Assault Suits series

The Assault Suits series is a series of futuristic robotic war video games developed by NCS featuring soldiers manning gigantic humanoid machines dubbed Assault Suits. Spanning the course of 15 years and beyond, the games would be cross-distributed, cross-published and developed between the U.S. and Japan. It would be known as one of the most challenging series to follow due to the drastic changes from game to game. The original Assault Suit Leynos and the direct sequel used the term "Assault Suit" while the Valken series used the plural "Assault Suits".

Target Earth / Assault Suit Leynos
The first known game of the series. On its debut, fans considered it a combination of Macross and Gundam, but without any of their licenses. Most fans who played it considered it a great game, but the US sales were lukewarm.

Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken
The success of the first Assault Suits game in Japan would spawn its another game on the Super Famicom. The artwork style, assault armor concepts, as well as the dialogue engine would remain similar to that of Target Earth, but with major graphical improvements. The US name Cybernator added confusion to American gamers and disconnected many of the fans from the Target Earth roots. This game was actually a prequel to Target Earth, taking place in nearly decade before. An enhanced remake was released for the PS2 in 2004.

Assault Suit Leynos II
This game would arrive on the Sega Saturn as the true sequel to Assault Suits Leynos, but was released only in Japan.

Assault Suits Valken II
The sequel to the SNES title in the series released on the PlayStation. It differed from the rest of the series, as it was a Strategy/RPG, unlike the rest, all being Action/Shooter/Platform titles. After the release in 1999, the same game would be reprinted by the company Four Winds on August 30, 2001. This game was never released outside Japan either.

Trivia

 * Cybernator was the subject of censorship during its localization. The Japanese version features written dialog accompanied by a portrait of the speaker, but for some reason, these portraits were removed during localization. There is also a scene absent in which the president of the enemy forces, after realizing that his nation has been defeated, commits suicide. It is unknown whether Konami or Nintendo took action on these censorships.


 * Target Earth wasn't left untouched either—the scene where a comrade who doesn't make it back to the ship burns up in the atmosphere, was removed.


 * The violent scene of a comrade dying in the atmosphere may be a homage of a similar scene in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam where a comrade of the antagonists chases the ship of the protagonists in hope of destroying it. Only to get caught in earth's gravity well and burned up in the atmosphere.