i couldn’t find a dedicated mecha thread (apart from this maybe, which is cool but not quite what i’m after) so…
i have kind of a weird complicated relationship with mecha, both because i feel like giant robots are often just an extension of military fetishism (and nowadays, increasingly too close to reality), but also because i think most mecha designs suck shit!
to be clear: this isn’t just a case of japan > “the west” re: robot design; i think gundam is like mostly pretty boring too. i’m tired of mecha that’s just A Big Guy In Armor, like come on we can do better.
i love the 5 star stories mechs (prominently featured in the above thread) and all the designs in dragon’s heaven, but most other mech media leaves me disappointed, maybe videogames most of all. EDF is still the only game i’ve played where the heft of the mechs felt right (and the awkward controls are a perfect fit).
i’ve also wanted to make a mech game for ages, and i’ve done loads of drawing and writing, and even made a little demo, all to better understand my own taste.
anyway please post all mecha media here: movies, images, videogames, cross-post from the lego thread, whatever. i’ll start with what compelled me to make this thread in the first place:
i read through magic knight rayearth last week and had a really good time. i love how sparingly/late it uses its mech stuff but the art is astounding when it does.
i found the pacing a bit awkward at times - especially with how generic some of the opening isekai stuff feels in 2025 but im looking forward to watching the show soon. i think that stuff might land better there.
yeah they count as heck, but for the most part ur still buzzin around like a lil skeeter in that game. that being said, i think armored core does a good job communicating the effort required to push your mech around at those speeds, and the inertia that incurs.
i was going to assert in my first post that there are basically no good mech games on steam but i wanted to make sure, so i searched through the tag and damn it’s fuckn bleak out here.
the first suggestion was fuckn horizon zero dawn and like fuck off man. anyway whatever.
obvs there’s ACVI:FoR, EDF6 (one day i’ll get around to you my love), titanfall 2 (which i literally just bought the other day cos it’s $4 rn), a whole bunch of gundam bunk (why is every gundam game the same (and bad!)), and a million shumps.
then there’s all the mech warrior games, which have extraordinarily high production values combined with mech design that puts me straight to sleep. they’re like the absolute epitome of american mecha design sensibilities, where there are only two shapes: Just A Guy (head optional), and featherless biped (with the backwards-hinging legs). it’s a shame cos i actually really like their kinaesthetics (even though i think lasers suck).
then there’s that forever winter game, which i am side-eyeing cos it’s an extraction shooter but i actually think it makes good aesthetic and kinaesthetic choices and i would probably have a good time with it. its mech designs follow that like, , , idk eastern european(?) sensibility (it’s probably a worthwhile project to actually identify regional design trends rather than making these sweeping guesses). they’re all spindly and horrible, lots of bugs and drones and cables and so on. they’re cool! i especially like how often cloth and other soft materials are incorporated to alter their silhouettes. the game itself isn’t about being a mech tho, it’s just a thirps, so.
(why is teleshrug so big on desktop)
ok i looked through a million other games and they fall into basically one of two categories:
terminally european strategy game with zero art.
anime girl.
anyway what i should actually do is go through all the entrants for the itch mecha jams cos there’s 5 of them now and i bet there’s like at least one good entry in each (i liked armored shell nightjar from the latest one).
yeah the tachikomas! they’re such a great approach to the one-man mech problem. i love a robot with pedipalps.
also the psx ghost in the shell game is great! cop this hilarious image from the booklet:
Big fan of the O.G. Macross, mainly for trying to keep it somewhat “realistic”. While it is military fetishism, I’m a fan of how the mecha legs are used outside of the bipedal form as way to move the thruster around, to come to a full stop in space.
They tend to not use the bipedal form unless they’re on a planet with gravity or on the hull of a ship, at a full stop. I like that there’s some thought given to the utility:
(1:52)
Another one I love is kind of cheating because we don’t know if it is a mech/tank or if it’s just an autonomous robot, but my headcannon is that there is the flopping skeleton corpse of a soldier inside this thing:
Really dig the purely utilitarian design that lets it keep righting itself and move across weird uneven terrain (and the mosquito face rocks).
trying to decide if i’m excited about this cos visually it’s fucking tremendous but the mecha movement and gunplay is like weirdly slippery? idk i trust that they’re making deliberate choices, they’re just not the choices i would make.
wow i’d never heard of the kileaks. they look like shit! great 90s-era gc tho. i love a mech that’s just a weird round guy. also makes me think about robotica aka robotica cybernation revolt aka deadalus which also looks not fun to play but has some of the best horrible lumpy mecha:
Kileak was the game I got when I bought my Playstation on launch week and the opening cinematic was so rad and the game sucked so hard and I refused to believe it