One of the most fantasised pieces of hardware over the last three decades has been the concept of piloting a mecha. This week, Frag Reel Friday takes a look at the history of the mecha in video games.

What's not to like about mechas; big, hulking robotic suits of armour that weigh hundreds of tonnes with enormous weapons that can level cities and flatten the horizon?

Nothing, of course. The sci-fi nature of mechs have made them a perfect tool for developers over the last three decades, who have featured the giant exoskeletons since the days of the arcades and early iterations of the PC.

While some might remember the side-scrolling and top-down shooters of old, the most recognisable franchises from the early eras were the Gundam games, which were based on the Japanese anime series of the time, and the BattleTech and MechWarrior series, the latter of which continues till this day.

It's worth pointing out that while many of the Gundam games were never released outside of Japan, they helped generate the interest that eventually led to the genre branching out in the West.

As the 90s wore on, more and more Western developers tried their hand at the genre with varying degrees of success. Looking Glass's Terranova was critically acclaimed by a lot of publications, but turned out to be a complete flop among the public. Starsiege and the Heavy Gear series had much more success, while games like Earthsiege took the model adopted by MechWarrior and continued to refine it. Console gamers weren't ignored either, with the iconic Armored Core franchise building up a strong following of its own on the PlayStation.

As the consoles and PCs became more powerful, so did the scope of the games. The release of the Dreamcast gave the Gundam games a platform to launch into the Western market, while SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division blended mechas into a traditional first-person shooter.





One of the most memorable games of the mecha genre was released for the original Xbox in 2002. Steel Battalion became infamous thanks to its price tag; you paid $200 not only for the game, but for an enormous control set that included two separate joysticks, a main control portal and a set of pedals.

While things began to calm down towards the middle of the 00s, interest in mecha games is beginning to spark up again thanks to the beta release of MechWarrior Online and the upcoming release of the independently-developed Hawken.

With the advancements in computing and console power, mechas can be even bigger and more powerful than before, while the worlds around them can be infinitely more complex and far more sprawling.

Of course those of you with a long memory might be thinking - hang on a second, haven't you missed something?

Well before the BattleTech and Gundam games began flooding Japan and the Western markets, there was one little game that many consider the progeny of the entire genre - Battlezone.

Published by Atari in 1980, this golden vector-graphics oldie might not have been representative of what people today would traditionally think as mecha, but it laid the groundwork by establishing battles against tanks only in a non-historical setting.

Activision would re-expand on Battlezone in the late 90s, converting the black-and-green classic into a Cold War classic set in space that became a highly successful FPS-RTS hybrid that, along with its sequel, still remains one of the most unusual games to this day.

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.