Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs.

Did You Know?

• Bandai and Linkin Park cooperated on a limited edition HGUC 1/144 RX-78GP01-Fb Gundam Zephyranthes Full Vernian model kit with colors and stickers inspired by the cover art for A Thousand Suns.
• The arcade version initially had around 40 suits, including FA-010S, MS-06FZ Zaku II, MSN-04 Sazabi, MSZ-006 Zeta, RX-78-2, RX-78GP02A Physalis, RX-93 Nu, and XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero EW.
• The release of 2 XBoost brings the total number of suits to over 220.

Gameplay

Extreme Vs. keeps the core gameplay of earlier Gundam Vs. titles with some modifications. In a standard arcade battle, each team has a resource meter of 6000 points; when a mobile suit is destroyed, its cost is subtracted from the meter, and the first team to reach 0 loses. Mobile suits are valued at 3000, 2500, 2000, or 1000 points, with higher-cost machines being more powerful and cheaper ones weaker. Some missions, especially boss battles, replace this with a single target to defeat, though the player's side still loses if its resource meter empties. The update Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Maxi Boost raised all 1000-point units to 1500 points, increasing their HP and ammunition to match 2000-cost suits in skill speed. Controls use four primary buttons: Shoot, Melee, Jump, and Search, plus three sub-commands activated by pressing Shoot and Melee (Sub-Weapon), Shoot and Jump (Special Shooting), or Melee and Jump (Special Melee). Machines can also have two charge attacks by holding Shoot or Melee until a meter fills. Two major additions are Extreme Action, which lets players dash-cancel attacks for longer combos, and Extreme Burst, a super mode triggered by pressing Shoot, Melee, and Jump together when a meter is full. While Extreme Burst is active, pressing the same three buttons executes a powerful Burst Attack; Full Boost gave Burst Attacks to every mobile suit.

Story

The story occurs in an unnamed timeline where humanity possesses advanced technology but faces a declining population and possible extinction. Protagonists Leos Alloy and Sthesia Awar, along with their Haro, work at the Jupiter base "Jupiter X" using "General Answer" (GA), a repository of data from earlier human eras. Leos travels to Earths of past eras to gather data on human evolution. After a year, Sthesia discovers a new GA data cluster outside Jupiter X, and they dive into it, arriving in the Universal Century during the attack on Side 7. Inside the colony, they find the RX-78-02 Gundam destroyed before Amuro Ray could activate it. They detect a faint life sign from Themis Chiron, a G-Diver from Saturn II, who warns them to flee to avoid the conquest of Mars I. Separately, Sai Amagi and Chikage Ebihara are transported to another world by a mysterious woman who asks them to save it, and they view this world from the cockpit of the N-Extreme Gundam.

Reception

Forbes praised the game's balance and noted its extensive singleplayer content, calling it a deep multiplayer game with variety. Push Square stated there is a large amount of enjoyable content and found it hard to fault as both a gameplay package and a celebration of Gundam. In Japan, Extreme VS. Maxiboost ON reached number one in sales charts, selling over twice as many copies as second-place Animal Crossing: New Horizons.