Region Free Strategy Gaming and MORE

I love the fact that handheld gaming devices are for the most part region free. This means you can play Japanese games in US handhelds, European Games in Japanese handhelds, US games in European handhelds, and so on. There aren't the restrictions that are placed on consoles.

A few Japanese strategy games really stand out as quite good. There are FAQs available for some of these games but if you're a strategy game fanatic like myself you won't need them. Here's a rundown as well as a source to buy them.

Daisenryaku Portable and Daisenryaku Portable 2 - PSP - These are modern era strategy games set on a hexagonal grid. With hundreds of units spread across six countries in Daisenryaku Portable and seven in Daisenryaku Portable 2 there are many hours of strategy game pleasure spread between these two games. The first is set in Southeast Asia though geographical accuracy takes a back seat to fun. The second is set forth in a hypothetical Middle East. There are FAQs for each of these games at GameFAQs.

Daisenryaku DS - Nintendo DS - Yes, another Daisenryaku game. This one is essentially Daisenryaku Portable 2 for the DS. It's set in the Mid East and the modern era. It's far deeper than Advance Wars so if AW left you wanting for more I assure you that Daisenryaku delivers in spades.

Super Robot Wars W - For your giant robot strategy needs you need look no further than Super Robot Wars. Two of the series starring Banpresto Originals were localized for a US audience. While those were good games, you can't compare them to the real-deal. SRW W contains mecha from dozens of anime series and the animation blows anything we've seen in a 2D SRW game before away. It's great fun.

I'll cover some more titles in my next posting. For now I want to leave you with something special. It's an action game but don't turn the page yet. I am not a huge fan of action games but this one really and severely captured my attention. It's called Chou Soujuu Mecha MG (Mecha MG for short).

Basically there are 140 Mecha in the game and each has it's own very cool control panel. For example, a sword wielding Mecha might have 4 direction joystick for swinging the sword horizontally or vertically. There are other controls as well for that Mecha for other functions. It's all very intuitive and can be played with no knowledge of Japanese. I am loving it!