Before we get into today’s topic: my zungeon is finally out!
Go check it out over on itch! It’s compatible with any system (bring your own statblocks) but it’s also made with The Serket Hack in mind.
I didn’t always like BattleTech. There are specific things I have in mind when I want to play a mecha game, and most of the mechs in BattleTech look like slow-moving trashcans.
Some of them don’t even have arms and most of them move about with a slow lumbering gait. These are walking battle platforms, guns with legs. The thing that finally sold me on these BattleTech mechs was the concept of an Eisenhower. Content Warning: sex and mechsploitation:
Bluesky user Nikki Ophan created the concept to present the dichotomy of pilots within mechsploitation based on the types of machines they pilot.
The word “Eisenhower” is pretty niche, but many authors are choosing to use it to refer to this style of mech. For me, the eureka moment was thinking about how Eisenhower mechs exist in relative perspective to other mechs and potentially alongside them. It’s the difference between thinking “this is a heavy and fuel inefficient car with few quality of life features” and “that’s a classic muscle car”. Comparing it to a modern daily driver or a Formula 1 car is a little silly.
The Point
What do we mean when we make a mecha game? What experience are we promising players when we use that word? Understanding the differences between mech “vibes” will help us. Not everything is going to be in conversation with the history of mecha — sometimes, we make new games purely based on what we want. That said, if you are trying to connect with other mecha lovers, it’s good to examine how different aspects will shape the game.
How Big Is It?
Pacific Rim is great because one of the mechs picked up a container cargo ship and used it as a club to beat a giant monster. If the mechs are really big, it signals to the players that this sort of action is available to them: titanic struggles the size of mountains, stomping their way through concrete jungles.
Smaller mechs like those found in Titanfall are much more vulnerable and human. They’re excellent for telling more personal stories and usually allow players to build and maintain their own machines. In comparison, the bigger mechs of Pacific Rim necessitate large organizations like the military to produce and maintain.
How Fast Is It?
While the speed changes from game to game, the modern mechs of Armored Core are basically fighter jets with legs. As you can see in the above clip, they frequently move at over 1000 km per hour, shattering the sound barrier in the process. If a player expects this and ends up with the glacial speeds of a BattleTech machine, they’re going to be in for a disappointment.
(image credit: osakanone)
How Clean Is It?
What are the vibes? How dirty are we going to get?
Lancer is self-described as a “mud and lasers” game and all of its artwork is indicative of how messy the robots get. In comparison, the mechs in Neon Genesis Evangelion are almost always in pristine condition with gleaming armor. The reason I compare these two specifically is because both of them are fairly “magic” (more on this in a second). Lancer’s mechs invoke “paracausality” to empower themselves to do impossible things like rewind time or form pocket dimensions. Evangelion similarly uses Absolute Terror forcefields and alien DNA as unrealistic weapons. While many super robot settings invoke clean aesthetics, the two are not always interlinked.
How Magic Is It?
The division between “Super Robot” and “Real Robot” is one of the most well-known facets of the mecha genre. Understanding the level of realism the game aspires to is important. Are we concerned with running out of fuel and ammo? Or are we going to be throwing galaxies at each other by the end of the game? It can even be fun to mix the two together.
Lasers vs. Bullets
This is the last and most specific of the questions that I interrogate mech games with: lasers or bullets? Effectively this is a question of technology and how advanced the setting is. Even within the Gundam franchise, the feel of Iron-Blooded Orphans is different from the beam sabers of Witch from Mercury.
There is so much room within the mecha genre to carve out a niche. Understanding the types of experiences that other games provide is useful both to figure out if you would enjoy playing them and what expectations you want to fulfill in your own games.