If there are two things that I love in life, it's fighting games and anime. Japan and I have a lot in common, really. We're both capitalists in a sense. Both of us eat rice as a staple in our diet. Xenophobia against foreigners is horribly rampant. We both call Army of Darkness by the name Captain Supermarket. Okay, that last one was a stretch, but anyways, Japan and I are a lot alike, though we don't agree with each other. For instance, I'm American, so in a way, I'm ultra evil in a place like mainstream Japan because I obviously was the man behind atom bomb extravaganza. While I'd like to apologize for nuking them twice in a row, I am reminded that I was not alive during that time period, so stop blaming me! Also, Japan doesn't know who I am so I really shouldn't speak of them as though we were close, so I'll start using the term Japan-san. Yeah, that sounds about right...

I thought I was playing Mega Man... Frown.

So I'm reviewing Kidou Senshi Gundam W: Endless Duel for the Super Famicom because I am a big fan of 2D fighting games and I like anime. Okay, so the Wing series was probably the crappiest of the various Gundam universes, but they have a fighting game associated with it, alright? If you have never seen the show before during its run on Toonami back in the hay-day when Cartoon Network ran anything remotely Japanese because it was the thing to do, the story really sucks. In AFTER COLONY 195 or whatever year they make up, the space colonies that were made like 100 years ago are trying to gain independance from the Earth. Earth isn't down with that, and so I guess the Colonies decide to send down five Gundam robots to raise all hell on Earth. They are piloted by five teenage mecha pilots that are reeking of metrosexual whatever. They're pretty faggy. And I guess of the five, Heero Yuy, the main character and pilot of the Wing Zero, got kinda sidetracked and had to hide from the Earth forces as well as try to kill other main character Relena Peacecraft because she saw him and Heero is much like Sean Penn in that he hates conservatives and war and being looked at by cameras and stuff and resorts to violence to solve all of his problems. Seriously, Sean Penn is a douche. I mean Heero. Yeah, that's it. So, this game takes place somewhere in the game.

You get to choose between nine different characters, with a hidden one or two just for kicks. So you know which is which, look at the picture of the character select screen provided and I'll read, from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, who is what now:

Heero has an unnatrual obsession with wanting to kill Relena Peacecraft, which is forgivable considering she is a mean-spirited bitch. Just like most anti-war liberal chicks, OH SNAP, POLITICAL JOKE!

ROBOTS SHOOTING AT EACH OTHER WHAT?

This game more or less plays out like your standard 2D fighting game. Some moves are performed by doing quarter-circle motions or half-circle motions plus a button. If you've played Street Fighter II, you can probably play this game. There is hardly any story to this, at least one that you won't care about. It's all in Japanese anyway, it isn't like you can magically read it with the power of BURNING SHOUNEN ACTION or anything like that. Standard story mode play usually makes you fight off the Gundams first, then usually the Tallgeese or Wing or whatever is in the end, I forget because I get bored with story mode and the computer pulls off some impressive SNK-style controller-reading abilities, denying you of victory at all cost.

The big green bar is your health, and as it drops, it changes color like a pregnancy test, warning you or impending doom if it gets too low and turns black. The smaller yellow bar is your super duper meter thing, which limits your use of specials and supers and all that, much like Art of Fighting did before it. Only difference between this and AOF is that Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia can kick a Gundam's ass with their awesome Kyokugenryuu fighting style. The three digit number thing near the smaller bar is like ammo for your ranged weapons and it probably does other crap I don't really care for. When you start doing multi-hit combos, the number gets overlapped by a "X HIT" disclaimer, informing you that you have, in fact, hit them X amount of times, where X is the number of Artifacts you control. Fights go on best two out of three. Yep. Standard fighting game. With giant robots.

You know, nearing the end of this review, this game was a bad way to re-start reviewing SNES games in general. God, what was I thinking? It'd have been better to have reviewed the wacky Tenchi Muyo stragety RPG, since that show was airing on Toonami the same time and it was infinitely more awesome than Wing. Bah.

Ratings

Graphics: 4.0 / 5.0
Sound: 1.5 / 5.0
Control: 4.5 / 5.0
Fun: 2.5 / 5.0

Graphics: Hey look, robots! Giant robots! And they kinda look like the way they are supposed to. Bonus points for having explosions when you defeat your opponent. Yeah!
Sound: Ear-piercing technobabble that I can't stand to listen to. Mute the music. Sound effects are very sci-fi-y, but work okay. Music sucks. Sucks, I tell you!
Control: They're alright for the game, since it isn't the kind of game where every frame counts like on freakin' Capcom fighting games. Joystick may not help you in this case.
Fun: There are better fighting games out there. And this is 1996 we were talking about, there were a SLEW of fighting games as far as the eye could see! Go play World Heroes or something.