Not a Robotech in sight.
Macross: Shooting Insight (technically the full title is Multi-Dimensional Shooting Game “MACROSS -Shooting Insight-“ but I’m not typing that out every time) marks a rare event. A Macross product not only made it to the shores of North America, but did so without any Robotech branding. For those who don’t know, the original Macross was purchased along with two other anime back in the 80’s and combined into a single series called Robotech. Since then legal issues around ownership of Macross in North America have made further appearances of the series extremely inconsistent. And even Macross: Shooting Insight is not entirely free of this influence. But the point is it came out, and I just wanted to highlight how cool that is before I get into the review proper.
Shooting Insight is a arcade style shooter that spans an array of shooter styles that dynamically change as you play. You may start a level scrolling from left to right, only to have that camera shift and the gameplay swap to a vertical shooter. Other segments play out as twin stick shooters or even the occasional Star Fox style forward scrolling shooter in a few instances. Each pilot, assembled from the various Macross series, has unique weapons and stats assigned to their Variable Fighter. These consist of a dumb-fire gun of some sort and a volley of homing missiles. The type of gun and the number of lock-on missiles will vary by character.
As you proceed through stages you can also destroy jammers which, once cleared, will cause a songstress to begin singing which will grant you additional upgrades. These are a highlight as anyone who has watched Macross will know that music plays a huge part in the plot, and most of the series have fantastic songs associated with them.
Levels themselves are visually dense which on the one had makes for a lot of visual variety, however it also causes problems for playability. Backgrounds occasionally become so busy that it can be difficult to parse enemy ships. One early level has layers of asteroids stretching into the backdrop. It took me a while to realize that none of these were actually on the same layer as my ship after I had spent a while carefully dodging all the nearby ones.
Unfortunately the story doesn’t really live up to the series history. The contrivances for all these characters (who span the entire Macross timeline) being in the same place at the same time are thin. They also just generally feel out of character most of the time. I suspect a lot of this comes down to the localization, as dialogue is awkward and stilted. On top of that dialogue is constantly playing out during stages but because there is no english voice acting, you’re evidently expected to take your eyes off the action to read obnoxiously small subtitles in the bottom right corner of the screen. I quickly lost track of whatever plot there was and wound up skipping cutscenes.
Switch performance does at least hold up pretty well. Levels play out smoothly, save for some of the more dramatic transition scenes which can exhibit frame rate drops. Loading times are noticeable but not offensive. At the end of the day Macross: Shooting Insight is a passable shooter, and a fun treat for fans of the franchise. But an oftentimes inscrutable, poorly told story is unlikely to win over any new fans. I’ll also note that in Japan, all content that featured the cast of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross was contained to a separate DLC. Currently that DLC is not available in this release, and seems unlikely to become so in the future, due to licensing issues. Still I’ll take what I can get, and it is great to see this series making an appearance at all.
