Bandai Namco Entertainment’s long-running Super Robot Wars (SRW) series recently got its first new installment in four years with the release of Super Robot Wars Y on August 28. Mainline entries have customarily been named after letters or short letter combinations along the lines of SRW Z, SRW X and SRW DD, but with over 50 games already in the series, the Super Robot Wars devs have, somewhat amusingly, started running out of unique letters to use.
SRW Y producer Kouta Toma confirmed that this is the case in a recent interview with Famitsu. “It’s true. We’ve already started talking about what to do once we run out of characters. But at the idea level, it’s not like it has to be a single letter, as we’ve already done subtitles like Impact and UX, so we’ll go with the approach of choosing whatever sounds cool and fitting.”
Interestingly, the developers mention that during the development of 2017’s SRW V, they considered opting for Japanese kanji instead of the alphabet. Although the idea was ultimately scrapped, this would be a pretty cool alternative given that individual kanji carry both meaning and sound. On the other hand, this might prove tricky to localize to English, which possibly contributed to the decision to forgo kanji-based titles.
With very few unused letters in the alphabet left, Super Robot Wars probably won’t be seeing many more single-letter titles in the future, but with a fully revamped game engine and DLC already in development, the series seems to be picking up its momentum. The developers don’t have the next installment fully mapped out yet, but are working to get a new game out as soon as possible.
Super Robot Wars Y is out now for PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.
