Gundam VS Gundam NEXT Plus Setup

2025-02-23

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like the Gundam Extreme VS family of video games. Gundam VS Gundam NEXT Plus is a blast to play, but it’s all in Japanese! You don’t need to know Japanese to be able to play the game, but not knowing does make navigating the menus a little annoying at first.

NOTE: In this game CIRCLE is “accept” and CROSS is “back/cancel” when navigating menus.

Top
├── Arcade
│   ├── Single Player
│   └── Communication Play
├── Free Battle
│   ├── Single Player
│   └── Communication Play
├── NEXT-PLUS
├── Gallery
│   ├── Movie
│   ├── Ending
│   ├── Illustration
│   ├── Character List
│   ├── BGM Selection
│   └── MS Guide
└── Settings
    ├── Pilot Data
    ├── Game Options
    │   ├── Difficulty Level
    │   ├── Damage Level
    │   ├── Timer
    │   ├── Boost Gauge Amount
    │   └── Custom Communication Message
    ├── Button Settings
    ├── Sound
    │   ├── Sound
    │   ├── BGM
    │   ├── Sound Effects
    │   └── Voice
    ├── Operation Manual
    ├── Save/Load
    │   ├── Save
    │   ├── Load
    │   ├── Delete
    │   └── Auto-save
    └── Media Installation
        ├── Install
        └── Use of Installation Data

(machine translated)

Arcade

This is a mode where you clear stages. There are multiple courses with different levels of difficulty. Up to two people can play cooperatively via communication!

Free Battle

In this mode, you can freely set your mobile suit, stage, background music, and more. Up to four people can play cooperatively or against each other via communication!

NEXT-PLUS

In this mode, you can form your own team of MS and take on a variety of missions. In addition to two-player cooperative play, you can also play against other teams you’ve trained!

You can view illustrations, BGM, movies, etc in the game. You can view more materials by playing other modes.

Settings

You can save/load, change various in-game settings, edit pilot data, etc.

Button Settings

The order of selectable actions is shown below, provided you start with the first action to the right of the --- (“disabled”) action, continuing to the right.

shot
melee
boost
switch target
comms
shot + melee (sub-shot)
shot + boost (special shot)
melee + boost (special melee)
shot + melee + boost (mobile assist)
guard

On this screen, press SELECT to reset buttons do their default. Press START to accept your button settings.

My personal preference is to use an arcade stick to play this game when playing it on PPSSPP, and set my buttons like how the arcade cabinets are laid out. See my lazily made diagram below for a standard 8 button fight stick.

[joystick]    [A] [B] [C] [ ]    [start]
              [D] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Where:

As you might have guessed, you can press the shot and melee buttons together to activate sub-shot, rather than needing a dedicated button for sub-shot action, and so on.

I hope this technical primer helped get you past the boring stuff of menus and button settings. All the fun is in fighting battles and figuring out which mobile suits you enjoy piloting. Happy gaming!