Title: Xardion (NA) Choukou Gokami Xardion (trans. Super Attack God Xardion)
Developer: Jorudan
Publisher: Asmik
Release Date: 3/20/1992
This seems to be an interesting entry. I have heard of it before, and seen the box on display when I was a kid at the local Video Tonight store, but have never played it or really know what Xardion is even about. I don't even know what sort of game it is. It definitely seems to be another giant robot/mech game (a common genre at this point), so let's jump in.
Background
Jorudan is a Tokyo based developer that existed from the 90's all the way through the late 2000's. I really don't recognize too much in their development history, other than the yokai-styled Castlevania rip-off Musya. Other than that, they entries all seem to be esoteric Japanese titles and little heard of licensed games (Yogi Bear: Great Balloon Burst anyone?).
The publisher, Asmik, we have heard from before with the god awful D-Force, the game I loved to hate (that's the game where you fought the dinosaur with no teeth and blew off its head, remember?).
The story is oddly intricate for a SNES game from 1992. In a galaxy that is not our own, three planets are embroiled in a war with an artificial planet. This artificial planet was created by a mad scientist to be the first world that "could not die." This turned out to be a mistake, as the creatures on this planet quickly evolved and started killing all the human life. The mad scientist, dying, ordered the computers on the planet to protect his daughter and kill all invaders to the planet. The computers took this too far and started to invade the nearby planets to preemptively "defend" the scientist's daughter. The daughter, it turns out, has already been killed, so the machines, instead, protect and defend a hologram of the daughter. The other three planets, in response, send three champions, each in their own spacecraft that can transform into mechs, to combat the creatures from this artificial planet. One of the mechs encounters trouble, and the three champions decide to work together and combine into a composite mech, a la Voltron. Like I said, weird.
Gameplay
The game operates as a run and gun game. You have several different forms of the composite robot that the three ships can form: one of them is a traditional Gundam-style humanoid mech, the other is a beast/human form hybrid with a whip like tale, and the third is a dog like robot that can fit into small spaces. Each form corresponds to which of the pilots is in control of the mech: Triton is the humanoid, Alcedes is the hybrid, and Panthera is the quadruped animal. Later in the game, your receive another form, the titular Xardion, who is the "ultimate" war-mech. Each form has their own lifebar, so it does behoove the player to switch between them often; as well, each form can also level up on its own and gain more life and attack power if they rack up more kills. Each level has paths that are gated depending on the robot you use, and then each level ends with an end boss. Overall, pretty standard stuff!
There is no real penalty for death except for starting the level over. You keep all your experience and progress, so you start the level again more ready to tackle the challenges. This does open up the game to a fair bit of grinding, but it was never too much of a grind. All told, you can work your way to the end of the game in about an hour.
The visual design of the game is really stellar. The enemies have this weird bio-mechanical aesthetic, and many of your foes are delightfully twisted and creepy in their design. A standout for me is a boss where it is a wall of faces, and each face is really well drawn and very emotive. You have a child face, an adult male face, an old lady face, etc. It gives you this impression that the people of this colony/man-made planet were forcibly turned into this monstrosity by the mad computers on this planet. Many of the environments, as well, look really cool and no level feels quite like another.
While the visual design of the game is great, the animation of the characters and enemies is really piss-poor. The first boss, for example, I think uses three frames of animation total? It moves in a really herky-jerky way which is not very pleasing aesthetically. This is the same with your main character, who is a BIT more animated but really not by much. You move so stiffly and awkwardly and it really makes the game hard to enjoy.
The writing is a little stilted and weird, but I do applaud it for its ambition of being a story-driven action game. I think the funniest thing is that during the first mission, you rescue one of the pilots as it is in the clutches of the first boss, Arms. After you free your comrade, mission control tells you to "hunt Arms down and destroy him...but even if you destroy him, he may come back later" which is a really weird explanation by the developers as to why they re-purpose the boss. I mean, the developers are definitely ahead of the curve as they realized that reusing bosses can be annoying for the player, but really it was a staple of the times to reuse assets. Heck, games today even reuse and reskin assets; it just makes good game development sense.
The game is also just too slow. The enemies move slow, you move slow, everything takes way too much time. It is a game that is just crippled by too much slowdown and a lack of energy. As well, some of the bosses have way too much health, making these battles slow slogs too. A separate annoyance is that many bosses have practically unavoidable attacks. If your sprite was a tiny bit smaller, this wouldn't be an issue, but instead you are a giant slow-moving robot who can't avoid much at all.
For a game based on swapping between armors, I really only used the main armor and, towards the end of the game, Xardion. I would only use the other armors if I was running out of life with Triton. The reason for this is that Triton can fire both straight ahead and up, which gives him a lot more utility than the other two. Alcede can only fire straight ahead (though he can hit harder), and Panthera somehow has more limited movement and can only attack at close range. 
Music
Ads, Art, Commercials
Final Verdict
It is one of those games where I hope a modder comes along and improves the game to make it more playable, because right now it just feels like a slog. It looks great, plays terribly. Overall, skip this one guys; watch it on youtube if you are curious.
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