Kidou Senshi Gundam

"An overlooked gem!"

It's no surprise that there aren't many reviews for Saturn Imports, as Saturn didn't fair well in the US, and that alot of people just never bothered with it, I recently picked up a saturn a Pro Action cart, and several imports, the first I will be reviewing is Mobile Suit Gundam.

Gameplay - 9
This is NOT like the Side Story games for the same system, this is a refreshing side scroller, it uses a psuedo 3D environment meaning you can shoot at enemies who are in the distance or coming up along side you, it's good old fashioned level after level of enemy mobile suits and bosses, like Char's red suits and the Zeon mobile armors.

Graphics - 8
A tad spotty in places, the graphics are comprised of pre-rendered sprites, most of them look pretty good some look a lil badly done, there are some slightly grainy footage from the original anime in there here and there as well, over all not an ugly game by any means, and if you look at them in the mindset of when the game was released they are actually quite well done.

Sound - 9
Lots of classic Gundam sound effects and music, the voices are all in japanese, and I assume they are of the original show cast, nothing sounds bad though!

Story - 7
It follows the plot of the original series as far as I can tell, the text for the story, and the voices are all in Japanese so I couldn't tell you exactly what is being said, but this is one of those games that is fun to play even if you CAN'T understand a lick of Japanese.

Controls - 7
A little odd here, for some reason I've noticed that on occasion the Beam Saber, and Beam Rifle buttons switched themselves, but on the whole the control scheme is not too hard to pick up on, you'll get it in the first couple of minutes of playing.

Replay - 8
This is actually fun enough to pick up and play again once you beat it, and there are ALOT of levels to play through, you can even continue later upon receiving a game over(only way I got to the save screen)

My Bottom Line.
The game is little known gem outside of Japan of a forgotten system.
If you like gundam OR good old side scrolling goodness then you would probably like it! the downside is that it is kind of hard to find, online auctions are how I came across it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/23/04