Last week the first trailer for April 2009’s Super Robot Wars K was released. The unique thing about SRWK is that the vast majority of the series included are incredibly new by Super Robot Wars standards. Mazinger Z is the only product of the 70s, Dangaioh the only series from the 90s, and the rest are from 2000 and beyond. These are the young, slick upstarts on the block and they’re fixin’ for some trouble.

So, the trailer.

The game is on the Nintendo DS, and so is a step down graphics-wise from the especially well-animated Super Robot Wars Z, but you really shouldn’t hold that against it. The animation is slick and colorful and there’s a lot of awesome fanboy moments like Godannar’s Heart Breaker (the attack shown in the trailer) and the appearance of the Z-Gradt from Virtual On (what Temjin is fighting, also in the trailer). You’ve also got Cagalli representing SEED in the trailer AS SHE SHOULD. However, I do have some criticisms.

First is that the cut-ins where the characters appear or it cuts to non-super-deformed footage of the robots appears to be lifted straight from the shows. While it looks all well and good on its own, it creates a jarring inconsistency when paired with the sprites and their animation. This was an issue in SRWW as well.

Second is the lack of voices. I don’t know much about the hardware of the DS, but I’ve played Phoenix Wright and that game has voices, and that was even originally a GBA game. Being unable to hear Yukana as Tessa in Full Metal Panic’s SRW appearance in W was a disappointment, and this just kind of extends that.

Third is that even now on the DS, they’re still using the GBA-era sound effects that started with SRWA (which recently got a PSP remake). It’s like they spent all their time on updating the animations and none of it on the sound library.

Overall though I’m looking forward to this and probably will buy it because hey DS’s are region free. I know some people are complaining that the series lacks UC Gundam but really now, the SRW franchise is nearly 20 years old by this point. If you want UC in your SRW go play the other 95% of SRW games, which also INCLUDES SRWZ.

It is awfully strange though that with all of these NEW series, they didn’t bother to put in Mazinkaiser. Maybe it’s too played out by this point.