Experience the golden age of anime in pinball form.

Over the past year, I’ve gotten somewhat obsessed with anime. Now, you’ll never hear me utter the words “that's so kawaii,” and I certainly hope I don’t qualify as a weeaboo, but lately a lot of my time has gone to watching Japanese cartoons. Nevertheless, I can’t say the average anime fan would appreciate my tastes, which are kind of stuck in the past. Most of the anime I’ve watched in the past year are older than me. Series from the 70s and 80s like Mazinger Z, Invincible Super Man Zambot 3, or Mobile Suit Gundam are more my cup of tea than say, K-On! or Madoka Magica. Thankfully, there’s a video game series that caters to my antiquated tastes and it’s called Super Robot Wars.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t speak Japanese, and only a few of the Super Robot Wars titles have full, fan translations. I could always feel my way through them—they are not the most difficult games—or I could even play one of the three Original Generation titles that Atlus has released in the West. Sadly, I’m not the most patient person, and the OG games lack the licensed characters that motivated me to look into the series in the first place. Then there's Super Robot Pinball, a Game Boy Color title that has none of these issues and just so happens to belong to one of my favorite video game genres.

If you’re a fan of video game pinball, you may have heard of the Japanese developer Jupiter. They’ve worked on plenty of Nintendo titles, from Mario’s Picross to Game Boy Camera, but they’re also known for their work on the Pokémon Pinball series. However, very few people outside of Japan know that they gave the Super Robot Wars series the pinball treatment as well. Instead of capturing and battling Pokémon, you use your pinball skills to pilot some of the most iconic mechs in anime history, from Mazinger Z to the RX-78-2 Gundam.

One of the first things I noticed about the game was just how similar it is to the first Pokémon Pinball. The layout of the first table is almost identical to Pokémon Pinball’s Red Field, and the game also controls similarly, though the engine’s physics seem to be somewhat improved. What differentiates Super Robot Pinball is its mecha theme. Immediately, Mazinger Z fans will recognize the game’s ball save as the goofy Boss Borot, a scrap mech built for Mazinger Z’s comic relief characters, Boss and his pals Nuke and Mucha. Haro, Amuro Ray’s robotic pet from Mobile Suit Gundam, can also be seen bouncing around the table; hit him with the ball to increase your score. Additionally, the table’s bumpers also appear as grunts from various series.

However, if two mildly mecha-themed tables were all that Super Robot Pinball had to offer, I wouldn’t recommend it. Luckily, there’s much more to the game. After you’ve destroyed several bumpers, you’re challenged by one of 61 rival Mobile Suits, Mechanical Beasts, Mecha Boosts, etc. To put up a fight, you have to shoot your ball to a ramp on the left side of the table. The game then prompts you to choose one of six randomized mechs from a pool of 41 from several series that include Aura Battler Dunbine, Combat Mecha Xabungle, Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3, and many more. Each mech has its own stats, but I usually just choose my favorite based on which remixed theme song I want to listen to. That’s right, depending on the mech you choose, the music changes to a chiptune version of the show’s theme song. It’s hard not to sing along. After all, there’s nothing catchier than an Engrish rendition of “Koji can swim in the sky, he can fly beneath sea, in his robot man, Mazinger Z.”

After you’ve chosen your mech, you then shoot your ball to a another ramp the right. This triggers an event that transports your ball to a smaller table that shows both mechs face to face. Fighting the enemy mech is simple: just ram your ball into it. For each time your ball hits it, your mech does an attack. You can strengthen your attacks by shooting your ball through an alley to the right. If you do this twice, you can trigger an attack that not only takes away half of the enemy’s life bar, but also shows a short animation of your mech’s most iconic attack. Be careful though, the enemy mech can also attack you. If you die, you miss out on a huge amount of points. If you win enough of these battles, however, you’ll get the chance to fight the game’s three main bosses. This is also how you unlock the second table and both tables’ endless modes.

After you’ve beaten the game, there are still plenty of mechs to collect for the in-game encyclopedia, where you can view the sprite animations and listen to your favorite chiptune theme songs. And like most pinball titles, there’s also a leaderboard that records your high scores.

For a fairly simple virtual pinball game, Super Robot Pinball is a lot of fun. It’s a pity that we’ll never see it as an import title on the 3DS eShop due to its numerous licenses, but, then again, it’s probably as niche as a pinball game can be. After all, there’s not exactly a huge audience for 70s and 80s mecha anime outside of Japan.