It’s Time For A New Custom Robo From Nintendo

When I was a kid, I had a few birthdays where my mom pulled me out of school, took me to the mall 🅘45 minutes from our small town, and handed me a crisp $100 bill. One year, I remember picking up a boxed set that included all three seasons of the ‘70s adventure series The Land of the Lost and the Robin Williams political comedy (which bizarrely morphs into a political thriller in the final act) Man of the Year. But the best hauls tended to be video g🉐ames.

A. King's Ransom

At the time, you could get a GameCube game for $50🍸 or less and a handheld game for under $35, so if I mixed and matched correctly, I could get two, three, even four games for one Benjamin. I don’t have strong m🥂emories of most of the games I got this way, but Custom Robo is an exception.

For some reason, my mom claims t꧙hat these ওbirthday trips never happened. Her memories may have faded, but Custom Robo is forever.

The game I played on GameCube was called Custom Robo: Battle Revolution in Japan, but came to North America as Custom Robo. That's because, though it was the fourth game in the series, it was the first to get a release outside of Japan.

Part RPG, part frantic arena battler, Custom Robo was unlike anything I'd ever played. Though the presentation outside of fights reminded me of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:GameCube’s Pokemon games, Custom Robo’s kinetic battles were a shock to ღmy 10-year-old system.

I mention Pokemon because that was my primary experience with R�ꦯ�PGs at that time in my life.

Around the same time I was dabbling with tactical RPGs like Shining Force and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and putting a decent amount of time into action RPGs like Tales of Symphonia and Final 💮Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. But Custom Robo had a lot more depth than either of those action RPGs, while being significantly more bombastic than t🐼he tactical RPGs I loved.

Build Your Own Bot

The depth came from the sheer amount of customization possible for your robot's build. Each was broken down into five parts: body, gun (on one arm), bomb (on the other), pod (a back-mounted weapon), and legs. As you played you acquired new parts to equip. I remember having a gun that looked like a dragon that sent missiles flying around the battlefield. But I also had a Gatling gun that let me merk all the other robos.

Two Robots Fight In Custom Robo V2

Two Robos battling by a crate and a wall

As cool as Custom Robo was, there hasn’t been a new game released since 2006 (in Japan) and 2007 (in the rest of the world), when developer Noise launched Custom Robo Arena for the Nintendo DS. Noise still exisꦏtꦕs, but has only worked on mobile games since 2013.

That’s a shame because a new Custom Robo could fit in pretty seamlessly to the current gaming landscape. Though the original confined its fights to small arenas, the game could work on a larger scale, too. You could do a pretty great battle royale with Custom Robo, littering the broader landscape with a bunch of small bespoke arenas. You could also resurrect it as an asymmetrical multiplayer game, with a team of smaller robos taking on one giant mech. If you wanted to go the single-player route, a roguelike in the vein of Hades could work. And, you know what? People still love RPGs, and there’s no reason Nintendo couldn&rsqu🎃o;t bring it back in a more traditio🌊nal format.

Of course, all that customizability would make the series ripꦇe for gacha nonsense or microtransactions exploitation. But I prefer to think that a new Custom Robo would be pure, like the delight I got from bringing it home on my birthday 20 years ago.