Super Robot Taisen (Game Boy)

Super Robot Taisen for the Game Boy is the very first game in the ridiculously prolific mecha crossover strategy RPG series.

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

To do: Game Genie codes to make the game use the unfinished versions of the enemy lists.

Unfinished Enemy Lists#

Some of the junk data in unused sections of the ROM appears to be copies of an earlier revision of the per-stage enemy lists, before playtesting and balance tuning were finished.

Something interesting is that in the early enemy lists, all 16 hero robots appear at some point as an enemy, and therefore could be recruited if you didn't pick the team they belong to as your starting team. In the final game, ZZ Gundam and F-91 never appear as enemies; you can only use them if you start as the Gundam team.

Meaning of flags in lists#

• nomove: Does not move from its initial position.

• shoot: Can use ranged attacks (enemies without this flag won't use ranged attacks even if they have a ranged weapon).

• base: Prioritizes recapturing bases over attacking your robots.

• unique: Is replaced with a substitute if the same robot is in your team.

• sub: Is the substitute for the preceding unique robot.

There isn't a flag that designates an enemy as the boss; a "boss" is simply an enemy placed on top of the goal square and flagged not to move, so that you can't finish the stage without defeating it.

Stage 1#

Used: 7B23-7B4D

Unused: There are no unused versions of the stage 1 enemy list in the ROM.

Stage 2#

Used: 7B4E-7B78

Unused: 1FB9D-1FBC7

The unused version of the stage 2 enemy list is identical to the used version.

Stage 3#

Used: 7B79-7BA9

Unused: 1FBC8-1FBF8

The boss of stage 3 was changed from a Baund Doc to a Messala, and the Gratonios was replaced with a fifth Dom. In the final game, Gratonios doesn't appear until stage 10. The AI flags byte for Gratonios has a bit set that no other enemy in any stage uses (either in the unused or used data); its effect (if any) is unknown.

Stage 4#

Used: 7BAA-7BDA

Unused: 1FBF9-1FC2C

ZZ Gundam, one of the 16 hero robots, was originally slated to appear as the boss of stage 4. Because ZZ's ranged weapon only has a range of 3, as an unmoving boss it would have been easy to defeat without taking damage by shooting from outside its range (most ranged weapons in this game have a range of 4). In the final game, none of the heroes ever appears as a boss. Also, the airborne enemies were changed from two Obeliuses and two Bados to four Obeliuses.

Stage 5#

Used: 7BDB-7C10

Unused: 1FC2D-1FC62

The boss's escorts were upgraded from Garada K7s to Sazabis. In a pattern that will repeat in almost every stage from here on, reinforcements in the final game were adjusted to appear earlier but in smaller numbers, presumably to speed up the pace of the game and/or to reduce the likelihood that players would finish stages before the reinforcements appeared and consequently end up under-leveled (unlike later SRW games, the level difference between the player and enemy has no effect on experience earned; in other words, there's no "rubber banding").

Stage 6#

Used: 7C11-7C43

Unused: 7DB7-7DEA (incomplete), BD97-BDAE (incomplete), 1FC63-1FC98

F-91 is the other hero robot that never appears as an enemy in the final game. Unlike ZZ-Gundam, there isn't any obvious reason why it was removed; maybe the developers felt that stage 5 was a good cutoff point for hero appearances, or that being able to recruit a hero that starts at level 7 was too advantageous.

Stage 7#

Used: 7C44-7C70

Unused: 7DEB-7E17, BDAF-BDDB, 1FC99-1FCC5, 1FE07-1FE20 (incomplete)

The grunts were bumped up in level, some enemies' flags were changed to allow them to move, and the reinforcements were upgraded but made to appear later (in a reversal of the usual pattern).

Stage 8#

Used: 7C71-7CA3

Unused: 7E18-7E4A, BDDC-BE0E, 1FCC6-1FCF8, 1FE21-1FE53

Not many changes to this stage, just some level adjustments and the usual changes to reinforcements.

Stage 9#

Used: 7CA4-7CD3

Unused: 7E4B-7E7A, BE0F-BE3E, 1FCF9-1FD28, 1FE54-1FE83

The Sazabi was replaced with a second Elmeth, possibly because Sazabis were made to appear in stage 5 regardless of which team you are.

Stage 10#

Used: 7CD4-7D0C

Unused: 7E7B-7EB3, BE3F-BE77, 1FD29-1FD61, 1FE84-1FEBC

The Gratonioses in the unfinished data have the shoot flag set, but that unit doesn't have any ranged weapons, at least in the final game. This is the second stage where the enemy reinforcements were delayed rather than hastened.

Stage 11#

Used: 7D0D-7D45

Unused: 7EB4-7EEC, BE78-BEB0, 1FD62-1FD9A, 1FEBD-1FEF5

The changes in the final three stages are extensive. In the final data, the shoot flag was accidentally left set for the reinforcements even though The-O doesn't have a ranged weapon.

Stage 12#

Used: 7D46-7D7B

Unused: 7EED-7F22, many other complete and incomplete copies.

Every single unit except the boss was changed in this stage, though most only had their levels or AI flags adjusted. It's interesting how many enemies in the final two stages were stripped of their ability to use ranged attacks.

Stage 13#

Used: 7D7C-7DB1

Unused: 7F23-7F58, many other complete and incomplete copies.

The changes to the final stage are so extensive that I've shifted the columns in order to make the lists easier to compare. The enemy lists don't include map coordinates (those are somewhere else in the ROM) so it isn't clear which enemy in the unfinished version corresponds to which one in the final version. The map coordinates where reinforcements spawn are in the enemy lists, and they're completely different between the unfinished and final data (I've omitted them from the tables because the numbers are meaningless on their own without the maps; I'm not even sure which byte is X and which is Y) so it's possible that the maps themselves were different at the point in development that the unused enemy lists left in the ROM correspond to.