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Platform: GCN, PS2, XBox

Developer: Vicious Cycle

Publisher: TDK

Genre: Action

ETA: TBA

Robotech: Battlecry

For a generation of people Robotech is the series that introduced them to anime, sure they get corrected and are told that the series is indeed called Macross, but it’s doubtful many care, it’ll always be Robotech to them.  I’m definitely part of that generation, my sister and I stampeding down the stairs at all hours of the morning to watch the show, seeing what Rick Hunter and the rest of the SDF-1’s crew would do next in the war against the Zentraedi, as well as following the subsequent generations that aired in North America.  Now XBox, Gamecube, and Playstation 2 owners alike will have a chance to sink their teeth into a game based on the original series.  A doubly sweet event for Nintendo fans who narrowly missed a chance for a new Robotech game on the N64.  

Battlecry pits players as a Veritech pilot, the transforming mecha/airplane that are the signature of the series.  With that players will have the standard three modes that the Veritech  are able to take: the Battleoid (the humanoid mode), fighter plane mode, and Guardian mode that is a combination of the previous two.  All the while players will be fighting off the Zentraedi both on the offensive and defensive, as they  perform strikes on the enemy, guard a position, do escort duty and so on, all while figuring out when is the best time to use each of these three forms the Veritech can take.

Unfortunately, it is unknown where and when, exactly, in the Robotech saga the game will take place.  Will we see Rick Hunter?  Will we be Rick Hunter?  All of this is in the dark right now.  However, considering the rabid near 20 year following that the franchise has, it seems a very safe bet that most, if not all, of the main characters will play a reasonably strong role in Battlecry.  

The one thing that will really bring back the nostalgia while playing this game is the fact that Battlecry will be using cel shading when it comes to the presentation.  Instead of going with full-on polygons, which would give a somewhat inauthentic feel to the game, or going with the potentially spatially limited possibilities of 2D sprite-based graphics, the decision to use cel shading should give Vicious Cycle the ability to let the game look like you’re playing the anime while keeping their options open more so in the way missions play out.  There already looks to be the familiar streams of missiles and the huge explosions that were a mainstay of the series, so hopefully the finished product will have even more for players to look at.

While the game is certainly looking good thus far, and the mere mention of a new Robotech game is sure to get many fans’ hearts beating a mile a minute, it seems that until the game is put into some sort of firm context in the Robotech universe, there will be a lot of questions circling it.  Hopefully we’ll hear more about it in the near future to help clear some of them up.

- Mr. Nash