Macross: Do You Remember Love

"A fine game for Macross and shooter fans; others may want to look elsewhere."

The original movie, "Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?" was a short synopsis of the original Macross series. Full of continuity switches, it was classified later as a "fancified retelling" of the TV series. Nonetheless, it's a beautiful movie, and most of it is perfectly recreated on the Saturn.

Gameplay:

This is the part that shooter fans may have trouble with; it's an extremely simple shooter. Your Valkyrie can transform to all three different modes(with corresponding play changes; the Battroid mode has to run along the ground but can aim the gunpod in different directions, while Gerwalk constantly loses altitude), use the 55mm gunpod or fire off lock-on missiles and occasionally release a bomb. All three weapons have two different modes; the missiles can lock either on multiple targets or choose one, the bomb can either clear your way or go off in front of you, and the gunpod has two different modes of tracking. However, that's it. No powerups, no weaponry added; the most that will happen is a friendly ship dropping off shield recharge batteries. Plus, the game difficulty only approaches real shmupper's hardness when set on hard. And even then, it mostly consists of dodging Battlepods and the occasional flurry of shots. Bosses, while being original, are generally not as clever as other shmup bosses. However, thanks to the 2.5D view, your fighter can rotate to keep firing on them if they hide in the background, a nice touch.

Story:

Well, anyone who's seen Robotech or the Macross series(or DYRL itself) knows the story; alien ship lands on Earth, Earthlings rebuild it, aliens come looking for ship, don't take no for an answer. Of course there's more to it than that but you should really watch the original to learn it all. A nice bonus to the Saturn version is the addition of an opening scene. Viewers of DYRL noted that the movie begins with the SDF already out in space; the game lets you see the takeoff of the Valkyries and fighting on the island before the SDF folds into deep space. The opening movie is jawdroppingly well animated, with flawless mixes of CG and regular animation. After that however, clips from the original movie are used. Even more interesting is that some of the levels are broken up with clips, giving the game a cinematic feel(and not in a bad way, like most of the American Sega-CD games).

Audio/Video:

Graphics are recognizable to fans. The Valkyries and enemy fighters are animated well(although the bosses are not too memorable), with small touches. The Valkyries gain the FAST pack boosters when they launch into space, and every transmission has a small comm screen next to it. Everyone's got a voice in the game, and every single audio touch is in. Even the music from the movie is playing in the background, all of which add up to a monstrously good time for Macross fans.

Replayability:

Macross is uneven here, since the difficulty is low. However, you basically get the movie on the two discs, so it's always worth playing through for the cinema scenes. Shmup fans that hate long intermissions will be stymied here, however.

Buy or Rent?:

For fans that are both Macross and shmup fans, you'll probably like this game. For Macross fans, you'll probably crank the difficulty to easy and love it as well. For hardcore shmupers however, it will probably not be worth the import price tag.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99