When I think about Macross, the first thing that springs to mind isn’t anything to do with the long-standing anime franchise, or indeed giant colourful mecha waging war in a super-Japanese space opera beyond the stars. The first thing that pops into my head, incredibly, is Ian Beale’s Caff in Eastenders. You see, for a time, the legendary soap opera greasy spoon and spiritual focal point of Walford along with the Queen Vic, housed a Super Dimension Fortress Macross arcade cabinet. Someone working behind the scenes on the show was obviously an arcade head, and it has always stuck with me.
That game was a classic, so it was with real excitement that I fired up MACROSS -Shooting Insight-, a new shmup on the Nintendo Switch. Could we have another slept on classic on our hands, or is Macross Shooting Insight just cannon fodder on a platform laden with other examples of the genre?
In a nutshell, this one is a strange curio that bites off a little more than it can chew. Going in, the licence is used tremendously with some banging cutscenes, properly bombastic speech and music, and glorious renditions of all the mecha that you know and love from Macross.
There are a selection of characters all with their own different bullet patterns and strengths and weaknesses in terms of their abilities and loadout. Things kick off with a vertical shooting stage that ironically feels a little bit like Under Defeat. You work your way through an asteroid field, collecting gemstones to power up your weaponry, and attempt to take down jammer units that kick off a mad sequence where the screen goes nuts and a song from the insane library of Macross ditties chimes in, enabling your craft to become even more powerful. There is a lock on system but it is tricky to pull off whilst already negotiating the cluttered playing field. There is also a dodge function, a kind of sideways roll used to evade bullets and enemies, but again, sometimes it is too little too late due to the volume of ordnance and overall tough nature of MACROSS -Shooting Insight-.
You see, everything looks lovely, it has to be said, but by jove there is just too much going on. There are multiple layers of asteroid debris, enemy units, bullets, missiles, crystals and overlaid HUD graphics that it just becomes so confusing on the eye, and coupled with the already very high difficulty level, punishing damage sustained, and one life you are granted, it becomes frustrating and unenjoyable quickly.
Just when you start to get the hang of this mode, MACROSS -Shooting Insight- throws multiple change-up curveballs at you. There are top-down twin stick Time Pilot stages, horizontal sections where your mech transforms into a powered-up Valkyrie unit, and even brief into-the-screen areas which play out like a poor man’s version of Star Fox, only with more shouting and less anthropomorphic animals.
I can’t fault the way MACROSS -Shooting Insight- is presented and the commitment to providing a varied and interesting take on the genre. It looks and sounds fantastic, and fans of the anime will be delighted just by the fact a Macross title is getting a Western release. Sadly judging it as a shooter, one of my all-time favourite styles of game, this one is just a bit too difficult and too cluttered (or maybe confused) purely as an example of the genre. Sure, you can change the difficulty, but it just isn’t that enjoyable even when toned down.
In this respect it reminds me very much of how weirdly punishing and poorly designed Western attempts at shoot ‘em ups can often be. Just take a gander at some of the retro titles on the Commodore Amiga, or, say, Last Hope on the Sega Dreamcast stack up against their Japanese equivalents. As lovely a use of the undeniably cool Macross source material as this is, it’s a commendable effort, but one that’s destined to remain rather niche, it seems.
