Oi, Hayaku!

By now, Macross Frontier has long since ended. And since then, the deathflags have been avoided, the songs have been sung time and again, the drama has long since passed on and we’re left wondering what happens in spite of a very open end till the movie…

Regardless of that, the spirit of Macross lives on in many in the blogosphere, be it whether you wanted to see Alto horribly genderbent, Sheryl X Ranka, Alto being a little more decisive, more Aimo, more Nyan~Nyan, more Seikan Hikou…whatever.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, I did say sometime back that Macross Ace frontier for the PSP was going to be released, yes…but since I don’t actually physically own one, it flew under my radar for quite a while, seeing as I went absolutely nuts over Strike Witches.

Recently, though, it has come to my attention that Macross Ace Frontier has finally made its debut on the Playstation Portable (which I don’t own, how sad is that!) and it comes with decades of Macross History behind it. All the way from Super Dimensional Fortress to Macross 7 (complete with Basara!) to Macross Frontier.

Thanks, Watch Impress.

Personally, from what I’ve heard, the game itself has a severe lack of Ranka numbers, but doesn’t fall short on others, including stuff like Sheryl’s “Fanclub’s Night”. I suppose she’s gone and carved herself a pretty legendary name in the annals of Macross History.

The gameplay itself is pretty much faithful to the core essence of Macross, spamming homing missiles and lasers to no end. Although then again…isn’t that why we all have such an unbridled love for space battles? The wanton destruction and the fact knowing that you have all that at the palm of your hand is something truly wonderful. You could almost say it was just as decultur’d.

Campaign-wise, I can’t really say, aside from the fact that you start out with four pilot presets and a stat selection screen, but that’s pretty basic for simulators, especially flight sims. Although it can vary, differing from stats of the pilot to that of the actual plane. I personally prefer customizing plane (or in this case mech) stats since I was weaned on Ace Combat, but hey, either way works.

As for missions, I’m banking on there being aerial dogfights, capture/hold objectives, wipe out all enemies in a given area before the timer…etc. The standard bit you see every here and there, now and then in most simulators.

And of course, you’d need eyecandy. Graphics aren’t stellar as this is a PSP game, but the some of the loading screens are official Frontier screens. That’s enough for me!

However, this is just what I’ve heard through the grapevine sparked off by INSANE fanboy desire and a burning need to be a PAIROTTO in a VF-25 myself.

Seriously…fighting aliens, saving lives and being the object of desire between two AWESOME women. Who wouldn’t want that, I ask you now?

For an indepth, relatively serious review from those who have seen all of Macross F (since there’s no way you can be serious around Macross sometimes), there are a numerous amount of others out there who’ve penned their own two cents.

1. - Shin wants his Ranka Numbers, NOW! Macross Ace Frontier PLUS DISC where?

I’m really annoyed with the developers for the exclusion of Ranka songs…

2. - Double likes to claim he sucks at the game, of which I doubt since he grasped the core essence of Macross. That being MISSILE SPAM.

Within the short time I’ve played the game in, I’ve learnt that this game is all about flying around and spamming homing missiles like there’s no tomorrow….

3. - Toonleap’s not surprised that it sold well in Japan. It’s not really that surprising at all you know…just look at Macross Frontier’s OST 1 sales!

Macross Ace Frontier beat records on sales in Japan. 104,000 sold in the 1st week in Japan!! I am not surprised about this…