Gundam Battle Assault

After the oft-rumored, but never-delivered Gundam Battle Master games passed us by, the chances looked slim that Bandai would ever bring an installment of the series to the States. At last Gundam Battle Assault, the newest of the series, is set to arrive in winter 2001. Lacing the Gundam Wing story line into the game, you select from one of nine initial mechs and take it through its paces. The animation in the Battle Masters games has always been super-fluid since the robots are made up of a marionette-like set of pieces that animate individually (instead of the usual Street Fighterlike cell animation). The gameplay is better-suited to button-mashing than finesse, but Gundam fans will probably be happy just seeing one of these games make it to America.