OKay, time to put useless knowledge to good use.
I didn't realize MX was out, and I don't know much about it either. I've kind of been out of the SRW loop for a little, I guess. Anyway, SRW is a fanboy game, except there's actually some meat to it. It falls under strategy/RPG, though the emphasis is more on building your characters than battle strategy(though it's there). Most of the SRW games have a massive, massive amount of sheer content. There's loads of maps and loads of units (and about ten that you will see in every game regardless), and they're pretty upgradeable on top of that. Pilots also have their own sets of stats, and (kinda) have spells that do various things. The fights are a non-essential thing, really, but SRW isn't the same without them. They're put together with a lot of detail and care. In the PS games and further they are accompanied with the trademark of giant robot anime: loud, loud yelling. Every time I see a robot I know do a trademark attack, I can't help but grin like an idiot. Even with no great amount of language understanding I've had a lot of fun with the series.
I have a bunch of games from the series and I'll go through what I've played (I'm always looking for more hint hint):
The original game (GB) doesn't really count as far as the SRW that we know. The robots aren't upgradeable (as I recall) and they have the same kind of stats you would see on a standard human RPG character. I think they had CHARISMA stats or something. There's no story in this game, just maps. SRW2 followed on the Fami and the series started to take shape there.
http://agtp.romhack.net/srw3.html
This is the ONLY SRW in English. It's early, but it establishes the formula. If you like this, you like SRW.
F and F Final (Saturn/PS) are two halves of the same really, really long game that I'm too intimidated by to go too deeply into. The difficulty of the games kind of peaks in this and the SNES SRW games, where money is much harder to come by and upgrades are far more expensive. You get a main character in this game; I think the first time that was done was SRW4, though.
Alpha (PS/DC) is something of a change in direction for the series; it gets more accessible. Simply to play through the game is easy, but missions have certain optional objectives that you can go after for Skill Points. The more of these you get, the more difficult later missions become. You get a main character in Alpha, and whether you make him a Super Robot or a Real Robot pilot determines what path the story and missions take in the game. Alpha's also got a pretty good character lineup: the Valkyries and the Evangelions and Gunbuster(!) are in there. The DC version is a slightly improved version of the PS game. The PS's sprite battle scenes (not too bad themselves) have all been replaced by 3D SD robots going at it, which I love but got mixed reactions from fans. On top of that there are a couple combination attacks and not much else. My copy of DC Alpha is busted, tragically.
Alpha Gaiden (PS) is a mission pack of sorts, running an enhanced version of the Alpha battle system, bringing in combination attacking and defending. Basically, robots adjacent to each other will support each other in battles. Skill points and difficulty become visible here, something that should have been in there in the first place. Not too much else changes, though, from what I can remember.
SRW Impact is the first PS2 SRW, a combination of (I think) the WonderSwan SRW Compact series. There's something like a hundred maps. It's STILL for the most part playing like Alpha Gaiden though. It's an alright game, but it's not a big deal as far as the series as a whole goes.
SRW Alpha 2 (PS2) on the other hand is pretty incredible. There are four lead characters, and four stories for each of them. About half of the levels are shared and about half of the levels are unique to your lead. There's a squad system instead of just having the conventional team attacking. You can group up to four robots (depending on their size) into their own squad with a leader. This group will attack together, level together, and the support units will defend the leader if possible. It's a really nice system, and a practical means of putting weak robots with good pilots to use. The sprites were all redrawn for this game as well. As a result you've got some really amazing battle animations that don't look stiff the way some of the earlier SRWs do. Gaogaigar in particular is very impressive.
Scramble Commander is an odd pseudo-RTS spinoff of the series in which you issue orders for your robots to search for enemies, and then tell them how to fight (close-range, long-range, defensively, offensively) etc, without direct control. It's full 3d with non-SD robots, and it's very pretty. Can't say I actually played it too much, though.
MX loses the squad system from A2, I hear (but WHY?), but I don't know much else about it.
Talking about SRW makes me miss SRW. I may just go play some.
