First broadcast in 1982, Super Dimension Fortress Macross mashed up intense mecha battles with pop idol concerts to create a franchise that’s endured over the decades. In addition to several sequel series, there has also been many video games, including 2024’s Macross: Shooting Insight. This crossover entry combines all of the Macross characters, mecha, and music into a diverse shoot-em-up with several gameplay styles. Released in North America in early 2025, it also dovetails with the first official release of nearly all of these series on the Hulu streaming service.
In the main story mode, you can choose from one of several pilots representing the series: Shin Kudo (Macross Zero), Isamu Dyson (Macross Plus), Gamlin Kizaki (Macross 7), Alto Saotome (Macross Frontier), and Hayate Immelman (Macross Delta). Each has their unique story mode which crosses over with characters from other series, and while most of the basic levels are the same, the level orders differ.
Each pilot’s variable fighter can take three different forms, which also changes the gameplay style – the Fighter scenes jet are overhead scrolling sections, the intermediary Gerwalk sections are side-scrolling, and the humanoid Battroid mode lets you move freely in any direction, as you destroy enemies in a small arena, plus there are a few brief over-the-shoulder segments. Each level usually switches back between a couple of these before you finish the stage. Despite the change in perspective, the controls and weapons are all the same. Your ship wields a standard weapon, dependent on the pilot and vehicle you’ve chosen, which is powered up by grabbing orange chips dropped by destroyed aliens. But a better alternative is your missiles, aimed with a targeting cone with the right analog stick, which is much more versatile and generally more powerful. You can also call for assist attacks, which bombard all of the enemies on the screen, though this drains a recharging energy bar. At set points during the stages, one of the singers will break out the tunes, playing one of the famous songs from the series while providing some kind of bonus, like increasing attack strength. You can take a few hits, but run out of health and you need to restart the stage.
The core action plays well enough, just because most shoot-em-ups with lock-on missile targeting systems (RayForce, Soukyuugurentai, etc.) are generally pretty fun. This game was developed Kaminari Games, a subsidiary of Moss, the folks behind the modern Raiden games, so there’s some shoot-em-up expertise here. But the rest of the game suffers from an obviously low budget. The visuals are incredibly dated by 2025 standards, as most stages just take place in generic outer space settings, and despite the varying perspectives, the levels feel repetitive. On the default setting, the game is curiously stingy with health replenishments, restoring only small bits after each stage. Depending on how boss battles go, it’s very possible to start the next stage with very little health, putting you in a nearly impossible position unless you restart the story mode. There’s an option to automatically regenerate it, at two different levels, which makes the game manageable. But it also disables high scores, which implies that it’s a cheat mode.
There are plenty of story scenes between missions, but none of it is voiced, as characters just interject basic sounds and phrases. The dialogue is voiced during gameplay (in Japanese, with small English subtitles), but the sounds of your pilot firing the missiles grow old very, very quickly. It’s always nice when one of the famous Macross songs pops up, but it would’ve made more sense if you could pick and choose when to use them. Plus, the game has a habit of starting up a song, pausing it for a story scene, then resuming it, which totally sucks the vibe out of the room. This may seem minor, but between the repetitive missions and sloppy difficulty balance, it’s just one of the many ways that make this game seem like it was carelessly slapped together.
After beating one of the story modes, you unlock a few extra modes, including an arcade mode, which lacks continues, as well as an Ace Pilot mode, which puts you in tough one-on-one duels against one of the series’ rival pilots. Between all of these modes, you can unlock a variety of galleries, including character artwork, little trinkets that refer to specific episodes, or screenshots from the anime.
Japanese PS4 Version
A major problem is that the English version of the game is completely missing anything to do with the original Macross series, which was included with the physical Japanese versions and as optional DLC for certain digital versions. This means that Hikaru Ichijo, along with his ship and story mode, are completely gone, and supporting characters Linn Minmay and Misa Hayase are gone too. Curiously, some characters are allowed to stay if they had appeared in a different Macross series – Maximilian Jenius still appears in his Macross 7 form, while Roy Focker shows up as he did in Macross Zero. But it sure feels like something is missing, especially considering that Minmay shows up on the Japanese cover, replaced by a blank space on the English version. None of this is technically the game’s fault, as it’s the result of decades’ long legal issues with Harmony Gold, the company that originally licensed Macross back in the 1980s to make it a part of their Robotech series. But now gamers can be infuriated in the same way that anime fans have been for decades.
Then again, Shooting Insight really isn’t a game worth being mad about anyway. It’s too basic for shoot-em-up fans to enjoy (especially after much better previous games like Scrambled Valkyrie for the Super Famicom, or any of the three 1990s arcade games) while anime fans will be the ones most critical of its chinzty presentation. It’s great that so many of the legal issues have been resolved so that this game (and the rest of the anime, barring the first one) have been finally released officially in English, but this is hardly Macross at its best.
