Retro Friday #8 | Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness

We have made it to another Friday, congratulations everybody!

A few weeks ago, during the Zero Divide highlight, I promised to showcase another fighting game based on big robots that aged quite a bit better, so it's time for exactly that.

In 1994, Capcom released Armored Warriors, a fantastic (and very overlooked) beat-em-up, where you were piloting one of several mechs while carving and shooting your way through hundreds of similarly armored opponents.

Just a year later, Armored Warriors received a spin-off fighting game in the form of Cyberbots, receiving the "Full Metal Madness" subtitle when releasing outside of Japan.

Since it was an arcade title, we're not looking at too many features here. You're basically just limited to versus, or arcade story mode, which admittedly had slightly more effort put into it than some of its contemporaries.

You only have 6 (technically 7) meat bags to choose from, and each of them has their own story to them that develops through intermission dialogues with your opponents, until you eventually find the boss and see your character's ending.

Even though I said that there were only 6 characters, in reality, you effectively have 12 fighters due to the gimmick of this game. Picking your character is effectively meaningless, the only thing that matters iw which machine you pilot, and there are 4 different groups with three mechs in each.

Those groups are also meaningless for gameplay, but hey, more flavor.

This is also one of those few Capcom fighters that didn't utilize the usual Capcom control scheme of punches and kicks with 3 different strengths each. Instead you have something more similar to a beat-em-up, with two attack buttons, a weapon button, and a boost button. A simple 4 button fighter.

I'd love to say something like "but despite this simplicity," and lead into something about how Cyberbots is super deep, but it really isn't. It doesn't try to be, and it's something that the game was often criticized for. While Street Fighter was evolving and becoming increasingly more complex, Cyberbots offered a fairly simple game with not much going on in terms of special moves and combos.

A lot of the time, you're simply chaining your weapons with special moves, or trying to land follow-ups just in time before some of your bigger attacks. This might sound pretty lame so people who like mastering long sequences, or excessively labbing all the possible routes that they can take depending on their resources, positioning, and goals.

On the upside, it's super easy to get into, and makes the fights feel like a proper brawl between two massive robots.

Much like our previous robot game, Zero Divide, Cyberbots absolutely nails the feeling of two robots smashing the crap out of each other. They feel heavy, they have momentum, but they also have an immense amount of power that is needed to destroy other machines like it.

Cyberbots had the luxury of reusing some of the assets from its predecessor beat-em-up, and perhaps that allowed the developers to add some other nice touches despite seemingly short development. The designs are stellar, and some feel like they borrow from classic mecha shows of the time. Obviously Gundam is one of them, but I also sense some influence from Votoms and even M.D. Geist with Warlock.

Stages are somehow even better. There are a few that I don't have strong feelings for, but the good ones are fantastic and completely sell you on the feeling that you're a massive mech. There's a stage where you fight on the broken spaceship, with a larger battle going on behind you. There is an underwater stage where the second round has you plummeting to the seafloor with some sunken city in the background. Obviously there is a space colony stage as well, you can even see people riding around in their little cars.

Two are my absolute favorites. One stage has you fall towards the Earth, with both you, your opponent, and the shipwreck you're standing on heating up as you break into the atmosphere. The other one has you fight near some sort of plane that looks large enough to carry mechs. You can break off the wing of it and watch the thing collapse, and for the next round it turns into a gorgeous inferno with smoke going everywhere. They really didn't skimp out on the art in this game.

Unfortunately, I don't have as many positive things to say about the soundtrack. It just sounds like some of the most generic 90s VGM out there. Cheap synth guitars, dull and repetitive drum beats, and synth rhythms that wouldn't sound new even 25 years ago. Nonetheless, it's almost a tradition to leave you with at least one example of the soundtrack at this point, so I will do exactly that by linking to one of the better pieces of the OST.

Also, as a small note, we have revamped our Patreon quite a bit, and it's not more rewarding for way less money. Special generosity is also rewarded with some impact on our future content, so those who go for the highest tier will be able to pick which game gets to be featured in the future Retro Fridays. Still, following is free, and you can hit us up just to get weekly news highlights, all our major videos, and some important articles.

Bye bye, and have a fantastic weekend!