Gundam F91 could quite possibly have been one of the greatest installments of the Gundam anime had it not been forced into movie format. Luckily, this game attempts to rectify that mistake, and does a fairly decent job of it. The story actually begins before F91's story in the manga F90, which sets the stage for the events of F91. You'll be playing a good couple of stages before you even get the F91, but the F90 is a hell of a machine.

Gameplay wise, this game is a shooter, but not in the traditional sense. First there's the map, on which you move about until you encounter an enemy squad. From there you enter combat. First thing you'll notice is that you don't appear to move at all, but you do. You have to rely entirely on your radar for locating enemies before being able to attack them. It takes a little getting used to, and not everyone will like it.

As for hacking, the entire script (except for the parts that use the 8x8 font) is dumped and clocks out at just over 30kb. The fonts (both 8x8 and 16x16) are heavily compressed, but (this is where it gets good) I've just about cracked the compression. Once I figure that out, work will begin on a recompressor, or, if I get bored, I may attempt to by-pass the compression all together via DMA. I haven't decided. I'll probably give this an 8x16 font in place of 16x16 before I'm through. If you're interested in translating hit me up at redcomet at rpgclassics dot com. Also, I happen to own one of the (the only?) Japanese guide book released for this, so if anyone's interested in translating it, I'd be glad to scan it.

NOTE: This game isn't completely compatible with ZSNES (you'll get a lot of black lines during battle). SNES9X plays the game just fine, though. Actually, ZSNES will play the game, but I'm not sure if anything after version 0.600 will... I imagine it has something to do with the Super FX.