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tepidsnakeUnlike last time, this one is available across the world at double the normal Arcade Archives price because of the license. Thanks to Retro Pals Discord member bVork for explaining the Macross licensing situation to me very simply- the original Macross TV series is tied up with the deal between Harmony Gold and Tatsunoko, hence the first game's ACA reissue not making it outside of Japan, but the Macross II OVA series was made without Tatsunoko's involvement, so Big West can release it outside of Japan with no issue. As with other licensed games like Mazinger-Z and the first Macross game, this is double the normal price.
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As with the first Macross arcade game, the language selection is done via dip-switches so there's no separate ROMs, but you can select the Japanese and English setting just like with every other Arcade Archives release. Preference Settings allow players to select the player two side ship when playing solo (which is slightly faster, but only when played alone) and adjust game speed.
NMK are at it again with another shmup based on the Macross series, but this is quite different from the last one. Not only has the screen flipped from vertical to horizontal, but the structure is also quite different from any other arcade shooter of the time. This takes a 'caravan' approach where you have a hard time limit of two minutes on every stage and a target score to reach if you want to move on to the next area on your selected course (there's three to choose from with three stages each and a final shared stage). There's actually no lives here- getting hit either stuns you if you've picked up power-ups or sends you flying off the screen if you haven't (and if you've switched forms to the mecha, you'll switch back to the standard ship) but while you'll recover quite quickly, you'll lose any power-ups you've grabbed and, more importantly, the score multiplier on picking up medals gets reset.
As with many caravan-style games it's a pretty neat challenge, as the faster you get rid of enemies on-screen, the faster the next set will show up, so being efficient and grabbing as many bonus items as possible is the key to getting to the end, and I found myself having just one more go when playing this for the first time to see if I could reach the par score quicker! Add in some great presentaton (big fan of the Minmay hologtams in the first Beginner stage) and an absolutely killer soundtrack and you'll find this is one of the more interesting shmups to make it to Arcade Archives in recent times, so I'd recommend this to those who aren't necessarily that big into shmups to give it a try. There's one more arcade Macross game- Macross Plus from 1996- so maybe that'll be in our future, we'll see~
And yes, this still has the normal Arcade Archives Caravan Mode, which is still timed! You get to do two full stages on any route and have just over a minute to rack up points in the third stage, so it's a slightly different kind of challenge.