Japan's long-running Super Robot Wars series is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion, Bandai Namco will be releasing the newest title – appropriately called Super Robot Wars 30 – on Switch, PS4, and Steam. Now, for the first time ever, a Super Robot Wars game is coming to North America and Europe on October 27, as revealed by the game's updated Steam page.
While a handful of previous Super Robot Wars games have seen English releases in Southeast Asia, the majority of the series has been Japanese-exclusive, and none of the English editions were made available outside of Asia. However, the Steam page for Super Robot Wars 30 clearly indicates that an international release is in the cards. The official trailer on the Steam page shows preliminary rating information from the North American ESRB and Europe's PEGI, revealing that the game will be rated and sold in those territories. Several options for pre-purchasing the game are also listed in appropriate local currencies.
Super Robot Wars is a long-running series of games based on commanding armies of robotic battle machines against foes in turn-based, grid-map strategy battles. What makes the games so special is that many of the robots – and their pilots – are taken from famous anime series like Mobile Suit Gundam, Evangelion, Mazinger Z, and Macross. The characters and mecha are then put together in original crossover stories.
But it's the crossover nature of Super Robot Wars that has proven to be an issue with localization. With so many series under one roof, it has long been presumed that a major international release was unlikely, as licensing negotiations with all of the Japanese rights-holders would be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. In 2006, the Game Boy Advance spinoff series Super Robot Taisen Original Generations was released in English, but that series featured only original characters and mecha made by the developers – meaning that additional licensing wasn't an issue. Since then, Super Robot Wars has not been seen officially in North America.
The first official multi-national Super Robot Wars release looks to be a real treat for anime fans, too. Every Super Robot Wars game has a different set of series it draws mecha and characters from, and Super Robot Wars 30's cast includes representatives from Mobile Suit Gundam, S.S.S.S. Gridman, GaoGaiGar, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Gun X Sword, among many others. If strategically commanding a massive crossover army from the world of anime robots sounds like a good time to you, then this is one release you should definitely mark down on your calendar.