- "Alcedes: Legends tell that a great war machine was sealed in a cave similar to this. Don't you know the legends? When Fiera used to go to war against another planet. They'd deliver a doomsday machine to the other planet to terminate hostilities.
Triton: And that's Xardion?
Alcedes: Yes, but I can't believe it's been sitting here all this long time.
"
- ―The pilots of Triton & Alcedes discovering Xardion in a cave.
Xardion is the titular giant robot and one of four playable machine in the video game Super Attack God Xardion.
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Overview[]
8000 years ago, Xardion was created as one of the strongest "Super Attack Armors" by combining all the knowledge and technologies of three warring civilizations on the planet Fiera. In legends they would come to be known singularly as the "Giant of White Iron" or "Legendary Guardian God." Xardion's neural interface was constructed by the civilization of the Superpsyche, its mechanical frame by that of Superscience, and armor forged under the civilization of the Supernatural. While serving as the blueprint for future Super Attack Armors, the integrated technology and resources would be lost in ensuing conflicts and divisions, leaving the prototype's weapons far more advanced than contemporary machines'.
Xardion has no pilot, instead carrying an artificially cultivated AI. Its Combat Device (the combining spacecraft that adapt to form the playable Super Attack Armors in the game) discovered deep inside NGC-1611 is thought to be the truncated form of the original, having abandoned most of its damaged body to preserve the most essential parts such as the AI and power generator. It lay dormant in a crystal cocoon within the enemy planet for 8000 years. Upon reactivation, it had lost most of its capabilities with its original body, but the "Treasures of Xardion" left across the three planets would allow it to regain its necessary power. Two hundred years after the decisive battle at NGC-1611, it is discovered buried in a lone, surviving tree after the formerly living planet had been reduced to a barren desert.
Background[]
- Age: Roughly over 8,000 years old. Around 70 years old in the English localization.
- Height: 15 meters (ship form), 20 meters (mech form)
Abilities[]
- Beam Vulcan: Xardion's main weapon, able to shoot a barrage of beams from its arm in any direction.
- Hyper Beam: A large, spiraling beam that pierces enemies, potentially clearing a line of them. Uses a small amount of energy.
- Lightning: A blinding light emitted from Xardion's entire body that burns away enemies within an area effect radius. All weaker enemies are destroyed (in the game, it dose so on-screen). Uses a small amount of energy.
- Sphere-On: Launches an array of spherical projectiles, varying in size and number, which home in on targets. Uses a small amount of energy.
- Light Arrow: Xardion's most powerful attack, able to destroy obstacles the setting's contemporary SAA armaments cannot. In-game, it fires from slightly above Xardion's raised hand as a tripartite of glowing arrows. It can hit multiple times and uses a moderate amount of energy.
Additional In-Game Items (canonicity debatable)[]
- T-Bomb: Xardion can place up to five of these Time bombs which blow up after 5 seconds.
- Missiles: Xardion can store and fire up to a total of 15 total missiles that home in on nearby targets.
- Ammo Supply: Xardion can carry up to 5 Ammo supply pods which instantly refill its ammo meter when it runs out.
- Sub-Tank: Xardion can carry up to 5, restoring its health to maximum any time it approaches near-death.
Feats[]
- Took part in fighting off a literal invading planet 8000 years ago. Though most of its body was lost, it survived inside the enemy planet to reactivate and resume its original mission.
- Traversed four different planets in an incomplete state to obtain the Treasures of Xardion, lost technology that would restore its ultimate attack.
- Destroyed a giant colony of luminescent, bio-mechanical microbes generating enough power to be mistaken for an artificial sun. All known available weapons besides Xardion's Light Arrow could not burn through the mass. (Solo skill feat)
- Defeated the living, bio-mechanical planet NGC-1611 and its strongest creation, the Guardian. An amalgam of unknown technology, genetic experiments, and automated advances by the planet's central supercomputer, the Guardian is implied to have been alive for thousands of years and was present when its kin wiped out that world's previous advanced civilization. The scope of its abilities are never elaborated, but it is immune to the setting's contemporary weapons and able to continually generate new mass while adapting to threats mid-fight, resembling magic and Lovecraftian horrors more than any known science. (Solo skill feat)
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Novel[]
The game has a prequel novel written by Tooru Sonozaki and illustrated by Ayumi Saitou released in October of 1992. Taking place 8,000 years before the current setting, it details the first conflict between Fiera and NGC-1611. Something then-known as the Mechanization Planet warps into Fiera's territory, unleashing a horde of hostile machines. Two satellites of the intruding planet are also caught by Fiera's gravity forming a ternary orbit, greatly disrupting its climate.
Under the threat of rapid extinction, the three warring civilizations of Fiera temporarily put their aside differences to combine all their technology and resources. They build what would become known as the legendary Super Attack Armor, Xardion. In reality, 14 varying units carrying the name of Xardion are manufactured, 7 covered in the novel and each with two pilots. The protagonist pair pilot Xardion IX, an especially heavily armed model spearheading an attack that would halt the invasion but ends in all units being lost. The civilizations survive, but much of their history, progress, and alliances are lost to be distorted in legends.
Trivia[]
- Xardion was first released in March 20, 1992. It is never specified if the titular machine in the game is one of the Xardion units appearing in the prequel novel. Fan theories range from it being Xardion IX, VIII, a never-seen AI-driven model, or a simple inconsistency between works.
- While no canon translation exists, the protagonists' combining spacecraft are roughly referred to as Combat Devices, and the playable machines they form as Super Attack Armors, or Superior Assault Armors. The original full title of the game can be interpreted as Super Attack God Xardion or Combined Super Blitz God Xardion. There is probably a catchier series of synonyms in English.
- The game's original Japanese text is infamous for containing typos, overly vague statements from unspecified speakers, and repetitive cursing which became memetic. For better or for worse, the English localization took several liberties to the text alongside adding gameplay improvements. Some were obviously to have a more coherent story, like replacing the entire intro text from the sparse and mysterious laments of NGC-1611's last survivor, to naming and explaining the premise of the setting's solar system in a dense title crawl. Others simply strayed from the source material, renaming the playable mecha and altering they and their pilots' origins. Triton was originally Salamander, hailing from Fiera rather than Oceansphere. Leopard is changed to the AI-driven Panthera and NGC-1611's last inhabitant's preserved remains are replaced with a hologram, presumably to lessen the focus on character deaths. Alcedes's intended spelling and naming theme remain unknown, but curiously its color and Japanese spelling are the same as Alseides from The Vision of Escaflowne.
- Xardion's soundtrack is by the famous composer Kouhei Tanaka, leading to one of the coolest arranged soundtracks released on June 3, 1992.
- The game's main mecha designs are by veterans Yasuhiro Moriki and Hajime Katoki. Xardion's design and equipment vary greatly between depictions based on who's drawing it, with the Moriki illustration used on Western covers having a strong resemblance to the RX-105 Xi Gundam due to their shared parentage. The '90s official garage kit is a mix of the two main designers' interpretations.
- Studio Gainax was involved in creating the original plot and setting. As a result, like Gunbuster, Diebuster, and Gurren Lagann, Xardion is a space opera epic involving centuries long wars, Getter Robo homages, and/or the title machine being a lost, ancient superweapon. It has been confirmed they put together the animated commercial.
- The game's disproportionately high pedigree production material in contrast to its infamous execution has led to a cult following in Japan. Due to Xardion's multiple interpretations, the existence of unimplemented power-up modes and weapons, and the novel describing 7 more Xardion models, there have been multiple fanbooks and other content built around what the franchise could have been. A short fangame was made in the mid-2000s, though few traces of it remain outside recorded footage. Halcyon released an unofficial, fan-made kitbash kit in 2016 allowing for an HG model of The NK-13J Denial Gundam to be modified into a posable Xardion model.