After 30 years, Japanese tactics series Super Robot Wars is finally coming West

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The Bandai Namco published series has never officially released outside of Asia, but Super Robot Wars 30 is coming to Steam.

Super Robot Wars has been a mainstay tactics RPG series in Japan for 30 years, ever since the release of the first game in 1991, and has had over 50 releases across various consoles and spinoffs since. You've probably never heard of  it, though, because it has never gotten an official localization and release in the majority of the English-speaking world. 

That's not the case any more, as after three decades the latest in the series is coming to PC in the US and Europe via Steam: Super Robot Wars 30 will release on October 27, 2021.

Super Robot Wars was previously never released in the West, at least according to its fans, because the game is a crossover series featuring giant robots from a broad spread of Anime and Manga series. There are 22 different IPs in the upcoming Super Robot Wars 30. That makes it a licensing hell, as many of those shows have been licensed or adapted by various Western companies in the decades before and after Super Robot Wars got rolling. Getting the signoff of all those companies, negotiating the rights, sharing the cash, you can only imagine how that nightmare might unfold.

Super Robot Wars has in the past few years dropped the Macross series, and some fans are saying that just might be the one thing that was holding it back. In the United States, at least, there's a notoriously litigious legacy around Macross and its American reinterpretation Robotech. Perhaps that, combined with Bandai Namco's recent positive experiences with PC releases, was enough to get it localized.

Despite lack of official releases, the Super Robot Wars series does have plenty of English-speaking fans, with previous titles in the series getting English releases in the Southeast Asia region. American and European fans of the game have had to import those in the past, and were sometimes forced to play them on region-locked consoles, but it looks like those days are finally over.

You can, perhaps by some miracle, find and pre-order Super Robot Wars 30 on Steam. There's even a full-on DLC schedule.

Jonathan Bolding
Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.