Heavy Metal Thunder is one of those games that reminds me why I even import games at all: Sometimes you ended up with the craziest shit! It’s almost shocking to see that Square Enix actually published this little gem.

In a Nutshell, it’s the future, and you end up getting involved in a tournament for fighting robots, The combat however is the equivalent to a rock-paper-scissors matchn as it’s not real time but menu driven. The only thing this game has going for it really overall is the sheer weirdness factor. I have rarely played a game that was just beyond bizzare that I did not want to put it down, Part of the amusement was in the announcers themselves, one of them happens to be a blender with an orange for a head.

Strangely enough there is a plot, even without a lot of japanese knowledge, it’s easy to keep up with it because between each battle there are fantastic animated cutscenes that are surprisingly top notch involving anything from Executions to evil dolls.

Although the actual gameplay itself is rather shallow, it’s saving grace is the customization you can apply to each robot. As you win matches you gain money which you can apply to parts for your robot, these become critical however, so don’t ignore it!

Part of the best experience however is the Music, the intro is a scream! The opening song is titled “Heavy Metal Thunder”, song by the Sex Machineguns it easily makes it’s way into your heart as a classic.

Although it certainly is not by any means a “great game”, it’s one of those titles that falls very easily into the Category of “cult classic”.

Bottom Line:

Graphics: Aside from the wonderfully done cutscenes and CG work, the actual game graphics fall rather short. The robots overall feel blocky and jagged.

Gameplay: Overall pretty “meh” , the battles seem more rooted into chance than your own devining, luckily the game is short, so by the time you get bored with the gameplay mechanic it’s already ended.

Sound: This title in a while feels more like a glorified music video, so in many ways it’s actually rather a good thing that the soundtrack is actually pretty decent, I still get “Heavy Metal Thunder” stuck in my head.

Import Friendliness: A lot of menu’s to fudge around unless you know what to look for, as a side note you could probably make your way around the game just by being aware of Katakana because there are many words that are very obviously barrowed from english, still, it’s not terribly dificult once you lean the menu’s.