
	Platform SNES Genre Shooter Publisher Zamuse Developer Winky Soft Released 1993
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Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie

The days of the 16-bit era were a golden age for schmups on the home consoles. Gradius, R-Type, Fantasy Zone, and others dominated the genre, and from time to time we would also see schmups come out that were based on popular anime franchises. One such example of this is Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie, which came out for the Super Famicom. Taking place after the events of the Macross movie, "Do You Remember Love", the game fills in the gap as to what happened prior to SDF-2 Megaroad-01.

Players get to choose from three characters that they can control: Hikaru Ichiyo, Maximilian Jenius, and Milia Fallya Jenius. The main difference between these characters is the types of attacks that their VF-1s are capable of in each of their three modes of combat: their fighter mode, GERWALK, and Battloid form. On top of this, each of these weapons can be independently powered-up to a maximum of three levels. It brings a nice little bit of variety to the ships players can use.

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As players zoom around the different levels, they’re greeted with typical horizontal shooter fair. Tiny enemy fly onto the screen in a nice, neat row, just waiting to be shot up, with an off-color ship at the end of the line that will obediently give players a power-up after it is destroyed. After that, there’s the usual mix of

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bigger, tough vessels to blast at. All the while, players are greeted with all sorts of popular enemy ships from Macross that are begging to be blown up. Getting hit by enemy fire carries a heavy penalty, though, as it will both deplete your VR-1’s shields and take away one power-up from the mode it is currently in. Some have complained that this is a tough game, but I disagree. If the developers really wanted to make Scrambled Valkyrie hard, they could have turned players' ships into one-hit-wonders that get blown up at the drop of a hat.

The two main flaws that Scrambled Valkyrie suffers from are that it gets hit with bouts of slowdown when too much is happening on-screen (a problem that many schmups suffered from on the SNES), and some bad use of English. Both of these are easy enough to get past. Everything about the game is very enjoyable regardless of whether or not you're a fan of Macross. The stages are a lot of fun to blast through, and it stays quite faithful to the franchise, even if it's over 15 years old now. This is definitely a schmup worth tracking down regardless or whether or not you follow Macross.

Mr. Nash
March 19, 2009