To launch a special attack, it needs to pose. That is an unavoidable requirement of robotics engineering.

I wonder how my feelings towards this and Robot Alchemic Drive would be if I played them in the order that they were released in. In many ways Remote Control Dandy feels like a first draft of R.A.D. A lot of the same ideas are explored. Similar character archetypes, reused scenarios, even a similar selection of maps for the areas that make up Torino and Senjo: The new downtown area, the old city centre, the docks, the power plant on the mountain. Both even have a map of Shinjuku for a mission where you have to defend the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. I definitely feel like a second go at this both lead to a more interesting and compelling story in R.A.D. as well as just a more fun experience. Mechanics that were a small part of R.C.D. get a bigger focus in R.A.D. while a lot of the other concerns fade into the background.

Conversely, while R.A.D. feels like a second draft it actually feels less polished. R.A.D.’s story is more interesting but also less coherent and I don’t think that all of that can be blamed on the rushed (but charming) localisation. In R.C.D.’s favour is that it looks a lot better for a Playstation game than R.A.D. does for a Playstation 2 game. Partly that is aesthetic choices. R.A.D.’s muted palette, Playstation 2 blur and general griminess aren’t doing it many favours, but while it boasts bigger maps and longer draw distances there is a conspicuous lack of damage models for buildings and other details that make Senjo feel a bit more sterile compared to R.C.D.’s Torino. Animated character portraits, a more visual novel-style intermission section and a much fancier and seamless robot selection and launch screen also just make seem like more time and care was allowed in this game than was for R.A.D.

There is also some more detailed simulationist aspects to R.C.D. that are dropped in its successor. Both games have monetary system to incentivise keeping property destruction down but R.A.D.’s is much more forgiving, simply giving you a base amount of money per mission and then bonuses for protecting key buildings and minimising damage. R.C.D. on the other hand (and somewhat more logically) gives you a larger upfront amount but penalises you for all damage done to the city over the course of your giant robot fights. You can, in fact, lose money on a given mission. The robots available to you even cost variable amounts to send into battle. Do you use the cheap, steam-powered robot that doesn’t have big fancy attacks, or do you send your expensive nuclear-powered model? You can go bankrupt if you spend everything and and smash up the city too much. You can also cause so much property destruction that the populace turns against you. In the second game this has largely been simplified away. R.C.D. has more intricacies here, and that can definitely be appealing, but in the end R.A.D.’s more lackadaisical approach lets one have a lot more fun driving a big stompy robot smashing through buildings without the looming risks of bankruptcy hanging over one’s head (though one is given more second chances than the game initially lets on).

And it’s interesting to see other elements that are somewhat vestigial in R.A.D. having more of a presence here. In both games police cars drive around the city while you do battle. In R.C.D. you have to pay the cost of them if they get destroyed but you are assured that they are automated patrol cars there only to detect and deter people from coming back into the evacuated city to steal while everyone is missing. You definitely aren’t killing anyone so don’t worry about it. The manual for R.A.D. keeps this explanation that the patrol cars are automated drones despite the fact that R.A.D. is more than happy to let you casually crush and mow down crowds of people as they spray comically large clouds of blood. You are not penalised for it at all; it is simply part of the slapstick. Yet it still keeps the excuse that the cars are automated, despite it not serving any purpose.

But for all R.A.D. can feel like a rushed copy of this game, it’s still fundamentally the more fun one. R.C.D. is great in its own right but it feels lacking compared R.A.D.’s analogue stick controls, more engaging mech fights and more fun cast. The battle mode in R.C.D. is also disappointing. While it does allow for playing against computer-controlled opponents it simply gives both players direct control over their robots from a birds-eye view, removing the core dynamic of having to deal with playing as a pilot operating from a ground level.

To end on a compliment, though, Remote Control Dandy’s final boss is much cooler than and has some more interesting unique gameplay tricks than Robot Alchemic Drive’s. Evidently the developers thought that they hit a winner there too, as one of the unique aspects of R.C.D.’s final boss ended up being promoted to a core gameplay mechanic in R.A.D.

Also the fact that you can combine Vordan’s tornado arms and remote control rocket fist is extremely funny.

A demo for a cancelled tie-in game for a T.V. show that got reworked into Robot Alchemic Drive. Very interesting to compare it to the final game. The first thing that jumps out is that the map seems much more detailed here than any in R.A.D. It makes me wonder what kind of budget and time constraints R.A.D. had during its development. That said, R.A.D. also features extensive use of picture-in-picture effects and panicking crowds running around in the story mode as well a split-screen multiplayer option which might have put some more strict resource constraints on its maps than the largely static Tokyo of this demo. The only things moving around are the player character, their robot, the big watermelon kaiju and the buildings that you are smashing apart as you fight it.

Some of the assets from this demo seem to have been reused for the intro cutscene of the third level in R.A.D., both of which take place around Tokyo Tower, though when the level proper starts in the final game you are actually in a completely different map based on a different part of Tokyo featuring the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. The layouts of the maps in this demo and the cutscene in R.A.D. don’t match up so they didn’t just reuse the same map, but some of the buildings appear to us the same models.

Both demo and final game do not feature a pause menu; the select button in both switching between pilot and robot and the start button showing control reminders in the demo and a map screen in the final game, but in the demo’s free-roam mode a message at the top of the screen informs the player that pressing select and start together will quit back to the menu. This feature is still functional in the challenge and versus modes in R.A.D. but as far as I can tell not documented anywhere in the game or its manual¹.

The watermelon monster is taken from the first episode of Tekkōki Mikazuki it’s just a very fun design. The conceit of controlling the robot from the ground is not from the show, though, and is taken from Remote Control Dandy, a game that Robot Alchemic Drive is very clearly a spiritual successor to, reusing and reworking many of the same concepts. The robot controls in this demo, though, are very simplified, using something like the “easy” control option from R.A.D. for moving Mikazuki and without the different array of attack options present in either game. Perhaps the developers only had working or wanted only to present a basic, less complex version of the control scheme than they had in mind for the full game, but the end result in this demo lacks the clunky, expressive charm of R.A.D. or its predecessor.

The third mission of Robot Alchemic Drive starts with a news broadcast about Tokyo being under attack. You see some in-engine footage of this in a map with Tokyo Tower. When you start the level it’s actually in a completely different map that features the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. The map with Tokyo Tower is never used for gameplay.

Robot Alchemic Drive was build on top of a cancelled game based on Tekkōki Mikazuki. There was a demo for that game released and it features a map that includes Tokyo Tower and some of the same temple buildings visible in the R.A.D. cutscene, though the layout of the two maps don’t match.

The text visible on top of the screen in the Tekkōki Mikazuki demo says that you can press the start and select buttons together to quit back to the menu. I don’t think this is documented anywhere in the English version of Robot Alchemic Drive or its manual but this command still works in the challenge and versus modes of that game (though not the story mode).

huh apparently Robot Alchemic Drive started as a licensed game for a tokusatsu show that ended up being cancelled after six episodes so there was only ever a demo of the game released

I knew it was a spiritual successor to Remote Control Dandy but not this

I really love a game that is deliberate in its controls. That doesn’t try to make everything as smooth as possible. That has a sense of physicality and realness to it. System Shock’s modular, maximalist U.I., Metal Gear Solid 2’s intricate and deliberate controls, the process of discovering and operating your submersible walker in Nauticrawl. I love a game that feels like operating heavy machinery and there is no machinery heavier than Gllang.

Robot Alchemic Drive has such a wonderful conceit. You are piloting a giant robot—a meganite—against giant invading alien kaiju robots—the volgara. You must swap between controlling the pilot and the meganite, but the perspective and camera always stays with the pilot. You are watching from ground level, or from a rooftop, or from the shoulder of your robot, and it’s rarely a simple or smooth process. Judging the distance, the angle, how to aim or throw a punch from a distance. The controls aren’t simple either. Each analogue stick controls an arm, and each pair of shoulder buttons the legs. Just to walk forward you need to alternate L1 and R1 to take each individual step. I’ve wanted to play it ever since watching Videochess playing it a few years ago and the more recent surge in Nanao-posting finally pushed me to jump in myself.

And it’s just a blast to play. It can be a bit repetitive but you do get three meganites to play with if you want to shake it up. I did mostly stick with Thrones-class Gllang the Castlekeep, because if it’s it a game about being a big, stompy robot why would you not want to be the biggest, stompiest robot? Gllang is slow but loaded up with weapons and you can eventually unlock the ability to unload every gun it has at once, which makes for a very satisfying finishing move. He can also transform into fortress mode, a surprisingly fast and slippery tank the width of an entire motorway to compensate for how slow his walk is. On the fast and light side there’s Cherubim-class Airborne Dominator Laguiole who can turn into a V-TOL jet and Seraphim-class Vertical Fortress Vavel as the middle of the road bland main character robot who can’t transform into anything but has a super mode that gives you a time limit of three minutes to finish the mission within or else he’ll explode (though if you pick Gllang or Laguiole at the start they will also get a similar super mode late in the story).

The game is a bit repetitive, throwing you into fight after fight, but it tries to throw in different twists on the formula either as a once-off or in little mini-arcs that explore a particular idea for a few missions. You will have to deal with poison gas, putting out fires, various twists on the enemy units’ Phantom System teleporter that allows them to dodge all ranged attacks until they are on low health, and a various other things. None of these ever really get integrated back into the gameplay in a more systematic way. The meganites can pick things up but it’s only useful in one or two missions (though there is some fun to be had in experimenting with picking yourself up).

There are also missions that focus more on the protagonist’s relationships with various characters, most importantly Nanao, who is a perfect angel who no one is ever allowed to be mean to except for me when I keep “accidentally” blowing up the buildings she works in. Amusingly blowing up various buildings is one of the main drivers of character interactions. Masaru, the stuck-up heir to an arms manufacturing conglomerate, gets more and more character development the more you repeatedly blow up his company’s headquarters. The general campiness, which extends to the gameplay itself, is also enhanced by the localisation, which is charmingly low budget and aiming for the energy of old cheezy dubs of Gamera and Godzilla movies (though they could have left out the bad Japanese accent that they give to the news reporter and no one else). The story does go in some darker directions at times and it put my slightly in mind of Neon Genesis Evangelion but where Gendo died and they just put Shinji in charge (but still did not tell him anything).

It does feel like there was more ambition here than was able to be filled, with dramatic and especially the more dream-like sequences struggling to convey themselves with the game’s fairly simple cutscenes and descriptions of the situation in the city of Senjo and Earth in general getting worse and worse as the war wages on being undercut by every map being completely reset whenever the next mission starts.

There is also a multiplayer mode that is both a little barebones but shocklingly generous with how much it offers. You choose a map and then each player chooses a pilot and a robot to control and then it dumps you in a splitscreen match. First person to have the health par of either the robot or the pilot deplete loses. But it doesn’t just offer the three megatnites; every volgara that you defeat in the story mode gets added to the roster and every map from the story mode is there with all their moves from the story mode. Even the Rome map that only appears in the opening cutscene of the story is here and fully playable, modelled well beyond what was needed for the intro. And with no time limit, no scorekeeping and a match only ending when something dies it leaves it very open to different strategies or even just being a toybox to make up your own game. You can focus on the other player’s robot or their pilot. The robots are giant, slow, targets, but the pilots are small and have a hard time defending themselves directly. You can ride on your robot to not have two targets, but it’s quite easy to get knocked off and find yourself in a very vulnerable position. You can agree to have an honourable robot fight and not attack each other’s pilots or you can forego the robots entirely and just chase each other with grenades. Myself and Ruby had a blast just messing around with it in various ways. We had a match where we tried to pick up each other’s pilots with our robots, first person to get grabbed loses. After that was resolved we just both rode around on her Gllang together in tank mode blowing up Rome.

And it’s also just a game that sets me off imagining how I would tweak it. What would I try to make if I made something like this? Could contextual or once-off mechanics be made more systemically useful or interesting? I think some way to control the pilot and robot at once would be cool; maybe the D-pad can always control the pilot while the analogue sticks and shoulder buttons are reserved for the robot? Or a two-controller mode where one controls the pilot and the other the robot? I just want more of this, different iterations of it. I am already eyeing up the fan translations of Remote Control Dandy and Marionation Gear.

Miscellaneous observations:

• There is only one walkthrough for the game on Game F.A.Q.s and the author hates both Gllang and Nanao. They have not been vindicated by history.
• In the famous bread and water soup mission the protagonist complains that 7-Eleven charge too much for vegetables and it’s cheaper to get them at the greengrocer when the smallest unit of currency you work with while upgrading your giant fuck-off robots is ¥500,000,000.
• As well as the hammy acting often being funny there’s a few great deadpan bits that really got me. In an early missions one of the people in mission control tells you to explore the city and familiarise yourself with the area while you wait for the meganite to launch. When the call back a minute later to ask if you’ve gotten familiar with the city the protagonist just responds “Well, yes. I live here.”
• The cutscenes aren’t skipable but holding down the start button fast forwards them which is very funny to watch.
• It’s one of those games with a choice of protagonists where they do not change the script very much if you pick the female hero so her and the love interests just become lesbians, which is great.

cartoony video game sprays of blood, people being run over by a car

was flicking through a Youtube playlist for a specific Robot Alchemic Drive cutscene and caught his one of Ellen telling Yui to be careful during a an evacuation training exercise while cops run people over in the background

girls night

I don’t watch game streamers much but one of the few who I have enjoyed a lot is Videochess (a.k.a. Chess). She doesn’t stream regularly at the moment but she has wonderful chaotic energy and a propensity for “crimes”, a term she uses for playfully exploring the mechanics of and pushing at the boundaries of games and seeing what is possible if one strays from the designated path. This can manifest as things like impromptu sequence breaking but not for the purposes of speedrunning or anything like that, just to see where it goes and tease out the foibles of a game. And sometimes she does things like collecting every star in Super Mario 64 while playing the game with a DJ Hero controller.

There are two main places to find her videos, her own Youtube channel that has her streams up until 2022 and another unofficial but endorsed channel that has archived more recent streams. One of her most popular series is an Ocarina of Time randomiser with GGDG but below I will share some of her videos that have had the largest influence on me.

Snolf

Her truly Sisyphean streams of Melon’s Snolf hacks inspired me to make my own Snolf Robo Blast 2 mod for Sonic Robo Blast 2 as well as a chat control mod that Chess ended up playing herself.

Discovering new games

I have also learnt about games and mods that I have since played or are now on my (long) list of things I want to get around to.

Robot Alchemic Drive I still have not gotten around to playing but seems fascinating. I love games with weird controls and especially when there is a diegetic basis for them. Having to remote control a giant robot from the perspective of someone on the ground who has to watch it from a distance rather than getting a camera from the perspective of the robot itself or even a cockpit is an incredible concept. You may be familiar with the game from clips that get shared online showcasing the best value greengrocer or Nanao having a miserable time.

I had only vaguely heard of Cave Story before watching her play “Cave Story Normal Regular”¹, i.e. Sonic Story, a mod that replaces the main character of the game, Quote, with Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, I know this is a massively important and influential game. No, I never bothered looking into it at all despite having had the Steam version in my library for years from some Humble Bundle or another. I have played both Cave Story and Sonic Story since and I can attest that Sonic Story perfectly replicates the feeling of how Mega Drive Sonic games control. It’s not just a reskin it is is playing as Sonic the Hedgehog in the wrong game in a way that is wonderful and silly.

For the opposite she has played Mario put into a Sonic game with the SM64 Generations mod, which uses libsm64. She has also played some other games using libsm64 as well as other regular normal Mario 64 mods.

Willy Wombat

I also became obsessed with Willy Wombat for a while after watching her play it. It is a fascinating, experimental 3D platformer with an isomorphic perspective with maps that have the same limitations as a Doom level: There are no slopes and not only are there no floating platforms but it’s impossible to have a floating platform in this game. Like Doom the levels are defined by floor sectors with designated heights. There are pillars and walls that rise out of the ground for vertically, but you can never go under anything. It leads to some unique level design, especially as the game progresses to areas were the developers had clearly gotten much more comfortable with their tools. The only thing I can think of that is similar (though lacking the top-down perspective) is older versions of Sonic Robo Blast 2 and that is literally a fork of Doom.

It’s also one of those bygone ’90s games that is fully voiced in English with a script penned and directed by a Japanese crew, giving it a surreal quality that is aided by a post-apocalyptic setting with jarring name choices and very little up-front exposition. Above is a fan animation I adore of a cutscene of Notes and Mail talking about “the peace and eternal life of Prison.”

I have a page on this website dedicated to my cat Easóg where you can see a video of her trying to kill Willy while I am watching Chess play the game and mushroom32x made a fun little Neocities webpage for the game’s 20th anniversary.

There’s plenty more

That’s enough for now. If you want to watch more check out the official and unofficial Youtube channels to dig through yourself.