Metal Wolf Chaos

Metal Wolf Chaos is a third-person mech action game developed and published by FromSoftware, released for the Xbox in Japan in 2004 and, notably, never given an official release in the West at the time. The player takes the role of Michael Wilson, the forty-seventh President of the United States, who pilots a heavily armed walking mech to put down a military coup staged by his own Vice President, Richard Hawk. The campaign moves across recognisable American locations, from a burning White House to city streets and beyond, with the President delivering florid, over-the-top declarations, most famously the battle cry Let's Party, as he single-handedly fights to reclaim the country. Built by the studio that would later become world-famous for the Souls series and Elden Ring, it is a deliberately bombastic, tongue-in-cheek take on the American action blockbuster, embracing every excess of the form with obvious affection. For years it was a sought-after import and a cult legend, its scarcity part of its mystique, until the remaster Metal Wolf Chaos XD finally brought it to a wider audience in 2019. That the most gleefully American premise in games, the President himself in a giant robot, was made in Japan and initially deemed too niche for American players is the sharpest possible illustration of how the country's mythology travels.