Wanzer– Walking
Robot of Destruction
Front Mission is a Japanese exclusive that
many Super Nintendo owning gamers,
myself included, longed to play in English.
For about a year, it looked like Squaresoft,
now Square Enix, would be bringing this
giant robot turn based strategy game to
North America- it never happened on the
SNES, officially.
Thanks to the hacking community we can
now finally enjoy Front Mission on the
SNES in English. Let me tell you, it was
worth the wait. Front Mission is just as fun
today as it probably was back in the 90’s
and even better considering I can actually
read what is going on.
The story follows a group of mercenary
types that were once a leading military
platoon who were unjustly dropped after a
certain event that caused the second battle
over a decent sized strategic island. This
story is told throughout the game as you
progress, how you get to the next step
though is the fun part.
Front Mission is a turn based strategy title
with tons of ambience and challenge, all in
a 16-Bit cartridge. On the battle field, the
festivities are your normal turn based
strategy fair- just with giant robots. The
usual trappings are all here, colored areas
alerting you to movement/attack areas and
the ability to use a turn to use inventory
items.
The battles are great, though can grow
monotonous after 20+ hours of play (you
will see tons of battles). The awesome part
about the battles is that your Wanzer
(walking tank) reflects the changes that you
make in the towns. Arming long range
weapons or a different gun changes the look
of your Wanzer in the shop and on the
battlefield (at least in one on one battle).
There are hundreds of options from legs,
bodies, arms to weapons and axillary items
that are detailed. Just don’t get lost in the
arena (a great way to earn more money for
upgrades).
Ah, the arena. The Arena literally adds a
ton of depth to the Front Mission universe
and offers a convenient place to test out
new Wanzer designs, weapons arrangements and to hone your skills without
having to face a life or death situation in the
normal game. The Arena events carry over
to the rest of the game too since the Wanzer
work loads are kept, unless you change
them, and your character earns both cash
and experience from Arena battles. I have
played Front Mission several times over the
years and each time, at some point, I get lost
in the Arena battles and forget the storyline
– forcing me to restart, again.
If you are a fan of giant robots then you will
feel at ease with the Wanzers. They don’t
carry familiar designs such as Transformers
(you won’t see an Optimus Prime or
Megatron) or Voltron or Robotech here.
There is no way to edit your way into any
familiar robots either.
Front Mission has only seen release on one
North American system, the Nintendo DS
where it received many updates that change
the game enough to warrant playing both
versions.
11
CARL WILLIAMS
We never got
Front Mission on
the SNES.
Playstation 2
did see Front
Mission 3 in NA.