SD GUNDAM GCENTURY (SD for super-deformed) is another sequel in the popular and funny SD GUNDAM universe by Bandai/Sunrise. GCENTURY is a strategic game which focuses on resource management, planning ahead, and eliminating other competitors. It is a turn-based game system with hex-gridded maps, fixed-location factories, revenue generating space-colonies and cities (where number depends on terrain map), and units that gain experience and ability over time. Additions to the standard game formula include the ability to upgrade or downgrade the suit or ship a pilot is flying, to trade in the vehicle for another, and to rename the pilot.
With the space of a CD, GCENTURY has been freed to span almost the entire illustrious history of MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM from the ONE YEAR WAR; STARDUST MEMORY; ZETA GUNDAM; DOUBLE ZETA GUNDAM; CHAR'S COUNTER ATTACK; V-GUNDAM; and G-GUNDAM, to the recent GUNDAM WING; GUDNAM X, 8TH PLATOON; and even GUNDAM GAIDEN. There are over 100 terrain maps based in space, on the Earth, and on the Moon; 150 SD mobile suits and ships including the Blue Destiny from the Saturn GUNDAM GAIDEN series; 14 factions plus 4 design-your-own custom faction; 5 game modes; 25 long and short CD music tracks; and the 4 player action contained in previous versions.
All of the suits and ships in arcade battle have been pre-rendered and turned into 2D sprites with many smoothly animated frames a la DONKEY KONG COUNTRY, and look quite similar to the sprites used in Bandai's SD GUNDAM OVER GALAXIAN game for the Playstation. However, the rest of the map sprites are the same hand-drawn variety of the previous games, but with better selections of colors. The backgrounds of the space maps have taken advantage of the available 3D abilities of the Playstation with a modeled and rotating Earth, g ouraud-shaded Moon, twinkling stars, and overall nicely drawn map sprites. Transparent information windows overlay the map grid, disappear when the cursor gets near, and can be dragged around or off the screen.
The opening screen leads to the menu screen with the following choices:

Scenario Mode Single Mode World Mode Century Mode Load Action Battle Original Organization Option

Scenario Mode gives you a chance to play all the scenarios from the GUNDAM storylines from Universal Century (UC) 0079 Odessa Operation of MSG MOVIE #1 to After Colony (AC) 0195 Libra Operation in GUNDAM WING. To understand the scenarios, one should be aware of some of GUNDAM's storylines or be able to read the Japanese text describing the scenario, but neither are required to play. Each one lets you and other players play one of the factions of that particular scenario, and to see how differently it can be resolved. Depending on the scenario, you may have access to the various weapons of mass destruction such as the solar system mirror array, the colony laser, a space colony or Axis to drop on the Earth, etc. The scenario introductions are still-shots of a battle scene (SD-style) with text scrolling at the bottom, and no full-motion-video (FMV). The only FMV introduction seen is the Bandai logo, and as of now I have yet to see any other FMV in this game. However, it seems to be made up by some cute sprite-animations such as the GUNDAM X firing its weapon in a side-bar during the course of the game.
Single Mode lets you play one particular scenario in one terrain map in space, on the Earth, or on the Moon. World Mode lets you play one scenario on your selection of three terrain maps of space, Earth, and Moon. Century Mode appears to be a sequence of unique scenarios not based on any GUNDAM storyline, and whatever money you have after winning the scenario carries over to the next scenario (leading to a cheat). Load loads in a saved game that incidentally takes up 5 blocks per save game, so free up space on your memory card beforehand.
Action Battle lets you practice battling up to 3 other ships or suits in the arcade battle mode that is used to resolve battles. Additions are a shield defense button for those suits that have one, a button to maintain the facing direction while moving (so you can fly backwards now), an I-Field on/off button for those suits that have it, and a jump/vernier thruster on/off button. During the loading time for Action Battle in any of the other game Modes, there are humorous text comments by the pilots amounting to "Aaaahh!," "I will kill you," or "Launching Gundam" to read while you wait.

Neat Stuff

The differing power and tech levels of the suits and ships from the differing GUNDAM timelines have been resolved into 5 tech levels (as in GX) with each suit or ship requiring a certain tech to build and a number of turns to build. This system is based more on how powerful the suit or ship is, and is much less confusing, more complete, and more balanced than GNEXT's 20+ tech levels and ranking suit and ship strengths chronologically. The AI capability here is almost on par with the challenging one in GX, and definitely above the simplistic one of GNEXT.
The SNES Mode 3 method of a suit attacking a ship or base has been eliminated and replaced with the side-scrolling Action Battle, with single or multiple suits fighting one or multiple ships, or one suit fighting against a base protected by a turrent and suit. This means ships are much more powerful now, and much more difficult to destroy. The same goes for bases, and this does affect playing strategies. In re-entry battles situated over Earth, a suit can take re-entry damage if it flies too low.
There are now asteroid factories in space besides the main floating ones. These usually have 4 suit-building bays as compared to 8 for the main ones. Larger asteroids such as Axis can have 2 full (8 MS pads) factories in it.
The much more clearly delineated factions from the various series and timelines such as the AEUG, Neo-Jion, Oz, and Delaz Fleet, are going to make for interesting availability and combinations of suits and ships during battle, depending on terrain. For example, the Delaz Fleet was almost entirely spaced-based so a number of its suits and ships would be useless in land-based battles.
Pilots of suits and ships have 5 normal pilot levels and 3 ace levels plus 99 possible Newtype (NT) points. Most pilots start at level 1 with 0 NT points. These numbers go up after surviving each battle (e.g. Amuro and the WhiteBase crew start out at level 3 with high NT points). A suit or ship does not have to dock for repairs for its levels to go up as in GX. More NT points and a higher pilot level translates into faster and more responsive suits and ships during Action Battle, and exposed NewType abilities (with the appropriate suits) such as funnels. Powerful Newtypes will show themselves with NT points jumping from 0 to say 20 after one battle. Newtypes can also make ranged attacks with just their funnels or bits.

Caveats: The New and the Bad

Those information windows can be accidentally shoved out of the way, but can be restored to default position with the select button.
Some mobile suits are now portable single-hex wide colony-laser equivalents, depending on suit, weapon, and available energy level. Undocking suits and ships have to wait one turn before they can directly attack another vehicle. Different playing strategies to plan for.
There have been complaints about the "unimprovements" made in this Playstation incarnation:

Loading

• Any action that takes the game off the main game map, such as going into battle or going into a factory, will face some loading time of around 6-7 seconds.

• Slowdown with more than 3 or 4 large sprites on the screen at once. This can be attributed to bad programming rather than the PSX's sprite capability.
• It takes 8 seconds to load into action battle and 7 to get out.
• All the sprites look the same now. The only way to distinguish sides is by thruster exhaust and weapon fire color.
• Turning around is nicely animated now instead of just flipping around, but takes long enough to make one vulnerable.
• Weapons don't do well when the buttons are pressed rapidly because they are not buffered, so you lose keystrokes. One has to time button presses to get the weapon to repeat fire rapidly.
• Differing AI types and suits to target during battle have been eliminated. It's a free-for-all now.

• Ugly factory background that's heavily pixilated with a zoomed-up look at a range of factory bays from front to back. Because of the zoom, one has to scroll around to see the all of the bays.
• Cannot build suits or ships that cannot be launched out of the factory. No more plugging factories with useless stuff when it's about to be taken over.

• Because GCENTURY is multi-tap compatible, there are going to be some problems with third-party controllers not certified by Sony, such as the ACT Labs multi-programmable joystick.