Robotech: The Macross Saga HD Edition // Review

Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: GPC Games
Players: 1-2
MSRP: $9.99

Way, way back in the 1980s, before importing Japanese animation was an incredibly popular practice, animation from Japan was hard to come by. People would get shows localized like Mach Go Go into Speed Racer, or Tetsuwan Atom into Astro Boy, and it worked fairly well. Names were often changed to something more “American,” but the plots mostly remained the same. These shows also had a lot of episodes that made them good for syndication, but other localizations had to be more… inventive. The ur-example is the 1985 series Robotech. Three almost completely unrelated anime series were rolled into one long epic that spanned decades of in-series time across 85 episodes with mostly mixed results.

The most well-remembered iteration of Robotech was The Macross Saga, the first 36 episodes of the series. Taken from the anime Superdimensional Fortress Macross, the translation was fairly accurate overall. There was some wonky application of the phrase “Robotechnology” being a solve-all hand-waive as to why the main characters’ robots were so weirdly powerful or why their culture was so different. Once the series passed into The Robotech Masters or The New Generation, the series really got out of control with more than just the name changes. God forbid you were lucky enough to see the aborted disaster that was The Untold Story in a limited Texas theatrical release before being tossed into limbo. But the merits of the “localization” that was performed on those shows (and the patent trolling from their licensing company) are for another day, and another article.

When importing anime finally became popular at the turn of the century, license holder Harmony Gold would begin pushing Robotech as much as humanly possible. DVD releases, “remastered” releases, comic books, republishing the novels from the 1980s, and even video games using “untold” stories of the franchise. Here is where the game we’re looking at comes from.

Robotech: The Macross Saga HD Edition is a remaster of the 2002 Robotech: The Macross Saga side-scrolling shooter for the Game Boy Advance. The original game was a fairly brutal bullet hell shooter that demanded the most of the player with little reward. At times, abusing the sprite limit and slowdown of the game was integral to survival. The new game does not have the weakness of the Game Boy Advance to abuse.

Coming from mobile game developer Galaxy Pest Control Games, with original developers Lucky Chicken being credited as well, this game feels like a re-imagining of the game rather than an upscaling of the original GBA game. Lasting for 10 levels, the game switches between side scrolling shooter with a transforming Veritech fighter plane and an isometric shooter featuring a non-transforming robot called a Destroid.

The main gimmick of the side scrolling stages is the Veritech fighter itself, with the ability to swap between Fighter, Guardian, and Battloid modes (or Fighter, Gerwalk, and Battroid, if you’re a Macross fan). Fighter is just a fighter plane, and is the fastest mode with the lowest armor and the ability to shoot missiles. However, you can’t touch the ground without taking damage (as you are an airplane). Battloid mode is a giant bipedal robot that allegedly has the highest armor, but is stuck to walking along the ground with optional jump-thrusters and no missiles. Guardian mode is a plane with legs and arms, which acts as a cross between the two. It’s slower, but has more armor, and can still fire missiles. Being able to swap between the three modes is rather fluid, and actually fun when it works well. Powerups can also be picked up to change gameplay briefly, like a spreadshot powerup.

As you beat the game, you unlock alternate versions of the characters. Some are a plain fighter jet, others are a robot that has no alternate modes, or a stunt plane with no transforming or missiles. Or an armed chicken with missiles and lasers.

The controls are solid for the most part, with a few custom control schemes for players to see what they like. The game translates from the 8-way directions of the GBA to the more intricate joystick on the Switch fairly well, but there were many weird moments where letting go of the joystick resulted in the fighter jet flying in the direction I’d let the stick reset to. However, the main issue is the hitbox of the characters. In the original game, the hitboxes could afford to be approximate to the character due to the smaller screen, fewer enemies, and less accurate enemy fire. The update from GPC Games has actually driven up the game’s difficulty even more than the already hard GBA game by making enemy missiles more relentlessly accurate and intensifying enemy fire while leaving the hitbox the same vague space.

This results in being destroyed by enemy fire that is feet away, or being obliterated in seconds by enemy missiles that experienced players would expect to get bored and fly away after a few seconds. At least the game saves what stage you were last on, in case you game over.

Luckily, all of the original cheat codes from the original GBA release were actually preserved in the HD Edition. For a modern game to have cheat codes is something of a miracle, and these cheats give you the option to unlock all hidden characters, have infinite lives, or just have each character at max power. You can also delete the save file whenever you desire if you just want to mess around before getting “serious” at the game.

Another thing that really needs to be mentioned is the music. The original GBA game used chiptune versions of the actual music from Robotech, resulting in a reasonably accurate rendition of the series. GPC Games has actually obtained the actual music tracks from Harmony Gold those tunes were based on. As such, the experience becomes just a little more immersive as you pull off fighter jet tricks or transform to dodge missiles. Sound effects aren’t as sharp as they were on the GBA, but keep to the more “accurate” feel that this version of the game is aiming for.

Finally, the updated presentation is surprisingly sparse. The HUD is generically designed, and it can be hard to tell how many missiles you have left due to how the meter is represented. Rumble and same-screen 2 player cooperative multiplayer were added, and function well. A higher difficulty ranking that increases enemy HP and lowers your defence called Advance Mode also adds to the replay value, but the game is already punishingly difficult for level 1 characters. Still, multiplayer in retro shooters tends to be rare, and is welcome.

In the end, it’s not a bad upscaling. It has flaws, but many of these flaws were evident in the original GBA iteration. It’s a shame these weren’t fixed, but the updates make a solid shooter the same solid experience in 2021 as it was in 2002 with a few new bells and whistles.

Grade: C+

TL; DR:
+A fair price for a few hours of enjoyment
+Great use of licensed music
+Advance Difficulty adds replay value
-The game difficulty curve is incredibly steep.
-Hitboxes feel off, and are larger than your character model.
-The presentation is a little dry and generic