Super Robot Wars 3 is the first Super Robot Wars game that was released for the Super Famicom. 3 is the first title to introduce backgrounds during combat animations, pilot and units stats and upgrades for playable units. Additionally, 3 features the first of many animated titles outside of the "Holy Trinity" of Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and Gundam. Banpresto largely greenlit the game as a favor to developer Winkysoft, who wanted one more chance after Super Robot Wars 2 was a flop. The fledgling series was on the brink of cancellation after the release of 3, only for gaming magazines to give the game positive press, turning it into a Sleeper Hit and justifying further games.
The main plot of 3 is the arrival of the "Inspectors" hailing from the intergalatic "Zuvorg Alliance" who instantly pacify the Earth, deeming them too dangerous and a potential threat to the galaxy. Londo Bell, who had been forewarned of this impending invasion in Super Robot Wars 2, are ready to fight back.
The original Super Famicom release was fan-translated by Aeon Genesis.
Series present in Super Robot Wars 3 (Bold indicates debuting entries)
- Mobile Suit Gundam (Includes the debut of MSV)
- Mazinger Z (Includes the movies)
- Getter Robo
- Daitarn 3
- Super Electromagnetic Robot Combattler V
- Brave Raideen
Tropes prominent to Super Robot Wars 3 are:
- All There in the Manual: Subverted; the Inspectors eventually appear the player will deduce who they are at any rate, but it's possible to wind up skipping their introductions and motivations speech, thus having no clue what their real goals are for most of the game.
- Bag of Spilling: The Federation simply strips all the upgraded mecha from the Londo Bell without justification.
- Canon Ending: There are three possible routes in this game - one where Anavel Gato decides it's the smart thing to join the Londo Bell, one where Inspector Mekibos decides to assist the Earthlings via Non-Player Character for a scenario or two, and one where neither of these things happen. Super Robot Wars 4 establishes the Mekibos route is the canon one.
- Canon Foreigner: This game introduces the Mass Produced Jagd Doga, which is Quess' Jagd Doga pained with the color scheme of Gyunei's Jagd Doga.
- Combat Pragmatist: Paptimus Scirocco is perfectly willing to tip off his enemies to your location for Enemy Mine benefits.
- Degraded Boss: While common to the franchise as a whole, 3 elevates this to an art form. The same mooks who likely gave you a hard time will return the favor a few scenarios later. This gets ridiculous when you realize this is S.O.P. to the ENTIRE GAME, with little to no variation, regardless of whether you're fighting the Divine Crusaders or the Inspectors.
- Disc-One Nuke: A couple, but in any scenario that isn't in space the Getter 3 and its "Daisetsusan Oroshi" attack, once you acquire it, will annihilate anything. Additionally, since the unit comes with three sets of Spirit Commands from its three pilots, it gives you access to pretty much all available Spirit Commands in the game, except the "Love" Spirit Command.
- Enemy Mine:
- The only reason why most of the Divine Crusaders are willing to get along (despite fairly major series canon incompatibilities); in short, they all hate the Londo Bell. Subverted when you discover that there are internal power struggles, but considering the Divine Crusaders are run by various Universal Century Gundam Big Bads, that's not really much of a surprise.
- Played straight with Gato in one route, who decides the aliens are just too big of a threat to continue attacking the Londo Bell.
- Excuse Plot: Daitarn 3 has no plot whatsoever in 3, especially since none of its story is utilized (not that most fans care, however). To a lesser extent, the Combattler V and Brave Raideen stories are rushed to make them available to the player without plot attachments. Getter Robo and Mazinger Z are slightly better off, but most of their plot outside of a few scenarios is totally ignored, though Mazinger at least gets enough of its own plot in to be recognizable. The main plot points regarding Getter are Musashi Tomoe and his Heroic Sacrifice and the Getter Robo G Mid-Season Upgrade. The Dinosaur Empire mooks are enemies, but none of the actual leaders like General Bat or Emperor Gore appear. Likewise, Dr. Hell is absent, as is Archduke Gorgon. The majority of the screen time goes to Universal Century Gundam, more or less.
- Face–Heel Turn: Shu Shirakawa
- Flanderization: Henken Bekenner and his attraction to Emma Sheen is way overblown to the point of making him a Stalker with a Crush. The Super Robot Wars Alpha series is way more mature in this regard, and tones it down appropriately.
- Fix Fic: Minor instance of this - if Kamille Bidan defeats Paptimus Scirroco in their final battle, Scirroco will do his usual Mind Rape on Kamille a la Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. However, the instant Kamille hears the voice of Four Murasame, he snaps right out of it.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Stage 12 has you start with a skeleton crew, since most of the pilots are relaxing on the beach. They're supposed to deploy on Turn 5, but if you manage to defeat all the enemies first (either by cheating or being insanely good at SRW), they're unobtainable. Hope you like using a small handful of Gundam characters and the Getter Team!
- Guide Dang It!: Did you know that Quess Paraya is in this game? Good luck finding her as she's hidden in a specific stage on a specific tile that only Amuro can land on to trigger her eventnote .
- Guest-Star Party Member:
- Ryu Jose and Hayato Kobayashi wind up only being around for the early parts of the game before they’re both transferred to the Radish along with Four Murasame (who herself qualifies for this trope if you don’t recruit her permanently later). According to the developers, they didn't program in more than a handful of Spirit Commands for them, seeing as how they're always going to leave. Their stats seem to emphasize that the player should focus on using other characters.
- Sayla Mass also becomes this if the player meets the requirements for recruiting Char Aznable (in his Paper-Thin Disguise as Quattro Bajeena) - sadly, there's no sibling team-up beyond one stage. The reason given in-game is that, being Char’s sister, she recognizes “Quattro” the moment he introduces himself and she admits to Bright Noa that she can’t bring herself to fight alongside her brother (at least at the moment; she reappears as a Secret Character in F Final, having seemingly put those issues aside). Unlike Ryu and Hayato, Sayla has rather good stat gains and a decent Spirit Command set.
- Likewise, if you didn’t recruit him, Char will show up in a later stage as an allied NPC along with Lalah Sune, Gyunei Guss and Nanai Miguel. Anavel Gato and Karius also show up here, though Gato will join you later as an 11th-Hour Ranger on this path.
- Depending on the path taken, Chuck Keith is only playable in one stage. Otherwise, he becomes a permanent party member, in which case, Bernard Monsha fills this role instead.
- Boss joins up with Londo Bell for 3 stages before leaving once they get ready to head to space, which his Boss Borot is not properly equipped for. And he probably won’t see much use in the stages where you DO have him, considering at this point Borot was not yet the Lethal Joke Character it is in later installments, but rather just a regular Joke Character.
- Michiru Saotome and Jack King only partner with you for two scenarios, one early in the game and one much later. And the first one is optional. To be fair, SOMEONE has to defend Saotome Labs in the Getter Team’s absence.
- Heel–Face Turn: Gato and Char, among others, should you choose to recruit them.
- Intrepid Reporter: Kyra Soon does this to Mashmyre Cello, to his hilarious consternation
- Joke Character: Bernie Wiseman and the Boss Borot
- Laughably Evil: Mashmyre comes off as even more of a lovable doofus than he was in Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ. In his case, any possible Flanderization is a good thing.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Lune Zoldark's debutting stage is as bad as Michiru's Getter Q scenario in the previous game. As an unhealable NPC, she simply rushes into enemy's army while she's piloting a Fem Bot with mediocre dodging rate and subpar armor.
- Magikarp Power: Kou Uraki
- Multiple Endings
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: There’s no way to have both Deikun siblings on your team in the same playthrough: recruiting Quattro Bajeena means leaving Sayla Mass behind. In addition, Quattro brings Apolly Bay and Roberto with him when he joins, while keeping Sayla around nets you Kayra Su (and later Katz Kobayashi if Emma Sheen pulled a Heel–Face Turn earlier).
- Also, Kyara Soon and Anavel Gato, who are locked to different ending routes. Tying into the above, while recruiting Quattro still allows to to choose whether to recruit Kyara or Gato later, if Sayla stays on the team, an earlier route split that serves as the first step to open the way to recruit Kyara is closed off, Railroading you into the “Gato joins Londo Bell” ending.
- Averted with Four Murasame, who’s recruitable on both the Quattro path and the Sayla path. However, not only does she join much later on the Sayla path than she does on the Quattro path (to the point where she’s more or less an 11th-Hour Ranger), it’s also
much harder, as it requires you to practically speedrun your way to Stage 47… which, given that there are only three stages left to go after that, means your turn count will be low enough that you’re all but guaranteed to find yourself facing off against Shu Shirakawa in his Neo Granzon (aka, THE one boss of Super Robot Wars until Dark Brain dethroned him for that title) unless you go out of your way to avoid doing so (either by recruiting Four and then deliberately wasting turns until you exceed the limit, not sortieing Shu in the final stage, or doing so and letting him get shot down).
- Negative Continuity:
- The defection of Reccoa Londe and the brainwashing of Four Murasame happened last time. It happens again in this game. No one bothers to mention that it's happened before. Further, recruitable characters Puru I and Puru II have jumped back to the DC and must be convinced to rejoin. Luckily, saving Puru II does not kill off Puru I like it did last time.
- Lalah Sune was savable last time as well, which is a rarity for the series. However, that didn't stop her from randomly jumping back to the DC between games, and again... no one seems to notice. Also, unlike the others above, Lalah can't be saved.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: One of the bad endings
- Nintendo Hard: 3 is harder than the succeeding Super Robot Wars 4, due to its limited gameplay mechanics from a limited game engine. However, it's not as hard as Super Robot Wars 2. To be fair, part of the difficulty comes from having to finish the game in a limited number of turns to fight the True Final Boss, otherwise you could abuse the game over trick to power up and make bosses run out of ammo. The principal factors of difficulty are allied units don't deal enough overall damage, Real Robots can be hard to hit for Super Robots to a point where you might need to use weaker, but more accurate attacks and lots of end game opponents have protection against (or even absorb) beam-based attacks. Oh, and there aren't enough powerful Gundams for all of the pilots the game gives you... well, on your side, anyways...
- One-Winged Angel: In his bid to test how strong Londo Bell is, Shu taps into the powers of the dark god Shiva Volkruss, morphing his Granzon into the Neo Granzon.
- Original Generation: Lune Zoldark, the Valsione, the Inspectors and the Neo Granzon
- Schizo Tech: Justifed since its a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, but it gets insane how many "one-of-a-kind" mecha the villains can use.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: In a rare SRW instance, Gundam fans were totally geeked out of their minds by being able to use and fight units from MSV and Z-MSV, recruit Anavel Gato, kill both Kycilia Zabi and Gihren Zabi (with the added bonus of her Oh, Crap! reaction to Quattro Bajeena leveling his weapons in her direction), and being able to repeatedly beat the piss out of most of the Gundam Big Bads. Also, most of the dumbest character Face–Heel Turn moments (like Reccoa Londe allying with Paptimus Scirroco) can be averted or given a Lampshade Hanging on its sheer idiocy (Quattro tells Reccoa her defection over him not showing her affection is pure bullshit). The death of Sleggar Law is totally avoidable, and the GP-03 Dendrobium Orchid/Stamen is obtained by means that don't force General Eiphar Synapse to a Redemption Equals Death event. Also, the depressing endings of Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack are entirely averted.
- True Final Boss: Shu Shirakawa and the Neo Granzon
- Villain Team-Up: Like the previous game, the Divine Crusaders is a patchwork of villains from across the Gundam spectrum, as well as the occasional Super Robot enemy.
- Wake-Up Call Boss:
- When Scirroco appears for the first time, you'll be facing an opponent that is both durable and evasive, tougher than what you're used to fight. Even Amuro Ray in the Nu Gundam is not guaranteed to hit him. If you don't get wise and use both the terrain and units that take advantage of barriers to even the odds, you will have an horrible time.
- This also applies to Cima Gaharau and the Gerbera Tetra, one of the first bosses that can be run into in the game. While a pushover compared to Scirocco's later nightmares, the Tetra runs circles around everything you have and tends to evade almost everything while dealing incredible damage in return for what you have at the time, like the Proto-Getter or most of the early Gundam units given to the player.
- Willfully Weak: For some reason, the Getter Team downgraded between the previous game and 3 to a Proto-Getter that barely scratches some foes. Amuro also took a downgrade from his Nu Gundam to the RX-78-2 original.
- Zerg Rush:
- 3 is notorious for sending huge waves of enemy mooks at you, almost to the point of absurdity. In one scenario, presuming you decided to be honorable to Gato and help him out, the game throws you a bone and he destroys a huge portion of mooks in a later scenario to make your job easier. It should be noted the Zerg Rush factor in future games is toned down to varying extents.
- Then again, with units like the Cybuster and Valsione equipped with a MAP Attack that is Friendly Fire Proof, those waves can be cleaned up in a surprisingly short amount of time. This gets more ridiculous when their pilots will gain the ability to perform two actions per turn.
