai before - Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Fighting Edition. That doesn’t sound encouraging, but it was actually a graphically rich, competently made effort with an amazingly good sense of physics. It had flaws and didn’t provide particularly deep gameplay, but it was made for eight year old boys, after all. Endless Duel appears to build off of this engine, but it manages to retain all the good aspects and replaces the bad.
Most noticeable from the get-go are the lush graphics. The nine selectable Mobile Suits are large and brightly colored with a decent amount of animation, making great representations of their anime counterparts. Thanks in part to Bandai’s need to sell more model kits, the designs are fairly diverse. There’s the intimidating, aptly-named beam scythe wielding Gundam Deathscythe. Gundam Heavyarms is, well…really heavily armed, sporting everything from bicep missiles to a gatling gun for an arm. Shenlong Gundam’s impressive extending dragon arm must be defeated to stand a chance (I am so fucking sorry). Everyone displays real personality, even in fairly simple, yet charismatic five or six frame neutral stances. The methods of attack, whether they use punches or kicks or beams sabers, look dynamic and vary greatly from robot to robot. There is a pair of palette swaps, the blue and red bro bots Vayeate and Mercurius, but each have plenty of their own unique animations and, more importantly, play completely differently. Effects are very well implemented here - hit sparks from a successful blow or blocked one are pleasing to the eye and easy to differentiate, an important factor in a rather fast paced game. There are some extra touches too, like how each hit sends electric blue sparks flying about and a successful beam gun impact yields satisfying explosions. Beam shots and bullets look appropriate, and massive fuck-off supers make nice use of transparency effects. The backgrounds mostly lack animation aside from the occasional flashing lights, but they make nice use of color to set the atmosphere. Sometimes there are (the remains of) robots in the background which are rendered in only a brown color, but the level of detail otherwise makes up for it. The locales are varied and are again good representations of the show, including places like the inside of a space colony, a battle ravaged military installation, and a moving aircraft carrier. A great example of all this coming together graphically is the boss fight against the demonic-looking Gundam Epyon (unlockable via code) on a cargo elevator, shadowy mechanical constructs pulsing with electricity in the background, giving the battle the right dark, moody ambience. Most impressive of all is the complete lack of slow down with all this going on screen at once.
The sound effects add even more oomph to the experience. Minor noises like the clunking of each step and the crunchy pow of a blocked hit are palatable, the swoosh of a beam saber in mid-air and the searing noise it makes as it crashes into an opponent’s armor are gratifying, and the anime-accurate sound of a beam rifle firing is exquisite. The music is vibrant and memorable and does a rather nice job of capturing the spirit of the mid-90’s robot action show. A trumpety and heroic tune plays when battling the Wing Gundam in a space colony, Gundam Heavyarm’s theme has a good techno beat, a harsh melody hits you when fighting the Tallgeese in the freezing Antarctic - it helps make the game all the more engaging.
As mentioned before, Natsume’s previous fighting game had some above average physics for a Super Nintendo fighter, and here they’ve tightened things up further. It succeeds in making giant robots control and feel like giant robots without being too clunky or slow. There’s a sense of weight that gives every step, every jump, every blow dealt and received the appropriate feeling. It goes the extra mile in making this feel more like a robotic fight to the death rather than a karate tournament by not making a knocked down opponent immune to attacks - this means you can keep hitting them with whatever will hit that low until they get back up. It sounds appalling at first, but this actually adds to the frantic pace of the game, not to mention, again, few attacks reach that low and they do less damage anyway. The engine borrows elements from some of the great fighters of the day, featuring dashes, air blocking, air specials, chain combos, some juggling and even limited air combos. It controls with four buttons, two regular attacks consisting of punches/kicks/chops and two weapon attacks using whatever beam saber/scythe/shotel/weapon that robot wields, each with weak and strong variations. Under your health bar is a large power bar, which also has a numerical representation beside it, starting at 300. Special attacks, which each Mobile Suit has two or three of, can be done with any button - the weak versions are free, but the strong versions take 100 energy. Every M.S. also has one super, universally performed with two quarter-circles forward and any button (except Wing and Wing Zero, who have a second done with the reverse motion), which costs 200. Energy is restored to this bar by successfully blocking your opponent’s attacks or by successfully landing hits. That includes specials and supers, so you can actually gain back most of the energy you just used if the entire attack hits. This sounds like it makes supers far too easy to perform repeatedly, and, well…that’s pretty much true, but should your opponent boost over your giant death beam just in time, you’re left with a serious power disadvantage.
Boosting is one of the more unique aspects of the game. By pressing any two buttons, your M.S. receives a jet-powered boost straight up, essentially a super jump. From here, you can choose to boost straight up one more time, propel yourself forward or back by pressing the direction and two buttons, or hold down for a slowed, controlled descent. When you boost up continually, the screen continues to scroll along with you, making for extra tall stages - just like Capcom’s X-Men/Marvel line of fighters. By pressing forward and boosting while still on the ground, you’ll automatically block while dashing a short ways forward, allowing you to plow through projectiles. Pressing backwards and boost results in a guarded back hop. It’s a well implemented, innovative system that adds a layer of strategy to the battles and helps to increase the pace tremendously.
The other system added to make the game uniquely Gundam-y is vulcans - every Gundam has a pair of small vulcans (a type of fast machine gun) mounted on their head. When each M.S. is a certain distance away from each other (about a half screen), a crosshair appears on the other M.S. At this time, pressing the regular attack buttons will fire a volley of bullets from the head (non-Gundam units pull out a small gun), consuming a tiny amount of energy. To be honest, this feature seemed a lot like something thrown in to give people unfamiliar with fighting games an edge - not too surprising, considering it’s a licensed property game. While it seems like this might risk reducing the entire game to a shoot out, the auto-blocking forward boost makes it easy to get through, as does simply boosting up and over. Oh…well, now it sounds like a waste of a feature, I figured. Still, it retained some use, since the bullets come out faster than most projectile specials and can be fired at a slightly vertical angle when crouching, not to mention some M.S. don’t have their own projectile specials. Its real purpose finally dawned on me during a particularly intense match - what it does is put you in constant danger. No matter where you are on the screen and who you’re fighting, your opponent can hurt you in some way.
All the elements of this game really pull together to achieve a greater sense of intensity and it does it to an extent that no other Super Nintendo game ever did. The passage of time tends to be cruel to old 16-bit home console fighters in particular - the wonky physics prevalent in games of the era get to be particularly bothersome. Putting all that Gundam faggotry aside, Endless Duel is still a solid and fast and exciting and fun fighting game after ten years. I can pin down the moment I realized just how enduringly great it is: An occasion I was on the versus screen, with your robot at the top left facing right and your opponent’s at the opposite, each flying in place as a tiny red stars pass by to simulate upward propulsion, a big “VS” between them and wailing guitars blaring the same little tune repeatedly. It was exhilarating. The anticipation of the game starting was more thrilling than the entirety of countless other 16-bit fighters, and even a number of newer ones. I forgot that this was some licensed property game made by some developer whose greatest legacy will probably be farming simulation. I can say with some confidence that this is one of the best Super Nintendo fighting games - hell, one of the best home console fighters of the era.
