Shingata Medabots Import Review
Out of the Scrap Heap, Into the Dumpster
One of the nice things about having a functional Game Boy SP again is that I can dip into the old backlog of stuff lying on my shelf in between weightier titles, and sometimes I come across something I’d forgotten I had. For example, Shingata Medabots, translated here as True-Type Medabots, is a Game Boy Advance secondary title from an oddly robust little series of the late 90s onward. This is not the same Medabots game that North American received on the GBA; that one was a full remake of Medabots 2, on which the anime was based. True-Type Medabots is ostensibly derived from the first game, but with enough changes for it to qualify as an attempted reboot of the series. Did it work? Well, there are good reasons why Medabots 2 GBA has a secondhand price many times higher than this game on the Japanese market. Whatever I paid for it was too much.
True-Type Medabots has a story. Having never played the game it is supposedly modeled after, it’s hard for me to say how much of a resemblance there is between them, but it could not have been worse than what’s presented here. The plot is amorphously vague, poorly directed, and there’s never any real pressure to be had. The ever-villainous Rubberobo Gang is hanging about and causing problems, but for most of the game, their reasons and criminal enterprises never go further than what might generously be found in the first hour or two of a better-organized game’s introduction to the action. NPCs just sort of exist without any sense of interaction with anything but their niche of the plot. There are side quests gated behind getting a specific score on a crappy baseball mini-game that is only available by trading in coupons gained by purchasing (expensive) items from a specific store—likely one at a time, to maximize the number of coupons received. The big villain appears out of the blue, gets defeated nearly as quickly, there’s a tournament arc, and then somehow things get sorted out at the end.
90% of the game is in town
For whatever reason, the writers for this game decided to make the setting vaguely Hispanic, with things like various locations being named La Colina or Vento del Mare, or an NPC who disguises herself as luchadora La Mascara for the tournament arc. However, while they might have had access to a Japanese-to-Spanish dictionary, they did not understand how Spanish phonetics function, so the Rubberobo villains Azul, Amarillo, and Rojo have names in katakana that are objectively not how they’re supposed to be pronounced.
The one solid thing True-Type Medabots has going for it is the combat, which it has inherited in toto from the games that came before it. The player’s team of one to three Medabots are tricked out in whatever mix-and-match of functional parts are needed, going up against a more homogenized enemy team. Battlefields are set up like dodgeball courts, with the ‘bots getting their orders on the back line and then rushing to the middle line to perform the action. The speed of charge times and cool-downs is supposedly set by stats and parts, and there’s a variety of mechanics related to targeting and positions.
Attack abilities are split into melee (Punch and Grapple) and firearms (Aim and Shoot), with Punch and Aim being more focused attacks while Grapple and Shoot are less accurate but often have special added effects such as carrying over damage between multiple parts of the target. There are also support abilities to heal, defend, boost stats, or cause effects. All of these have their associated skill levels on a Medabot’s empowering medal, and some medals are intrinsically more in tune with certain move types than others. Lastly, the leg/base segment of a Medabot gives it bonuses depending on the terrain, or otherwise provides a better shield against general damage.
The game’s biggest issue here is consistency. Charge times and cool-downs can take wildly different amounts of time, even when between different iterations of the same encounter in the same area with the same field type. Status effects may randomly fail to come into effect, or else disappear before they do anything effective to the enemy. The first area of the game is balanced for firearms attacks, based on the traits and strengths of the local bots and minor boss, but if one is playing the Kuwagata (Rokusho) version with a melee-focused starter Medabot, it’s a struggle to survive. Defeat in battle means losing a Medabot part, which is bad enough, but if the main character has only the one ‘bot (such as in the first few hours), then any loss means an instant Game Over as well. In order to defeat the beachfront boss, Cervo (i.e. the new version of Rokusho) will need to make use of Shoot attacks that he’s not at all good at, which only exacerbates the inconsistencies with simply hitting things.
However, as the only good way of gaining cash is the resale of used ‘bot parts, it still behooves the player to beat every single trivial battle the random number generator throws at them. Running away is an option, but it requires a limited resource, Rubber Robo Medals, which are mostly won off of gang members in the handful of areas they appear. Once the player has a few extra ‘bots to form an actual team and a good array of parts to equip on them, then the Auto-Battle option can take out practically all random encounters (and possibly major battles as well). Since battles can take upwards of ten minutes to play out, late in the game, this makes it easy to put things on auto-pilot while one does important things like hang laundry, wash dishes, or write game reviews.
This picture has the best-drawn hands of anything seen in the entire game.
The Medabots series has long been known for its idiosyncratic art style, which was further popularized in its manga and anime adaptations. It shouldn’t be a surprise that True-Type Medabots went with a different design style that is objectively worse in every way. If one searches up this game in Japanese, the auto-fill will suggest the Japanese word for “ugly or unsightly,” and this is an accurate assessment. Eyes, heads, hands—nothing looks quite right, and what this does to the ethnic stereotype characters in the tournament arc goes well past objectionable.
The ‘bots come out slightly better in comparison, with the mix-and-match and parts-damage aspects being clearly visible in battle, but for some reason the character artist went with significantly different designs for Metabee and Rokusho that could not have gone over well with the series’ fanbase. Another plus is that while almost the entire game takes place in town, the different sections of the city each have their own unique style, so it’s not too hard to navigate. As for the music and sound effects, those are mostly recycled from previous games and about as good on the GBA speakers as one might imagine. It’s not that bad, not that good, just solidly average.
It should be obvious from everything written to this point that I did not have an enjoyable experience with this game. The auto-battle options kept me going through most of it, but I could not have made it without an online guide. Not because the game itself was difficult, but because it gave so little clue as to where to go or what to do. There are so many things wrong with this title that we could go on about it in ever more granular levels of complaint for hours. If, as the title of True-Type would suggest, this was supposed to be a true series reboot, then it failed; the game has been relegated to spin-off ignominy while the main series continued with Medabots DS. The least one could say is that True-Type Medabots is still functionally playable, but not many would want to.
Inherited a decent battle system
Combat visuals are easy to understand
Different parts of town are visually unique
Plot is barely there
Most non-robot visual designs are ugly
Unnecessary redesign of iconic Medabots
Inconsistency in game mechanics and effects
Recent Comments