I borrowed the GameCube Custom Robo from a friend as a kid and really enjoyed it, but I'd only ever heard about the N64 game. This Japan-exclusive first entry in the series is one that I scored ages ago, but only got to playing recently as something I did on Twitch. I was super out of practice and had forgotten most about the GameCube game, but things slowly came back to me as I went through it. It's definitely a first step rather than some inspired peak of the series, but I had a good bit of fun with it~. It took me around 8 hours to beat it over the course of two streams.
Custom Robo tells the story of you, the main character, who has just moved into a new town. Your cousin happens to live here, and he's a big fan of this new toy craze of Custom Robo. A "Commander" pilots the robos by "diving" their consciousness into the toy and battling other their opponents robot for who can KO their opponent's robot first. Lucky for you, your parents have gotten you your very own Custom Robo toy as a present for the move, and you get right to work as your cousin teaches you how to play. You turn out to be a prodigy as you go basically undefeated through every opponent you come across, winning every tournament their is and even saving the world from a Team Rocket-like evil.
It's a story that's very typically anime for the time, and it gave me very Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh vibes between the relationship the main character has with his family, friends, and even the villains. It's got some really weird pacing and twists at times, and it's hardly gonna set your world on fire, but it's mostly here to give a set dressing for the robot fighting, and it does a more than good enough job at that. At the very least, you'll probably get some giggles from just how campy and expressive the characters' expressions can be when they're emoting their dialogue X3
The gameplay is very much like a prototype for what would eventually be the English-released GameCube game. The two robos launch into different directions from the center of the map, and then your cubes morph into the robots who then begin to fight. You fire your main weapon with A, fire your bomb with B, launch pods with Z, and can jump and boost with R. You can even use a C button to dash towards your opponent eliminating their normal fire coming towards you. There are all sorts of different main guns, bombs, and pod types you can get as you play through the story, and even different legs for your unit to affect things like how long it takes you to start moving again once you hit the ground and how fast your acceleration is. You can tweak your build a ton in the story mode, and there's a ton of skill present in how you can play.
The only major complaint I'd have is that the action feels a bit too clunky/slow at times compared to how the GC version can feel. While that isn't a death sentence, it does mean that you can get punished REALLY hard if you happen to misstep, and the harder battles in the game can very quickly turn against you if you make a couple mistakes. While the game isn't really super hard and the AI is far from the best, the last fights of the penultimate and final in-game days are both super tough, and really drive home just how hard you can punish an unready opponent. I found the challenge quite nice, overall, at least for someone like me who is quite unaccustomed to fighting games, let alone in a 3D fighting genre like this ^^;
Other more minor complaints are things like how you can't change the build of your robot in the story mode. There is an arcade mode you can basically play however you want in, but you're stuck using the all-around fine Ray model in the story mode. Different Custom Robo models have different recovery times, can get knocked down easier or harder, and even have higher defense values and different base speeds. You end up fighting a ton of opponents (there are like ten or so different models in the game), and it becomes a little bit of a bummer that your robo is always just plain ol' Ray (unlike how you can change that in later games).
My only other significant complaint is that a fair few of the weapons in the game aren't just tactical decisions, but are clearly better than others. While that power creep does favor the story mode well (especially for a game this old with no online play and a fully functional arcade mode), it's still a little bit of a bummer for how the fighting itself is designed. It makes it feel like more of an RPG and less like a fighting game, which isn't a fault, per se (it honestly probably made me like it more), but it's definitely something worth mentioning here.
The presentation is about what you'd expect for a Nintendo-published game on the N64 in 1999. Colors and models are really colorful and vibrant, and the game runs really well. The music is also quite good, although there's nothing particularly MP3 player-worthy in my book. Just how cool so many of the other robo models can look made me even more bummed that you're stuck playing as Ray all the time. I wanted to look a that cool too! X3
Verdict: Recommended. This is a pretty darn good game on the N64, especially for a system that is so barren of any competent fighting games (save for a few exceptions). While it's certainly an untraditional fighting game, taking more from something like Virtual On rather than Street Fighter, it's a very competent one. While the sheer amount of text will likely keep any non-Japanese speaker thoroughly confused and unable to play the story mode, the arcade mode can still be enjoyed to a point even if you don't know Japanese. It's certainly navigable with the use of a guide, and it's a cheap import worth checking out if you're a fan of fighting games and neat N64 stuff.
Custom Robo tells the story of you, the main character, who has just moved into a new town. Your cousin happens to live here, and he's a big fan of this new toy craze of Custom Robo. A "Commander" pilots the robos by "diving" their consciousness into the toy and battling other their opponents robot for who can KO their opponent's robot first. Lucky for you, your parents have gotten you your very own Custom Robo toy as a present for the move, and you get right to work as your cousin teaches you how to play. You turn out to be a prodigy as you go basically undefeated through every opponent you come across, winning every tournament their is and even saving the world from a Team Rocket-like evil.
It's a story that's very typically anime for the time, and it gave me very Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh vibes between the relationship the main character has with his family, friends, and even the villains. It's got some really weird pacing and twists at times, and it's hardly gonna set your world on fire, but it's mostly here to give a set dressing for the robot fighting, and it does a more than good enough job at that. At the very least, you'll probably get some giggles from just how campy and expressive the characters' expressions can be when they're emoting their dialogue X3
The gameplay is very much like a prototype for what would eventually be the English-released GameCube game. The two robos launch into different directions from the center of the map, and then your cubes morph into the robots who then begin to fight. You fire your main weapon with A, fire your bomb with B, launch pods with Z, and can jump and boost with R. You can even use a C button to dash towards your opponent eliminating their normal fire coming towards you. There are all sorts of different main guns, bombs, and pod types you can get as you play through the story, and even different legs for your unit to affect things like how long it takes you to start moving again once you hit the ground and how fast your acceleration is. You can tweak your build a ton in the story mode, and there's a ton of skill present in how you can play.
The only major complaint I'd have is that the action feels a bit too clunky/slow at times compared to how the GC version can feel. While that isn't a death sentence, it does mean that you can get punished REALLY hard if you happen to misstep, and the harder battles in the game can very quickly turn against you if you make a couple mistakes. While the game isn't really super hard and the AI is far from the best, the last fights of the penultimate and final in-game days are both super tough, and really drive home just how hard you can punish an unready opponent. I found the challenge quite nice, overall, at least for someone like me who is quite unaccustomed to fighting games, let alone in a 3D fighting genre like this ^^;
Other more minor complaints are things like how you can't change the build of your robot in the story mode. There is an arcade mode you can basically play however you want in, but you're stuck using the all-around fine Ray model in the story mode. Different Custom Robo models have different recovery times, can get knocked down easier or harder, and even have higher defense values and different base speeds. You end up fighting a ton of opponents (there are like ten or so different models in the game), and it becomes a little bit of a bummer that your robo is always just plain ol' Ray (unlike how you can change that in later games).
My only other significant complaint is that a fair few of the weapons in the game aren't just tactical decisions, but are clearly better than others. While that power creep does favor the story mode well (especially for a game this old with no online play and a fully functional arcade mode), it's still a little bit of a bummer for how the fighting itself is designed. It makes it feel like more of an RPG and less like a fighting game, which isn't a fault, per se (it honestly probably made me like it more), but it's definitely something worth mentioning here.
The presentation is about what you'd expect for a Nintendo-published game on the N64 in 1999. Colors and models are really colorful and vibrant, and the game runs really well. The music is also quite good, although there's nothing particularly MP3 player-worthy in my book. Just how cool so many of the other robo models can look made me even more bummed that you're stuck playing as Ray all the time. I wanted to look a that cool too! X3
Verdict: Recommended. This is a pretty darn good game on the N64, especially for a system that is so barren of any competent fighting games (save for a few exceptions). While it's certainly an untraditional fighting game, taking more from something like Virtual On rather than Street Fighter, it's a very competent one. While the sheer amount of text will likely keep any non-Japanese speaker thoroughly confused and unable to play the story mode, the arcade mode can still be enjoyed to a point even if you don't know Japanese. It's certainly navigable with the use of a guide, and it's a cheap import worth checking out if you're a fan of fighting games and neat N64 stuff.