Super Robot Wars X is out in Japan. That means the English version comes out in less than a month. Time for some hype.
I am hyped. I loved the hell out of V, so I'll be there with bells on when this available for Anglophonic players.
Hopefully the story bears out its premise, and all of the included properties manage to work well as they did in V, but we'll soon see how that shakes out. Gameplay videos from the Japanese release already flood YouTube.
But there's another reason to pay attention: to see what #AGundamForUs has to do to get outside our own niche.
The narratives for these games are mashups, but they've gotten smarter over time and paying attention to how a given game's story mashup worked (and why) will go a long way towards figuring out what genre elements have resonance with the audience, which don't, and why.
The previous game built its mashup around the plot of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 as the frame. Every other series had its plot blended into it, including the original plot created for the game. At this time, I don't know what the framework is for X, so I am curious to see how they're blending together so many different properties (and what decisions they're making) because if the writers for the SRW games can show me something useful for my efforts then why not pay attention and learn what they've got to teach?
Remember that, though we deal in prose, we're working with a medium that is usually visual (Manga) or audio/visual (Anime) in its most popular forms. This has to include relevant videogame adapatations, and none in the mecha world is bigger than Super Robot Wars. Even if you don't play any of them, catch a play through if you can, preferably with a host or chat audience that knows the lore (if you don't), so you can see first-hand what's been done with X as a story. Then go watch the sources they mashed-up for this game (and others).
Think of this as part of scouting the audience, as market research, because you're going to succeed if you get what they're after here.
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