What it says on the tin. (I am mostly thinking of the shows I watched as a kid; I know know there have been a PLETHORA of Ultraman spinoffs in Japan.)

How gameable is Ultraman, assuming a group of 3 to 5?

(Hm, this concept starts to address Voltron territory.)

That's precisely what I'm working on these days, although a little more in 'Voltron territory', as you put it.  Voltron is game-able.  Ultraman, less so, unless you're using a more-than-one-Ultraman setup, which is essentially super sentai.

I don't think your question is, at heart, a genre question.  It's a player-spotlight question or a differing-power-levels question.

That aside, I don't think "alien policemen who beat up monsters" is a difficult sell to most gaming groups (for a short run, anyway).

Okay, it been a long time since I've seen Ultraman, but even as a kid it seemed pretty lame.

But I think the real problem translating it to a game is that the source material is so utterly fomulaic. Every episode consisted of a fight scene with the monster du jour and some padding leading up to the above mentioned fight scene monster du jour.

To make it "gameable" you either have to make the plots more sophisticated so that there is some real investigation to do or make the fights tactically very rich and challenging, to the extend that if the players don't give it their all they are likely to lose. Either way it would not longer play like the original source material.

Wouldn't "Ultraman RPG" be at core just another mecha RPG? If folks can play Macross or Votoms I see no reason they can't play Ultraman also.

One thing is certain: you can count with Junichiro Koizumi. :rotfl:

I really like Ultraman but I can't see how to RPG it without a whole lot of changes and new setting information.
Ultraman, at least the one I watched as a kid... didn't have a very distinctive setting... except for the giant monster of the week.

I think what you'd end up with is really a Science Patrol game.
You'd need to greatly expand the concept of the Science Patrol... what they do when not having their asses rescued by Ultraman?... maybe mesh them with some of the teams from the 'Andersonverse'... Thunderbirds' Tracy Family, Captain Scarlett's Spectrum, U.F.O.'s Shado.
Give them a bunch of alien intrigue to investigate/combat...
Even then I don't see how to work in Ultraman himself, I'd probably keep him mostly offstage... just like Elric/Conan/Cthulhu... and when he does appear the PC's are lending him support with their ultratech vehicles.