And to think this all started with perler beads. You know: those little pieces of colored plastic that you arrange in a pattern on a board, and then iron them so they melt together…

So, there was a game released in 1993 on the Famicom (NES) system in Japan called SD Gundam: Gundam Wars. I started researching and playing this game after my daughter got a perler bead set for Christmas, and I remembered there being an old 8-bit game that had excellent artwork of giant robots in SD form (SD stands for “Superior Defender,” but more commonly known as “Super Deformed” – cute cartoony versions with big heads, little bodies) which would be perfect for perler beads. I just couldn’t remember its name or for what system it was on. I soon found out it was released on the Famicom (the original Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System), but I also learned that actually playing it wasn’t going to be so easy…

A copy of the game and associated materials (image from eBay)

To try to make a long story short, this game was run through an add-on peripheral called Datach, through which you scanned the barcodes off of special cards that came with the game or (and this is where it gets funky), also select barcodes from participating consumer products (food, movies, tools, toys, etc.). These barcodes would do one of two things: generate your team (six characters for single player, three each for player versus player), or generate actions in battle once you were playing the game (regular attacks, special attacks, healing, defense).

It is a rather clunky system and it shows. Apparently only seven games were ever released for it.

My research led me to find sparse resources on the game itself and how to play it. But there were two invaluable pages that helped: one which was a brief walkthrough of the game (which got me started), and another which was a table, mostly in Japanese, listing details of 454 of the barcodes and, most importantly, the 8 or 13 digit numerical codes that one could type in in lieu of the Datach barcode scanner.

With this information, a copy of NesterJ (a Famicon/NES emulator that has the Datach system coded in), Google Translate, and the help of a friend who is fluent in Japanese, I played through the game. Taking screenshots of everything I could and making notes and translations (it helps if you already know the names of a lot of the things discussed in the table linked above, or the game itself). In the end I tracked down all of the known “playable” characters and their head shots from the aforementioned table, as well as five additional unplayable characters which were presented as enemies (but no head shots of those).

However… Something seemed a bit off. Missing were some of the most important mecha from the Gundam franchise up to that point. Where was the GP01 Gundam? Nu Gundam? Hyaku Shiki?

Curious about this, and armed with the rom-hacking tool Tile Layer Pro, I went into the game’s tiles to see what I could find. Famicom/NES games weren’t generated pixel by pixel as you played. Instead they had 8×8 pixel tiles which were swapped in and out to give the appearance of action or movement. Tile Layer Pro lets me see all of the tiles for game in one big canvas and, while they look like a jumbled mess, like a jigsaw puzzle you can start to see the patterns of related tiles and begin to put them together on a sample canvas (this is a simplified explanation).

Lo-and-behold, I not only found five hidden characters and their head shots, but also head shots for the five “unplayable” enemy characters. This leads me to believe that it is either possible, or was intended to, be able to play as all these additional characters (the head shots can only be seen when the player is choosing their team, so there would be no point in having any of them available for non-player characters [NPCs]). Frankly, I don’t know if this is the case because there aren’t a lot of resources online for this game, and I’m neither clever enough, nor have the time, to dig into the game’s code to see if they are playable or not.

Below is a composite of the sixty-three characters found in the game’s graphic files, both playable non-playable. Below them larger mecha, spaceships, etc., each of which corresponds to special command that can be given:

It took longer to compile this than I care to admit

And these are the sixty-three head shots:

This, too

Either way, this was a bit of a fun experience for me during some debilitating down time, and… a bit of a rabbit hole if I am going to be completely honest. I may make these images available on a t-shirt just for the fun of it. I may also (probably should) make all of my notes and resources I’ve compiled available for anyone else who wants to try this game in the future, as I’ve put in a bunch of work that expands on the limited (in English, at least) resources out there. I actually probably should do that.

Oh, and in case you were curious:

Proud father of a SD RX78GP02 Gundam “Physalis”… in perler bead form!

p.s.- If you have any information or corrections on anything here, please do let me know!