Front Mission

Front Mission was originally release for the SNES exclusively in Japan, but was ported to the Nintendo DS and translated in 2007.

Front mission is a tactical trun based strategy game, not unlike Fire Emblem. The camera is angled towards a grid based map where characters are placed. Each round plays out beginning with the player acting first, followed by the opponent. Players move all of their characters in their turn. When characters engage in combat, the game shifts to another screen. Players choose the weapon they wish to use or the action to take if on defense. Then, in turn, each wanzer will take their action. Each waner has 4 health bars, two small bars for each arm, and two large bars, one for the body, and one for the legs. If an arm is destroyed, whatever the wanzer was carrying in that arm becomes unusable. If the legs are destroyed, the wanzer's movement is greatly limited. Finally, if the body is destroyed, the wanzer becomes inoperable.

In between combat, players can customize their wanzers. The game's stores offer a variety of wanzer parts to beef up your robots. There are a variety of weapons, bodies, legs, CPUs, and other items with which to customize. Each wanzer is limited by the supply of power it has, and it's weight. You cannot overload a wanzer with too many weapons, as it will surpass the allowed power. There are upgrades to power, but it is never unlimited. There is a variety of  weapons in the game, short, medium, and long range. Wanzers can simply punch with their arms, use advanced melee weapons, shotguns, flamethrowers, machine guns, rifles, and the long range missles. Each arm can carry one weapon, and a long range weapon or a shield can be place on the shoulder. There are also a number of options for your wanzer's legs and movement. The most common options are legs, but wheels and treads are also available.

Missions in the game are varied from taking out all opponents, certain opponents, escort missions, defense missions, and more.

Lost in Translation

There are translation issues with this game. The crew of Pilots the player controls are called either the 'Carrion Crow' or the 'Canyon Crows' depending on the version of the game played.

 Furthermore, there is confusion over the name of the lead character in the OCU storyline. Although in most circumstances he is referred to as 'Royd' or 'Roid', his name is in fact Lloyd, and the transliteration to Roid is merely an example of the syndrome known as 'engrish'. This is further backed by the positions (a): Lloyd is a real first name used in the west, Royd is not, (b): Square would not intentionally name their lead character after a slang abbreviation of the word hemorrhoid. [would they?]