The thing about myths is that they always have at least some basis in truth.

Any outside legend or myth seeks to either explain how a thing happens or exaggerate an event that took place or an object that actually existed.

And while we usually think of myths as larger stories like religious parables or cultural folklore, these days nearly anything can become a myth if you try. Things like unreleased movies or the behind-the-scenes story someone having a nervous breakdown while trying to finish an anime series everyone loves but doesn’t understand can become a myth all unto themselves, in some cases eclipsing the work itself in favor of a story everyone can get behind, even if it’s frequently misinterpreted.

Video games are particularly susceptible to this. Even in the days of the Internet providing immediate and accessible feedback on basically every game we can get our hands on, there’s still a ton of narratives surrounding games that didn’t get an official release, or games that were never localized outside of their home country. As though every Japanese game that doesn’t get an official release in the West is somehow an unheralded treasure worthy of our admiration, praise, and several hundred dollars on eBay for a copy still in its native language.

A lucky few of these games are actually worth our hype and obsession, and out of all those an even smaller number actually becomes readily accessible outside of the import market and/or emulation and piracy. So few games make it to an official American storefront and actually stand up to the test of time and expectation that it seems almost like a story unto itself when it happens.

A mythological game about deflating the American myth. Sounds like Metal Wolf Chaos XD to me.

Even before most of us had a chance to play it legally on Steam, Xbox One, or PS4, Metal Wolf Chaos was something of a legend. Developed by From Software (who everyone under 30 only knows as the developers of Dark Souls and Sekiro, but older people will remember from the Armored Core series which has way more relevance here), Metal Wolf Chaos was a combination of rare circumstances: a title made by a Japanese developer for the original Xbox, which had never gained much in the way of traction there despite a large number of well-made Japanese titles for the system, which was already voiced fully in English, which was never fully released in America. Despite a hidden demo in a disc included with an issue of Official Xbox Magazine, the game never made its way over here and didn’t sell as well as hoped in its home country of Japan.

Even back in the halcyon days of 2004, word about video games spread pretty quickly thanks to the Internet, and the existence of Metal Wolf Chaos didn’t stay secret for long. The Xbox modding community quickly found ways to get copies onto the Xboxes of anyone adventurous enough to hack theirs, and everyone else would hear tales of it through word-of-mouth and online/magazine write ups about this hilariously overblown satire of American politics and heroism. (I myself first heard about it from my former manager at Hot Topic who had a modded Xbox, and I was always bitter I couldn’t give it a shot.)

Metal Wolf Chaos, put simply, is a game where you play as the President of the United States of America, driving a robot suit to save the country from your traitorous vice president. The vice president (whose name is, of course, Richard Hawk) has led a military uprising to plunge the country into martial law, and sent war-hero President Michael Wilson (evidently a descendant of Woodrow Wilson, which should give you a sense of this game’s ideas about American history) fleeing to the West Coast in Air Force One to regroup. Luckily, President Wilson has an experimental Patlabor/Appleseed-styled robot suit, an entire team of backup, and a sassy radio assistant at his side to help him SAVE AMERICA’S FREEDOMS and FIGHT FOR HIS OWN JUSTICE!

That’s really the best I can do to sum up the plot of this game. Everything unfolds in an incredibly Team America fashion, with characters delivering clumsy catch phrases and melodramatic speeches to one another in between explosions, all voiced by a cast whose skill level ranges from “not bad considering what they have to work with” to “didn’t have time for a second take”. The satirical aspects are hilarious but seem good-natured – the game is less concerned with bigger topics like American military intervention and more interested in poking loving fun at how Americans perceive themselves, their leaders, and their history. We used to want a President that we knew would stand up for what was right when the time came, and we want to believe that the American spirit can overcome any adversity, even when that adversity comes from within and has a robot suit.

As President Wilson, you spend your time fighting for your own justice using a control scheme pretty familiar to anyone who’s played a third-person shooter since the original Xbox days, with various dodges, jumps, and boosts to aid your robot’s overall mobility. The moment-to-moment gameplay is much faster and less thoughtful than its sim-lite sibling Armored Core, having more in common with the explosion fests of Earth Defense Force than anything else. You spend your time alternating between destroying larger vehicles and rival robots, and mowing down hordes of no-name redshirt troops that only exist to boost your overall killcount at the end of the level, and most enemies won’t pose much of a threat, especially after you start upgrading your equipment, despite the frequent environmental hazards and occasional poorly-placed helicopter.

The upgrade options are the closest thing this game has in common with Armored Core (or most other mech games, really) and offer a level of customization much deeper than most other shooters of the era even if they only result in new weapons. Each different weapon class has several different iterations you can pick from, including handguns, shotguns, and bazookas, and each one has enough variation (energy, explosives, etc) to make it worth your while to mix and match. The weapons add another layer of bizarre humor to the whole endeavour, as the guns aren’t particularly futuristic or mech-styled – instead you’re just left to assume your robot is carrying some mech-sized replica of the sort of shotgun you can buy at Gander Mountain, which makes for some fairly amusing visuals.

Overall, Metal Wolf Chaos is a ton of fun for anyone who likes a sense of humor and mindlessness to their third-person shooters, and the recent release of Metal Wolf Chaos XD to Steam, PS4, and Xbox One has allowed a lot of curious players to catch up on lost time with a new localization of the text elements as well as an HD upscaling, even if the original graphics and voice acting has been left intact. (If you’re anything like me, you won’t have a huge problem with that).

So even if it’s fun, it leaves the title of this article a little in question. Should I have played Metal Wolf Chaos sooner? I very much wanted to, simply for its status as an urban legend among GAMERS IN THE KNOW™ such as I fancied myself, but I lacked the means or knowledge to modify my Xbox, and as it was my primary source of console gaming during that generation (yeah, that’s right, I was an Xbox guy, do something about it) I didn’t want to run the risk of breaking it and/or ruining my ability to legally play new-release games on it.

But even then, let’s say I’d gotten ahold of a copy – would I have had that much fun? I doubt it. It’s my understanding that none of the text was translated right away, which means I could’ve heard the voice acting but not been able to read any of the menus, weapon descriptions, and the like. Considering I was unable to play the other untranslated From Software mech game, Frame Gride, until that got an English patch, I probably would’ve had to resort to GameFAQs to help (as I just learned there was a Romhacking English patch sometime in 2011 well after I stopped caring), and that would’ve taken some of the fun out of it.

Given the English language translation, the inclusion of autosave (which doesn’t work as often as you’d like and you’ll still find yourself repeating levels pretty frequently, but I hear it’s way worse in the original), the improved controls, and the fact it’s still just as funny and absurd as it’s always been, I’m actually pretty glad I waited. The sheer difference in quality-of-life between the two means I’m probably having more fun with this version, despite the occasional bullshit level design and GOTCHA deaths – but that’s just how From Software does things, right? Besides, I’m playing it with a Duke, so I’m still getting a pretty faithful Xbox experience.

If any of this review sounds remotely interesting, or if you’re like me and were always curious about the myth behind Metal Wolf Chaos and were sad it never made it to our shores, I can’t recommend Metal Wolf Chaos XD enough. I can guarantee it’ll be the best version of this game we ever get, and I’m glad we actually get a legitimate release of it for everyone to check out.

Not bad for a game that seemingly only existed in magazine urban legends and primitive YouTube videos, right?

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