Thoughts from the rewrite: Macross II

[Seto Kaiba]

While I agree they "ripped-off" concepts from Macross, that is such a common sight in industry to "rip-off" concepts from one show/movie for another I don't see re-using concepts as "rip-off".

This was before that was really a thing, man... and MOSPEADA didn't really "re-use" concepts so much as crowbar them in where it made no sense to have them, in the name of making a buck off the success of Macross. (Which they didn't exactly succeed at doing anyway.)

Though, admittedly, whether or not your interpretation is actually relevant is another matter... it hardly counts if the creators of MOSPEADA are very open about the fact that it was hijacked and turned into an attempt to cash in on Macross.

Mind you, Southern Cross had hardly an original idea in the show... it was a 50-50 split between a ripoff of Macross and one of Gundam, both mechanically and narratively. MOSPEADA did try to copy a number of narrative and mechanical aspects of Macross as well, and RTSC isn't even trying to hide the fact that the only things important in its story are either from Macross directly ("Rick Hunter", Skull Squadron, FAST packs, SDFs) or are first-degree relatives of same (Maia Sterling, Wolf Squadron, Vince Grant, Janice Em, the UEEF logo).

The name really isn't the problem though, its HG's involvement that has done the damage.

After almost thirty years of seemingly doing everything in their power to offend or irritate everyone they could in the industry and the anime hobbyist viewer base, the name Robotech is pretty intrinsically linked to Harmony Gold USA. I very much doubt that it could ever escape the stigma of its owners even after a sale. The brand is a poisoned well.

Honestly I don't find the Novels to be like Star Wars, yes there are some references to Star Wars, [...]

More than "some". Quite a few. Loads, really. So many that it's not hard to get the very distinct feeling that they started with a rejected Star Wars manuscript and just went to town on proper nouns with the correction fluid.

(C.S. Goto is notorious in SF circles for doing something very similar... many of the novels he wrote for Games Workshop UK under their Warhammer 40,000 line are just name-changed versions of older screenplays he penned that were rejected.)

[Alpha 11]

It can't. They had at one point thought about having it transform and the have preprod art of it transformed in Art of Shadow Chronicles

It can't. They had at one point thought about having it transform and the have preprod art of it transformed in Art of Shadow Chronicles

Thanks for the info!

[ShadowLogan]

After almost thirty years of seemingly doing everything in their power to offend or irritate everyone they could in the industry and the anime hobbyist viewer base, the name Robotech is pretty intrinsically linked to Harmony Gold USA. I very much doubt that it could ever escape the stigma of its owners even after a sale. The brand is a poisoned well.

I think it would partially depend on who acquires it from HG (who did not originate the name), a well known company or a "who is this" can make all the difference. It would not happen over night though in either case.

More than "some". Quite a few. Loads, really. So many that it's not hard to get the very distinct feeling that they started with a rejected Star Wars manuscript and just went to town on proper nouns with the correction fluid.

We'll just have to agree to disagree here.

[Seto Kaiba]

I think it would partially depend on who acquires it from HG (who did not originate the name), a well known company or a "who is this" can make all the difference. It would not happen over night though in either case.

Yeah, but Harmony Gold and their franchise are stuck with the name of Revell's two failed attempts to rip off Hasbro and Takara-Tomy's Transformers. When you think about it, there's actually ripoff recursion going on here.

Put bluntly, because bluntly is my favorite way to put things, the Robotech name will likely be tainted forever by association with Harmony Gold. Decades of bad press and having had public opinion turn on the practice of rewriting in general and Robotech in particular as far back as 1991 mean that the name of the series is intrinsically associated with the way Harmony Gold has wronged other, far more popular sci-fi franchises like Macross and BattleTech. It has, in my estimation, probably already passed that point-of-no-return where the name itself carries the stigma of the product's failures... like the Edsel, the Pinto, or the Corvair. The only thing to do is throw the lot out and start from scratch.

(I would cite, as evidence of that, both the Robotech fandom's decidedly poor reputation in the broader anime continuity, and the mere fact that Carl Macek's name is the source of a term often used to describe the worst regionalization chop-jobs. That a regionalization that ruins the original is a "Macekre" says something... as does the worrying way that some of the larger communities often take "Robotech fan" to be a synonym for "troll" or "idiot", and the sheer variety of mocking or derisive nicknames for the series and its fans.)

[Chronicler]

(I would cite, as evidence of that, both the Robotech fandom's decidedly poor reputation in the broader anime continuity, and the mere fact that Carl Macek's name is the source of a term often used to describe the worst regionalization chop-jobs. That a regionalization that ruins the original is a "Macekre" says something... as does the worrying way that some of the larger communities often take "Robotech fan" to be a synonym for "troll" or "idiot", and the sheer variety of mocking or derisive nicknames for the series and its fans.)

Funny how I haven't had any grief when I say that I like both the original material and Robotech. Besides the people that know me knows that I like cheesy sci-fi anyways

Hey Seto I really like the rewrites for this and the extra tidbits. I should probably track down the OVA's and watch them myself, didn't manga entertainment dub it and released it in the U.S.?

[Seto Kaiba]

Funny how I haven't had any grief when I say that I like both the original material and Robotech. Besides the people that know me knows that I like cheesy sci-fi anyways

's probably because of the first part of that statement... though in some ways, Robotech being the industry's perennial non-starter has made it an almost literal nonentity among anime groups that aren't in the mecha genre. Among mecha groups, things did get better after Carl Macek died, though there is the occasional uptick in hostility that usually coincides with Harmony Gold screwing someone over (e.g. what they did to Catalyst Game Labs), lying especially blatantly (e.g. the LAM being a thing, RT Remastered or LLA being "new and never before seen" content), or a particularly attractive bit of Macross merch is released in Japan.

Now that Big West has decided to try doing an end-run around Harmony Gold's nonsense with a subtitled direct-import-available version of the Macross Frontier movies, this may subside somewhat, since Macross fans outside Japan can now get their hands on some of Macross with English subs via channels where Harmony Gold will not profit in any way, shape, or form.

Hey Seto I really like the rewrites for this and the extra tidbits. I should probably track down the OVA's and watch them myself, didn't manga entertainment dub it and released it in the U.S.?

Er... with the best will in the world, don't watch the dub. It's terrible. Watch it with subs instead.

Memetically hilarious, but terrible.

The Macross II: Lovers Again OVA was one of the earlier efforts into doing a "faithful" dub, and was one of the first projects undertaken by its distributor, US Renditions (a division of the American branch of Nippon Shuppan Hanbai). Consequentially, the translation is a lot closer to the original work than a lot of what was available at the time, but it still suffered a fair bit of distortion between languages.

Also, much like the ADV dub of Macross, they seemed to have chosen the voice actor whose voice was least appropriate for each character. It's at its worst with Hibiki's friend Mash, who somehow went from having a deep, manly voice and being a bit of a playboy despite his VERY effeminate looks, to more along the lines of a stereotypical gay hairdresser with a very high and effeminate voice. The bartender from Shot-5 deserves an honorable mention, since the English VA apparently decided "slightly gruff" was the same as "I'm doing a terrible impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger coming off general anesthesia".

The translators doing the regionalization also changed a few details, giving Nex Gilbert an unofficial one-rank promotion from Captain to Major, at odds with his very visible rank insignia, so that they could get around the English language's limitations when it comes to Captain (the army rank) vs. Captain (a ship's commanding officer), which are two totally different words in Japanese. They also indulged in many of those mistranslations that I've previously alluded to, apparently (and possibly forgiveably) not having a whole heck of a lot of experience in romanizing loanwords in katakana. (Speaking from experience, it's occasionally bewildering... I still haven't forgiven Macross R for throwing random German at me in places.) The identification of the original Mardook taskforce is also a real head-scratcher, since they don't say anything like what was in the original dialogue.

All that aside, the OVA still did pretty darn well in the US, though not well enough to save US Renditions' parent company Books Nippon from going under a few years later, at which point the rights were picked up by US Renditions' UK release partner, Manga Entertainment, who unfortunately did not redo the show's pretty awful dub.




For my next trick, I'm putting together a .pdf itemized listing of all the various VF variants that have appeared in canon or pseudo-canon works. Somehow, the VF-1 has many more variants than there are letters in the English language at this point. I've even found a few that I wasn't even AWARE OF.

[Seto Kaiba]

2037 AD - The Three-Way War of 2037
Following his defeat at the hands of Red Horns squadron and its leader, Komilia Maria Jenius, Quamzin was once again forced to fleet into deep space with the shattered remnants of his forces. Without the mobile fortress at the heart of its command structure, the Zentradi Army's Neld main fleet swiftly collapsed. The Neld fleet's surviving forces scattered, many of their ships surrendered to the UN Spacy after the Minmay Attack. However, the peace achieved by the defeat of the Neld fleet proved to be painfully short-lived.

In 2037, Quamzin and his supporters returned to the Sol system at the head of yet another main fleet... the Zentradi Army's Burado main fleet. Like the Neld fleet, the Burado fleet's forces exercised much more caution in dealing with the UN Forces than Boddole Zer's forces had decades earlier. The first encounter occurred over Luna, when the Burado fleet's scouts were discovered by a flight of trainees operating out of Apollo Base. Trainees Hayato Kiryu and Letlade "Leto" Elendil successfully engaged and destroyed the scouting force, securing them a promotion to full pilot duty status. The second battle quickly followed... Apollo Base's Apple platoon was dispatched to track down and destroy the enemy's scoutship, an attack that failed when it was discovered that the Zentradi forces were resistant to the Minmay Attack.

After a fierce battle that ended in the destruction of the enemy ship, the Burado fleet defolded near the planet Saturn. Quamzin was identified as leading this latest offensive, with its goal being to acquire the "secret" of song and use it as a weapon to finally defeat their Meltrandi enemies.

The Zentradi forces responded to the loss of their scouting force with an attack on Luna, a battle which was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a Meltrandi Army detachment... and the new arrivals proceeding to launch an attack of their own on the Burado fleet's forces. The chaos of a new opponent's arrival put the UN Spacy on the defensive, and General Vrlitwhai ordered the fleet to fall back towards Earth until a reappraisal of the situation could be made. The Meltrandi forces also dispatched a small forces to follow the UN Spacy fleet back to Earth.

As the UN Spacy regrouped on Earth, small parties of Zentradi and Meltrandi infiltrated the defenses and landed spies on the planet. The infiltration teams skirmished briefly with the defenders, though both the Zentradi and Meltrandi were successful in landing spies on Earth.

In recognition of his service, Hayato Kiryu is promoted to squadron commander and assigned as the new leader of Hound squadron on the new, state-of-the-art carrier Prometheus II. An ace of the newly arrived Meltrandi Army Leplendis main fleet, Misty Klaus, was able to infiltrate the town nearest to where the Prometheus II was docked, and met Hayato Kiryu. The two hit it off, though their meeting was interrupted by a new offensive launched by the Zentradi Geran branch fleet of Burado's forces, forcing a rapid deployment of the Prometheus II's air wing to prevent a raid on the town. The UN Spacy was quick to press a counterattack, catching Geran's flagship and the lead elements of his branch fleet off-guard and destroying them.

With the Zentradi's landed troops ousted, the UN Forces turned their attention to the infiltrator problem, identifying a number of Zentradi and Meltrandi spies who were, to be blunt, not very good at their jobs... after the two parties ran into each other and started a brawl in public. Troops from the Prometheus II's air wing who intervened in the fight discovered that Misty Klaus was one of the Meltrandi spies, causing considerable disquiet on the part of both sides, prompting the commander of the Meltrandi Army Leplendis main fleet to order her forces to immediately withdraw from Earth. Her declaration that Earth's inhabitants were effectively the Protoculture prompted an all-fronts withdrawal of her forces from the Sol system, with both the Zentradi and UN Spacy used to press their advantage.

Zentradi main fleet commander Burado, outraged at the loss of the Geran branch fleet, launched a large-scale counterattack against the UN Spacy forces on the surface, which was repelled by a taskforce led by the Prometheus II. While on patrol, one of Hound squadron's pilots went missing, only to turn up on the Zentradi flagship as the commander of one of its branch fleets. During an enemy attack centered on the Prometheus, a stowaway absconds with one of the ship's Valkyries, using it to mount a highly effective defense of the ship. At the battle's conclusion, the pilot is revealed to be none other than the Leplendis fleet's top ace, Misty Klaus, who has defected to the UN Spacy.



(Part 2 of this very complicated war is coming soon)

[Seto Kaiba]

One of the most glaring omissions in Palladium's Macross II RPG is the lack of any actual description for the UN Forces. It seems like a difficult thing to miss, since most of the "good guy" OCCs are actually UN Forces soldiers or people who work closely with the UN Forces like SNN. So here's a brief-ish way of explaining the organization of the UN Forces as it would matter to the players in a game.


History of the UN Forces

The UN Forces were formally established in February 2001, along with the official commencement of the Unity Government's role as the de facto supreme leadership on Earth. The existing militaries which had belonged to the UN Government's member nations were merged into a single fighting force, with the intention of forming a united front and centralized command structure to resist a potential invasion from the stars. The original four branches, the UN Army, UN Air Force, UN Navy, and UN Marine Corps, were part of the initial founding, and formed the backbone of Earth's planetary defenses.

As luck would have it, the newly minted UN Forces first battles were against their own people, as unrest spread in response to the establishment of a one-world government. The UN Wars, as they came to be known, were a series of small conflicts between the UN Forces and separatists backed by regions within some UN Government member nations, with increasing amounts of overtechnology being used in combat.

In March 2003, the UN Government made an unprecedented addition to the UN Forces... a space-based dedicated military force: the UN Spacy. Tasked with the maintenance of Earth's space-based defenses and the protection of any long-distance space exploration missions, it was the UN Spacy's new flagship that found itself at the center of Earth's first space war.

Both the UN Government and UN Forces were nearly annihilated in the disastrous war with the Zentradi, and the survivors were left to pick up the pieces using the surviving assets buried under South America, Africa, and out in space at Luna, the Lagrange points, and aboard the Macross. Because the UN Spacy was tasked with space-based defense and security, it enjoyed a preeminent position among the various branches of the UN Forces after the war... the frontline defenders of humanity and the shepherds of its space colonization program.



Organization of the UN Forces

The UN Forces of the 2090s are organized into seven branches of service... four of which are responsible for planet-based defenses, and three of which are responsible for space-based defense and exploration.

The UN Army, UN Air Force, UN Navy, and UN Marine Corps are little changed from how their various real world equivalents work, though they have benefited from the introduction of new overtechnology-based weaponry like destroids and variable fighters. There is regular infantry for security purposes, but as the enemy is a ten meter tall giant, the front-line troops are usually mechanized. Because these forces are essentially rear-echelon troops, they tend to have fewer soldiers than the space forces and see less of actual combat.

The UN Spacy, UN Spacy Air Force, and UN Spacy Marine Corps are essentially new organizations which don't entirely follow modern organizational structures. Contrary to what many may believe, the "Spacy" isn't actually a space navy, it's actually a "Spacy Military" or "Space Army". Its basic organization actually follows Army/Air Force structure and ranks, though it did inherit some navy traditions due to its role as the operator of the UN Government's space fleet. The UN Spacy Air Force is effectively a force tasked with the non-fleet space defense assets, while the UN Spacy Marine Corps is what'd done with many of the Zentradi troops that are absorbed into the UN Forces... forming the crack orbit-to-surface and anti-warship assault forces that the UN Government sometimes deploys as garrison forces on some distant worlds.



The UN Spacy

Most of the story centers around the UN Spacy, the largest and most frequently featured branch of the Unity Government's space forces... and it's also the one to which most of the characters on the UN side belong to in Macross II.

The minimum age to join the military under normal circumstances is 17, the age of legal adulthood under the UN Government. Like the real-world military, it's possible to join at a younger age if the new recruit has the blessing/consent of his/her parent or legal guardian. The absolute minimum age is 15 years old, which requires special admission to the pilot training program... a three-year flight school course. Pilots who graduate that course enter the UN Spacy as Warrant Officers (see below). Some particularly good students may graduate the program in two years, while "problem children" may find themselves needing four years to graduate.

The UN Spacy's rank system is essentially that of an Army, though it draws far more heavily upon the US military's traditions than it does for the Japanese defense forces. The UN Spacy's rank system treats the rank of "Warrant Officer" as an officer candidate rank akin to Midshipman, an officer grade below the first regular officer rank, a distinctly Japanese touch. On the other hand, the rank system also includes a rank that doesn't exist in the Japanese system... Brigadier General, which is omitted in the JSDF because of a cultural belief that the number four is unlucky. The officer rank system is as follows:

Officer Ranks
General
Lieutenant General
Major General
Brigadier General*
Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel
Major
Captain
1st Lieutenant
2nd Lieutenant
Warrant Officer*

Some Naval traditions are preserved in the UN Spacy, though the terms used do not translate directly in English in any helpful way. Japanese has separate words for the rank of Captain and the title of a ship's captain. For translation purposes, I tend to find it easier to refer to the ship's captain by the somewhat more archaic title of "Shipmaster" to avoid confusion with the third lowest officer rank. As an example... the shipmaster of the SDF-1 Macross was Bruno J. Global, who held the rank of Brigadier General. Many shipmasters are typically Colonels, while Generals will usually be in charge of fleet groups and hold a title that could be translated as "Admiral of the Fleet" or "Fleetmaster" (I tend to prefer the latter).


Formations

Among the mechanized troops, the most common formations encountered are the Valkyrie squadron and Destroid battery.

Valkyrie squadrons use a Navy-inspired designation system, but are organized partly along the lines of an armored unit. Typical squadrons consist of fifteen VFs, organized into platoons of three or four Valkyries each. Squadron leaders typically hold the rank of Captain or Major, though it is not unheard-of for some squadrons to be led by a particularly capable 1st Lieutenant. Each individual platoon consists of two (or three) junior officers led by a more senior officer... typically 2nd Lieutenants or Warrant Officers led by a 1st Lieutenant. The individual platoons are the smallest strategic formation VFs are deployed in, usually given specific callsign codes separate from the squadron's name (Vermilion Platoon would be the one the original series focused on the most). The command platoon led by the squadron leader usually shares its name with the squadron itself (Skull platoon being Roy's platoon in Skull squadron, for instance), and has two or three junior officers led by the squadron's CO (a captain or major). The most senior CO belonging to an individual ship's airwing (usually a Major or Lt. Colonel) holds the title of Commander, Air Group (or CAG) and has overall authority over the fighter squadrons assigned to the ship.

UN Spacy air/space craft squadrons follow a designation system cribbed from the US Navy, though they put an S in front of the designation code to indicate a Space unit. Most of the UN Spacy's squadrons of Valkyries are classified as either SVF (Space Fighter) or SVFA (Space Strike Fighter). The most notorious obviously being the SVF-1 Skulls, with Skull platoon having contained some of the most notorious aces of the first space war... Roy Focker, Hikaru Ichijo, Maximilian Jenius, and Hayao Kakizaki. In 2092, the most notorious platoon is Fairy Platoon, led by celebrity pilot 1st Lieutenant Sylvia Gena, with her wing-women 2nd Lieutenant(s) Saori Kujo, Amy Lock, and Nastassja Toht. The platoon is pretty much the UN Spacy's default currency of warfare... and makes a very conveniently-sized unit for a RPG session where most of your players are pilots, that way they have a ready-made reason to sortie together and hang around on the ship.

Destroid batteries are organized along very similar lines, though their rank and file troops are often NCOs rather than junior officers... Corporals and Sergeants, for the most part. These are also organized into platoons of three or four units apiece.

[Alpha 11]

If what you are saying is true about Macross II, how did Palladium get it so wrong?

[jaymz]

The same way they got the original robotech so wrong.....inability to get proper translations at the time as well as a lack of some information.....though that doesn't excuse the REALLY offbase stats of the ships.....

[Seto Kaiba]

If what you are saying is true about Macross II, how did Palladium get it so wrong?

The same way they got the original robotech so wrong.....inability to get proper translations at the time as well as a lack of some information.....though that doesn't excuse the REALLY offbase stats of the ships.....

More or less...

Though, to be entirely fair to both Palladium Books' staff and the creators of Macross II... the hobby magazines in Japan had quite a bit of exclusive information that appeared nowhere else. Tracking down a dozen or so different magazines without being aware of what their contents were would've been a slightly taller order than tracking down art books released after the show's conclusion. On the other hand, a few select chunks of those articles were released in America in English a year or so before the Palladium RPG's release, and it's rather hard to excuse their having missed information printed directly on the line art that they traced by the designers themselves, or the way their stats were often at odds with the visuals that art presented (the VF-2SS's missile launchers, for instance). One of the books mentions a researcher on retainer while they wrote the books, and I suspect he may have played a role in leading them astray. In some cases, we could also lay some blame at the feet of US Renditions, who managed to get quite a bit wrong in their translation despite having the information occasionally presented to them in English before they changed it to make it wrong.


There's still an awful lot of cases where Palladium's writers missed or entirely misrepresented information presented directly in the OVA itself, including major plot points, and entirely too many errors of the type that are obvious to anyone who's actually watched the show or is even just looking at the art printed in the books themselves to be entirely believable as an accident. That would be why there are some who wonder if Palladium's staff ever actually watched the OVA before writing the game... or, in a number of extreme cases, if they were even looking at the art when they wrote the stats. In some cases, I think their work was colored by their impressions from Robotech, despite their having noted that they're not related shows. The tendency to massively short-sell the human hardware vs. alien hardware is not something warranted in the Macross 'verse, but IS in Robotech.


Get right down to it, it's a perplexing mixture of failures of research, completely unwarranted deviations from the official material, and being unable to get the complete picture from Japanese sources while the game was being written.


Of course, in my rewrite I have the unfair advantage of putting the pieces together after all the various publications are already out, with foreknowledge of where all the information is, and the ability to get it into a usable form without having to resort to a third party to translate it for me. To say nothing of the sources that didn't exist back when Palladium was writing the books, like Macross Chronicle.

[Alpha 11]

If what you are saying is true about Macross II, how did Palladium get it so wrong?

The same way they got the original robotech so wrong.....inability to get proper translations at the time as well as a lack of some information.....though that doesn't excuse the REALLY offbase stats of the ships.....

More or less...

Though, to be entirely fair to both Palladium Books' staff and the creators of Macross II... the hobby magazines in Japan had quite a bit of exclusive information that appeared nowhere else. Tracking down a dozen or so different magazines without being aware of what their contents were would've been a slightly taller order than tracking down art books released after the show's conclusion. On the other hand, a few select chunks of those articles were released in America in English a year or so before the Palladium RPG's release, and it's rather hard to excuse their having missed information printed directly on the line art that they traced by the designers themselves, or the way their stats were often at odds with the visuals that art presented (the VF-2SS's missile launchers, for instance). One of the books mentions a researcher on retainer while they wrote the books, and I suspect he may have played a role in leading them astray. In some cases, we could also lay some blame at the feet of US Renditions, who managed to get quite a bit wrong in their translation despite having the information occasionally presented to them in English before they changed it to make it wrong.


There's still an awful lot of cases where Palladium's writers missed or entirely misrepresented information presented directly in the OVA itself, including major plot points, and entirely too many errors of the type that are obvious to anyone who's actually watched the show or is even just looking at the art printed in the books themselves to be entirely believable as an accident. That would be why there are some who wonder if Palladium's staff ever actually watched the OVA before writing the game... or, in a number of extreme cases, if they were even looking at the art when they wrote the stats. In some cases, I think their work was colored by their impressions from Robotech, despite their having noted that they're not related shows. The tendency to massively short-sell the human hardware vs. alien hardware is not something warranted in the Macross 'verse, but IS in Robotech.


Get right down to it, it's a perplexing mixture of failures of research, completely unwarranted deviations from the official material, and being unable to get the complete picture from Japanese sources while the game was being written.


Of course, in my rewrite I have the unfair advantage of putting the pieces together after all the various publications are already out, with foreknowledge of where all the information is, and the ability to get it into a usable form without having to resort to a third party to translate it for me. To say nothing of the sources that didn't exist back when Palladium was writing the books, like Macross Chronicle.

Sounds like they might have just rust it. Do you think that if and when the time comes, and we finally get Macross over here, that Palladium could get the rights to do an RPG on it, or would it be WAY out of their leage? Will there work on Robotech, and thought that, with HG, hurt them if they tried for the license?

[Seto Kaiba]

Do you think that if and when the time comes, and we finally get Macross over here, that Palladium could get the rights to do an RPG on it, or would it be WAY out of their leage?

It could go either way, honestly.

The so-called "traditional" branches of gaming, including pen-and-paper RPGs and tabletop games, are a fairly minor niche part of gaming in Japan. Video games and CCGs are the dominant market sectors over there, so Palladium wouldn't be at as big of a disadvantage in licensing negotiations as they would if the series were American-made... but they'd still be way out of their league. After all, Macross stands pretty tall in the anime industry as one of the three big sci-fi anime series (alongside Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam). It would, in practical terms, be like getting the license to the Star Trek, Star Wars, or Transformers franchises.

Will there work on Robotech, and thought that, with HG, hurt them if they tried for the license?

Odds are it would probably hurt them pretty badly unless Harmony Gold and Robotech were totally and completely gone... both from the anime industry and from Palladium's catalog.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yeah, I'm not sure any company would go after Macross.

It's a safe bet several would... Palladium Books and R. Talsorian Games almost certainly would, since both have made plays for rights to Macross in the past and both systems have a large number of fanmade Macross conversions already.

much less what would probably end up being a niche RPG (face it, Macross is just not that big in the US) for most of their markets.

Reality check time! Did it ever occur to you that the reason that you can't walk into frigging Barnes and Noble and buy a Macross kit the way you can for Gundam is because Harmony Gold is blocking Macross imports to protect the completely useless sinkhole called Robotech? Macross is stuck as a grey market import right now, but it's picked up enough steam in the US that Bandai is adding English subtitles to their region-free blu-ray releases of Macross titles to do an end run around that ridiculous "embargo" of Harmony Gold's. Why? Because the demand is there and it's growing.

There's demonstrably a market for it... and if Harmony Gold were no longer squatting on the rights in the faint hope that somehow, some day, the stars will align and people will care about Robotech, that'd be growing much faster than it is.

The big question for me would be, if we DID manage to get it, how much would the licensed company be forced to bow to certain thematic elements?

Odds are that Big West and Studio Nue would insist on something more accurate than what Palladium did for Macross II or either edition of Robotech.

As far as thematic elements go, the Macross metaseries is a universe with a LOT of flexibility. The main continuity that includes the original series, Plus, 7, Zero, and Frontier has one easily one of the best suited settings for individual customization that I've ever seen. There are at least 155 colony fleets that we know about, ranging from a few tens of thousands to ten million people, and it has been officially established that fleets can vary wildly in a lot of ways. I'm sure they would insist the game include some kind of vocalist OCC with the option to have some kind of combat potential, but that isn't exactly mandatory. There have been canon Macross titles without some idol singer warbling around behind the scenes, and there've been Macross stories that don't include Valkyries at all. The enormous diversity of stories and settings is one of the things that makes Macross almost tailor made for a RPG.

Sure, the video games don't get into it beyond a few plot points, but RPGs don't quite have the same limitations, and I'm not sure the idol singer portion of Macross would be particularly well-received as part of the game.

Actually, there are a few video games that use it as key parts of the plot... especially in the most recent canon game Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. That game managed to work Minmay, Sharon Apple, Myung, Mylene, Basara, Sara, Sheryl, Ranka, and an original character named Mina Forte into the plot all at the same time. (Seeing them all on the same stage is more than a little awesome.)

Somehow, having run and seen many MANY Macross games run using conversions of the Palladium system, Mekton, and homebrew systems, I don't think the singing part will be an issue. Hell, for a VERY long time, one of the most common uses of the Palladium Robotech RPG has been to use it to run Macross games with the help of fanmade stats for the later generations of mecha. For a while, in the early 2000s, I would've bet money there were far more people using it to run Macross than there were running Robotech... and that was before Frontier came out and brought in uncountable numbers of new fans.

[glitterboy2098]

The big question for me would be, if we DID manage to get it, how much would the licensed company be forced to bow to certain thematic elements? Music is a BIG part of Macross, and as much as a lot of people who want to play Macross like to pretend differently, the idol singer/Anima Spiritia would likely be something Big West/Shoji Kawamori would probably insist on being a part of the RPG in some format. Sure, the video games don't get into it beyond a few plot points, but RPGs don't quite have the same limitations, and I'm not sure the idol singer portion of Macross would be particularly well-received as part of the game.

with macross II at least, since it is in a continuity where spiritua/sound energy is at best an invisible background element, you could manage with sets of modifiers..
so if unacculturated Zentraedi are exposed to music of a certain type (whatever would count as a minmay attack basically) they'd, say, lose initiative and have some penalties to strike, dodge, skills, etc for the duration of the music. the Marduk emulators songs would have an opposite effect, cancelling out the minmay attack. and so on.

mainstream macross, where it is more major and eventually becomes a science with effects more like casting magic spells.. no idea how you'd want to do that one.

[Seto Kaiba]

mainstream macross, where it is more major and eventually becomes a science with effects more like casting magic spells.. no idea how you'd want to do that one.

Er... not quite, no. The Macross II 'verse doesn't have anything like song energy/spiritia in it... what the Minmay Attack operates on is purely psychological. Specifically, it's confronting the Zentradi forces in opposition with something they really aren't equipped to comprehend but will evoke an emotional response. The same basic principle is at work in the songs of the Mardook emulators, whose songs are used to stir a Zentradi unit's aggressive instincts instead of suppressing or confusing them. The Mardook are cheating a little in that they're also using brainwashing and cybernetic surgery to increase the effectiveness of same.

The main Macross continuity's take on the "power of song" is no different, for the most part anyway.

The Minmay Attack's effect is still purely psychological as described above. Where we run into the actual exception is with the extradimensional life forms called Protodeviln, who feed on the emotional energy that the humanoid brain naturally produces. This energy is reflected, very faintly, in higher dimension space... and is known as spiritia. It's basically just a special type of low-intensity fold wave, and has no practical combat application outside of fighting a Protodeviln (and even then, you need an individual whose spiritia happens to be naturally inimical to them, and significant mechanical amplification). It hasn't been shown to have any real effect on a human or Zentradi who haven't been subjected to a spiritia drain, though its effects probably wouldn't be any more than a slight improvement in the debuff/penalties inflicted by that song (assuming sufficient mechanical amplification was involved).

[Seto Kaiba]

Meh, the primary mecha circles I run in just sorta treat Macross as simply another really good series, and not a major pillar of mecha anime.

Sounds like you run in a pretty heavily super robot-y crowd... but if you look at it in both objective terms and in terms of the influence on the industry in Japan, and you'll find the same three titles cropping up on every occasion: Yamato, Gundam, and Macross. With no exaggeration, those three have shaped the industry as a whole... since they were the hat trick that really sold sponsors on the idea that anime could be something more than kids stuff or a 22 minute toy commercial. Yamato was written off as a fluke until Gundam proved it wasn't, though Tomino had to fight tooth and nail against their sponsors to keep it on the air in its first run, and Macross put the cherry on it by proving that they didn't need a run-up or word of mouth in reruns to make it big.

All three have graduated to the status of cultural icons in Japan, though Macross remains the most junior of the three. Macross Frontier saw a real sharp uptick of interest in Macross not just in Japan, where it blew past sales of Gundam to set new home video sales records for Bandai, it made quite a splash in the fansub circles, being one of the most downloaded titles of the past six years. That spike in interest is part of what prompted Bandai to start considering English subs (and for Plus, an English dub) on their new region-free HD releases.

[keir451]

Meh, the primary mecha circles I run in just sorta treat Macross as simply another really good series, and not a major pillar of mecha anime.

Sounds like you run in a pretty heavily super robot-y crowd... but if you look at it in both objective terms and in terms of the influence on the industry in Japan, and you'll find the same three titles cropping up on every occasion: Yamato, Gundam, and Macross. With no exaggeration, those three have shaped the industry as a whole... since they were the hat trick that really sold sponsors on the idea that anime could be something more than kids stuff or a 22 minute toy commercial. Yamato was written off as a fluke until Gundam proved it wasn't, though Tomino had to fight tooth and nail against their sponsors to keep it on the air in its first run, and Macross put the cherry on it by proving that they didn't need a run-up or word of mouth in reruns to make it big.

All three have graduated to the status of cultural icons in Japan, though Macross remains the most junior of the three. Macross Frontier saw a real sharp uptick of interest in Macross not just in Japan, where it blew past sales of Gundam to set new home video sales records for Bandai, it made quite a splash in the fansub circles, being one of the most downloaded titles of the past six years. That spike in interest is part of what prompted Bandai to start considering English subs (and for Plus, an English dub) on their new region-free HD releases.

Umm...I already have and have had English dubs of Plus, they were done originally by Manga Entertainment back in the mid-90's on VHS and then later on DVD. So having Bandai do English dubs isn't that big of a deal. Now getting better subs and dubs for Frontier would be good, as the one I have is second hand translations from either Korea or China so they're not that good.

[Seto Kaiba]

Umm...I already have and have had English dubs of Plus, they were done originally by Manga Entertainment back in the mid-90's on VHS and then later on DVD.

Yes, we know. You missed my point completely though.

The point I was making is that these American audience-friendly features are being included in the new HD Japanese-market editions of the media. Bandai is acknowledging that there's demand for the Macross franchise outside Japan, and they're including English dub audio and English subtitle tracks in these new releases to make them more accessible to western fans. Bandai would never be able to release these HD remasters and new shows through an American distributor because of Harmony Gold, but there is nothing Harmony Gold can legally do to stop fans from purchasing Macross merchandise from retailers in Japan and importing it to their country of residence. Macross fans can obtain legitimate copies of titles that would otherwise only be available to them via legally questionable means like fansubs.

Isn't that kickass? Hell yeah that's kickass.

[Seto Kaiba]

Macross Chronicle has given the heat energy weapon on the Mardook mobile fortress a name... albeit a rather uninspiring one. Glossary Sheet 24A identifies it as an "Energy Irradiation Weapon".

Also a fun tidbit on that same sheet... Colonel Millard Johnson, the tough-as-nails director of Project Super Nova in Macross Plus is not only a Space War 1 veteran, he's a former Skull squad member and subordinate of Hikaru's.

[Alpha 11]

Umm...I already have and have had English dubs of Plus, they were done originally by Manga Entertainment back in the mid-90's on VHS and then later on DVD.

Yes, we know. You missed my point completely though.

The point I was making is that these American audience-friendly features are being included in the new HD Japanese-market editions of the media. Bandai is acknowledging that there's demand for the Macross franchise outside Japan, and they're including English dub audio and English subtitle tracks in these new releases to make them more accessible to western fans. Bandai would never be able to release these HD remasters and new shows through an American distributor because of Harmony Gold, but there is nothing Harmony Gold can legally do to stop fans from purchasing Macross merchandise from retailers in Japan and importing it to their country of residence. Macross fans can obtain legitimate copies of titles that would otherwise only be available to them via legally questionable means like fansubs.

Isn't that kickass? Hell yeah that's kickass.

Are they available now and were?

[Seto Kaiba]

Are they available now and were?

Both the Macross Plus HD remaster and the box set containing English-subbed versions of Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime and Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa are already out... while Macross II's HD remaster is expected to drop next month.

[ShadowLogan]

The big question for me would be, if we DID manage to get it, how much would the licensed company be forced to bow to certain thematic elements? Music is a BIG part of Macross, and as much as a lot of people who want to play Macross like to pretend differently, the idol singer/Anima Spiritia would likely be something Big West/Shoji Kawamori would probably insist on being a part of the RPG in some format. Sure, the video games don't get into it beyond a few plot points, but RPGs don't quite have the same limitations, and I'm not sure the idol singer portion of Macross would be particularly well-received as part of the game.

with macross II at least, since it is in a continuity where spiritua/sound energy is at best an invisible background element, you could manage with sets of modifiers..
so if unacculturated Zentraedi are exposed to music of a certain type (whatever would count as a minmay attack basically) they'd, say, lose initiative and have some penalties to strike, dodge, skills, etc for the duration of the music. the Marduk emulators songs would have an opposite effect, cancelling out the minmay attack. and so on.

mainstream macross, where it is more major and eventually becomes a science with effects more like casting magic spells.. no idea how you'd want to do that one.

Doesn't Macross2 RPG already do something w/various songs the emulators sing? Might only need to expand upon it.

And Palladium has done "song magic" in the past (Rifts Underseas/BoM).

[Seto Kaiba]

Doesn't Macross2 RPG already do something w/various songs the emulators sing? [...]

Not really... but the way the Mardook song priestesses work requires brainwashing on top of just the song, and even then all it does is manipulate the level of their aggression.

I doubt "song magic" would be a good fit either... the Minmay attack has no actual effect beyond causing confusion and/or psychological shock in Zentradi and Meltrandi who've never been exposed to culture. In the case of spiritia attacks, those only work on Protodeviln and people who've been either spiritia-drained or possessed by same. The only time it's ever been presented as being able to tangibly affect something other than Protodeviln was in Macross 30, and only another super dimension phenomena (a fold fault barrier thrown up by the final boss).

[keir451]

Umm...I already have and have had English dubs of Plus, they were done originally by Manga Entertainment back in the mid-90's on VHS and then later on DVD.

Yes, we know. You missed my point completely though.

The point I was making is that these American audience-friendly features are being included in the new HD Japanese-market editions of the media. Bandai is acknowledging that there's demand for the Macross franchise outside Japan, and they're including English dub audio and English subtitle tracks in these new releases to make them more accessible to western fans. Bandai would never be able to release these HD remasters and new shows through an American distributor because of Harmony Gold, but there is nothing Harmony Gold can legally do to stop fans from purchasing Macross merchandise from retailers in Japan and importing it to their country of residence. Macross fans can obtain legitimate copies of titles that would otherwise only be available to them via legally questionable means like fansubs.

Isn't that kickass? Hell yeah that's kickass.

Your point wasn't that clear initially, you mentioned that it was being done in their (Bandai's) region-free HD releases, but did not actually state that this was being done in the Japanese market. And, Yes, it IS kickass.

[Alpha 11]

Are they available now and were?

Both the Macross Plus HD remaster and the box set containing English-subbed versions of Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime and Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa are already out... while Macross II's HD remaster is expected to drop next month.

Thanks! Will try Amazon first, then if not there, will just try googleing it.

[Seto Kaiba]

Your point wasn't that clear initially, you mentioned that it was being done in their (Bandai's) region-free HD releases, but did not actually state that this was being done in the Japanese market. And, Yes, it IS kickass.

Yeah... but earlier on I'd pointed out that Bandai was doing it to do an end run around Harmony Gold and its efforts to block Macross. I'm sure Manga Entertainment would love to be able to release the Japanese HD remasters of Macross Plus and Macross II, but with Harmony Gold blocking new Macross licensing there's no way they can.

Personally, I hope this is the start of a trend... if Japanese distributors don't have to work through a lot of middlemen to produce an edition for sale outside of Japan, we could get a much larger cross-section of the industry's output, including titles that have previously been stuck in "No export for you" territory thanks to companies like Harmony Gold. Legit releases of the rest of the Yamato franchise would be great.

[ShadowLogan]

Doesn't Macross2 RPG already do something w/various songs the emulators sing? [...]

Not really... but the way the Mardook song priestesses work requires brainwashing on top of just the song, and even then all it does is manipulate the level of their aggression.

I doubt "song magic" would be a good fit either... the Minmay attack has no actual effect beyond causing confusion and/or psychological shock in Zentradi and Meltrandi who've never been exposed to culture. In the case of spiritia attacks, those only work on Protodeviln and people who've been either spiritia-drained or possessed by same. The only time it's ever been presented as being able to tangibly affect something other than Protodeviln was in Macross 30, and only another super dimension phenomena (a fold fault barrier thrown up by the final boss).

Yes they did something with the various songs the emulator sing. It may not be the best, but it shows that Palladium does have some idea on to fit it in mechanically.

The Minmay attack, nothing more than an extension of the Emulators really. As for that Spiritri, Palladium has done song based magic in the past, and magic can be limited to effecting targets that meet certain requirements, so again Palladium really does have the mechanics worked out.

[jaymz]

Actually the have mechanics that could be worked out. Not mechanics that are already in place and would work as is.

[keir451]

Are they available now and were?

Both the Macross Plus HD remaster and the box set containing English-subbed versions of Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime and Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa are already out... while Macross II's HD remaster is expected to drop next month.

Do you have links for them that you could PM me? I'd much rather have better subs than the version I've got. Also do you have links for the games as well or suggestions as to where I can find them?

[Seto Kaiba]

Do you have links for them that you could PM me?

HMV.co.jp/en/ should have 'em... though be warned, they're a bit more expensive than the average anime release in the US, thanks to the higher media prices in Japan.

Also do you have links for the games as well or suggestions as to where I can find them?

Which ones? To date, none of the Macross video games have been released with English subs or an English language option. Some of the canon Macross games require legacy video game systems, like the Turbografx-16 w/ CD-ROM adapter (for Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song, the Sega Dreamcast (Macross M3), or the original Playstation (Macross VF-X and VF-X2). At least Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy can be played on a US Playstation 3 with no modding or anything like that... the only downside is that if you get the limited edition, you can't use those download codes for the 30th Anniversary VF-1, VF-25, and YF-29.

The old stuff turns up on eBay all the time, and HMV has Macross 30.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yes they did something with the various songs the emulator sing. It may not be the best, but it shows that Palladium does have some idea on to fit it in mechanically.

As you can tell, I don't agree with their implementation... but really, I can't see song as an obstacle that would prevent someone from making a true Macross RPG. With my own work on the main timeline in other projects, I'm still sort of avoiding the subject of how to quantify anima spiritia.

(Of course, that's a much bigger project... with over 160 Valkyries to cover, never mind optional hardware.)

[jaymz]

I'm trying to remember how Dave Deitrich did it. I'll have to reread that.

[Alpha 11]

I'm trying to remember how Dave Deitrich did it. I'll have to reread that.

Man, I just wish he'd finish The Third Invid War. That was a great game he was writing up.

[ShadowLogan]

I'm trying to remember how Dave Deitrich did it. I'll have to reread that.

I just look at the site, and the whole Spirita aspect wasn't addressed, at least not in the dedicated article he had in the index. So if he has anything up, it would be buried.

As you can tell, I don't agree with their implementation... but really, I can't see song as an obstacle that would prevent someone from making a true Macross RPG. With my own work on the main timeline in other projects, I'm still sort of avoiding the subject of how to quantify anima spiritia.

(Of course, that's a much bigger project... with over 160 Valkyries to cover, never mind optional hardware.)

Well some things have to be done for game balance from an implementation standpoint. Songs done in the Minmei attack aren't really that much of an issue since there are a few ways to handle it.

Well Palladium does have 3 mystical forces defined:
Inner Strength Points (I.S.P.); psychic power of the mind (Garudans in RT2 used this)
Potential Psyhic Energy (P.P.E.); magic energy (this was added to the system post RT2, works like ISP instead of the spells per day of the Perytonians in RT2)
Chi

I'm not to familiar with Chi as IINM it's only used in the Ninja's and SuperSpies RPG line, but ISP and PPE can be found in Rifts, Heros Unlimited, Palladium Fantasy, (IINM) Beyond the Supernatural, and probably a few other lines that deal with magic and psionics. Chi might be a better fit because IIRC it has positive and negative values where ISP and PPE are absolute values. Though you would need to find someone more familiar with Chi to deciede.

[Seto Kaiba]

I just look at the site, and the whole Spirita aspect wasn't addressed, at least not in the dedicated article he had in the index. So if he has anything up, it would be buried.

If memory serves, he never did finish figuring out how to make it work vis a vis the Protodeviln... I think he'd only got one of them statted out, and only in a very cursory way.

IIRC, the only one he did was Glavil.

Well some things have to be done for game balance from an implementation standpoint. Songs done in the Minmei attack aren't really that much of an issue since there are a few ways to handle it.

PPE would probably be the best of the three... though honestly, for main timeline Macross, I was considering adding a new stat for a person's Spiritia, since the Varauta War saw that briefly become a scientifically-measurable phenomena and something the enemy could actually use to detect you by. It also functions sort of like a second set of hit points, since when your spiritia is gone you are DEAD and very low values effectively put you in a coma.



EDIT: An eyes-on count of the number of VF variants that a main timeline Macross game would have to account for, stats-wise, including variants but excluding block upgrades or "character" mecha, is 154 VFs and 48 distinct sets of Option Packs.

[Seto Kaiba]

Does that include enemy mecha or just protagonist mecha? Also does that count things where the differences are "minor" enough that you can say "use these stats with this addition?"

Yes and no.

That eyes-on tally I did is just VFs, so it doesn't include things like battle pods, battle suits, or any other mobile weapons like the variable destroid Octos or that rogue Zentradi combiner from M3. It covers what the UN Forces have/use across sixty years of in-universe chronology, and the few VFs developed in secret by various hostile powers like the Anti-UN's SV-51 and SV-52, Struggle's Variable Glaug, the Feios Valkyrie developed by Black Rainbow, and the True Earth Fleet's Queadluun-Alma.

That tally also doesn't acknowledge or cover any variations between production blocks of a single variant, like the major hardware changes between the TV series VF-1 (Blocks 1-4) and the DYRL VF-1 (Blocks 5+). (So as a result, it pretty much ignores the entire "Valkyrie Plus" family.)

There are some that could probably be grouped together on the basis of only minor variation between the different models (the VF-1A, B, D, and J, for instance), but for that same aircraft there are also a number of ones that would have to be done separately (e.g. the VF-1L, N, P, X, and X++) because they have SO much that sets them apart that their performance, capabilities, armament, etc. are radically different from the base model and each other. It's a toss-up between the VF-1 and VF-19 for the worst offender there.

[Seto Kaiba]

I... had to look some of that up. Something tells me I'm going to want to see this work of yours eventually just to realize how much I don't know about Macross.

That's one of the reasons I'm so psyched about Bandai's apparent interest in making more of Macross accessible to westerners... for a long time now, a lot of Macross's non-televised content, including a number of side stories and pretty much all of the reference material, has only been accessible to fans who read/speak Japanese. There's no way that I and the other fan translators could tackle it all, especially as there's more coming out all the time* and of course there're IRL concerns for everyone.

Would you believe that there are something like, excluding one-off custom jobs, twenty-two distinct VF-1 variants out there, several decades of service? There's also upwards of a dozen distinct Option Packs like the Super Pack for it kicking around. Even the lesser-known VFs like the SV-51 still manage to have four or five variants, and there's the cases of certain colony fleets producing their own custom spec. versions of some VFs on a mass production basis... like the Macross Galaxy fleet's VF-19C/MG21 Excalibur, or how the Macross Frontier fleet produced the new Caliburn family of VF-19 variants based off the VF-19E.



* Macross Chronicle, the official Macross encyclopedia, is in the middle of its second biweekly serialized edition, and will weigh in at a whopping 2,560 pages when complete. There's also a VF tech manual for the VF-22 coming out soon, which will be 128 pages and the sixth installment in its series.

[keir451]

Do you have links for them that you could PM me?

HMV.co.jp/en/ should have 'em... though be warned, they're a bit more expensive than the average anime release in the US, thanks to the higher media prices in Japan.

Also do you have links for the games as well or suggestions as to where I can find them?

Which ones? To date, none of the Macross video games have been released with English subs or an English language option. Some of the canon Macross games require legacy video game systems, like the Turbografx-16 w/ CD-ROM adapter (for Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song, the Sega Dreamcast (Macross M3), or the original Playstation (Macross VF-X and VF-X2). At least Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy can be played on a US Playstation 3 with no modding or anything like that... the only downside is that if you get the limited edition, you can't use those download codes for the 30th Anniversary VF-1, VF-25, and YF-29.

The old stuff turns up on eBay all the time, and HMV has Macross 30.

Well I've got a original Playstation as well as access to a PS3 and I could conceivably find a Dreamcast, but, yeah the others are waaayy too far gone.

[camk4evr]

Do you have links for them that you could PM me?

HMV.co.jp/en/ should have 'em... though be warned, they're a bit more expensive than the average anime release in the US, thanks to the higher media prices in Japan.

Also do you have links for the games as well or suggestions as to where I can find them?

Which ones? To date, none of the Macross video games have been released with English subs or an English language option. Some of the canon Macross games require legacy video game systems, like the Turbografx-16 w/ CD-ROM adapter (for Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song, the Sega Dreamcast (Macross M3), or the original Playstation (Macross VF-X and VF-X2). At least Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy can be played on a US Playstation 3 with no modding or anything like that... the only downside is that if you get the limited edition, you can't use those download codes for the 30th Anniversary VF-1, VF-25, and YF-29.

The old stuff turns up on eBay all the time, and HMV has Macross 30.

Well I've got a original Playstation as well as access to a PS3 and I could conceivably find a Dreamcast, but, yeah the others are waaayy too far gone.

Play-asia.com has Macross 30 as well as the PSP games for sale as well as various Macross DVDs. Previous versions of the Frontier Movies (not the set with both movies) come with Macross Trial Frontier (more a demo than a game but good for a few trophies for your PS3) and Macross Final Frontier. And, if you can still find it, the DYRL set comes with a PS3 DYRL game and a download code for the PS1 game.

It should be pointed out that I've never purchased anything from Play-asia or any of the other import sites that I know of. I have a friend who imports games, DVD, Blu-rays, toys etc. (I can't remember his site, unfortunately)

At any rate, if you haven't already done so, I'd recommend that you make a Japanese account for your PS3 (a friend help me set mine up but there are also tutorials on youtube. Play-asia and other import sites will also sell Japanese PS network cards (or codes) so you can purchase games and DLC from the Japanese PS store.

[camk4evr]

Yes they did something with the various songs the emulator sing. It may not be the best, but it shows that Palladium does have some idea on to fit it in mechanically.

As you can tell, I don't agree with their implementation... but really, I can't see song as an obstacle that would prevent someone from making a true Macross RPG. With my own work on the main timeline in other projects, I'm still sort of avoiding the subject of how to quantify anima spiritia.

(Of course, that's a much bigger project... with over 160 Valkyries to cover, never mind optional hardware.)

Well, even with the song energy booster things (whatever the hell they're called) the most humans can do (besides counter Spiritia draining/effects) is make a nifty light show cure maybe have it just be that they can make illusions that can only create 'physical' effects
in Spiritia and Spiritia rich beings (like Protodeviln) because it interferes with their ability to manipulate Spiritia.

I swear I had it thought out better than this earlier today.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, even with the song energy booster things (whatever the hell they're called) the most humans can do (besides counter Spiritia draining/effects) is make a nifty light show [...]

That's about the best that someone possessing anima spiritia abilities can do... with the aid of some intense mechanical amplification via Dr. Chiba's sound energy system. Your average human can't even generate the necessary levels of spiritia required for the sound booster to turn on, and even Basara and Mylene struggled with it. Even then, the actual effect of that spiritia beam is no more dangerous than a laser light show at a rock concert to your garden variety three-dimensional lifeform.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, picked up some of the volumes of Macross Chronicle (yard sales! yay!) and apparently the Macross Quarter has two new versions of the ARMD platforms on it? That's actually not surprising at all...

Which edition? (Revised and Expanded has issues numbering over 50 and has "DeAgostini" on the bottom of each cover.) I know of at least two sets of the first edition that people are unloading to make room for the 2nd "Revised" edition, though I know we're holding one for Jaymz.

But yes, the Macross Quarter-class variable attack space carrier is, like its larger cousin, a single ship made up of a collection of technically-independent modules. Five, to be precise. The Center Hull (which is the legs, torso, and head), a pair of mobile gun battery ships named BASTER-L and BASTER-R, and then its arms, which are ARMD-L (a carrier) and ARMD-R (the gunship). Mind you, unlike the original Macross]-class and the ARMD-class space carriers, and like the New Macross-class and its gunship, we've never seen an ARMD-L or -R type operating independently of a Macross Quarter.

[Alpha 11]

So, picked up some of the volumes of Macross Chronicle (yard sales! yay!) and apparently the Macross Quarter has two new versions of the ARMD platforms on it? That's actually not surprising at all...

Which edition? (Revised and Expanded has issues numbering over 50 and has "DeAgostini" on the bottom of each cover.) I know of at least two sets of the first edition that people are unloading to make room for the 2nd "Revised" edition, though I know we're holding one for Jaymz.

But yes, the Macross Quarter-class variable attack space carrier is, like its larger cousin, a single ship made up of a collection of technically-independent modules. Five, to be precise. The Center Hull (which is the legs, torso, and head), a pair of mobile gun battery ships named BASTER-L and BASTER-R, and then its arms, which are ARMD-L (a carrier) and ARMD-R (the gunship). Mind you, unlike the original Macross]-class and the ARMD-class space carriers, and like the New Macross-class and its gunship, we've never seen an ARMD-L or -R type operating independently of a Macross Quarter.

Cool info.

[Seto Kaiba]

I think its 1e.

Ah, not surprising. Now that DeAgostini's "Revised and Expanded" edition of Macross Chronicle is just five volumes away from completion, there are a fair few Macross fans looking to unload the first edition in the name of making shelf space for the larger, second edition. Who could blame them? The first edition's page count was 1,600... the second? 2,560. That's eight of those huge A3 binders instead of the five that the original edition took. That's somewhere between an encyclopedia and a self-inflicted hernia.

(And if you think THAT'S bad, you don't even want to consider the Gundam equivalent... the so-called Gundam Perfect File is currently at 146 volumes and counting. That's over 4,600 pages, and they're still not done! At six bucks a pop plus shipping? Ouch.)

[Alpha 11]

I think its 1e.

Ah, not surprising. Now that DeAgostini's "Revised and Expanded" edition of Macross Chronicle is just five volumes away from completion, there are a fair few Macross fans looking to unload the first edition in the name of making shelf space for the larger, second edition. Who could blame them? The first edition's page count was 1,600... the second? 2,560. That's eight of those huge A3 binders instead of the five that the original edition took. That's somewhere between an encyclopedia and a self-inflicted hernia.

(And if you think THAT'S bad, you don't even want to consider the Gundam equivalent... the so-called Gundam Perfect File is currently at 146 volumes and counting. That's over 4,600 pages, and they're still not done! At six bucks a pop plus shipping? Ouch.)

Wow, those are big. Do they have a computer file version you could get? And were can you get these books?

[Seto Kaiba]

Wow, those are big.

No kiddin'... I have both the initial and revised editions of Macross Chronicle, and the shelf they're on actually bends in the middle because of it.

Do they have a computer file version you could get? And were can you get these books?

Nope... no digital edition that I'm aware of. They're not really books either, you see. Both Macross Chronicle and the Gundam Perfect File are serialized encyclopedias, meaning they're printed in the form of biweekly magazines. The individual volumes are made to be disassembled into individual articles, and the reader simply removes the pages from the magazine cover and places them in three-ring binders in order of the sheet categories and numbers at the top of each page.

That way, you assemble the 50/80/140+ volumes into a single, cohesive publication once the series is done printing. Macross Chronicle's current edition has 12 different kinds of article (sheet), which you sort according to sheet type, faction (where applicable), number, and letter. The types of sheet are: Mechanic, Character, Timeline, History*, Technology, Worldguide, Glossary, Episode, Heroine Gallery**, Gallery, Song, and Goods.


* Examines specific events in great detail, usually battles... where the Timeline Sheet is a broad chronological overview.

** Official art of Macross's leading ladies... this is a new type of sheet in 2nd Ed., with a lot of mecha musume art. Regular Gallery sheets are often official production or promotional art like DVD box covers and posters.

[Seto Kaiba]

Some news regarding the Macross II blu-ray release... here's the absolutely gorgeous new box for the release:

Outer Sleeve
Disc Case

[SRoss]

Sweet.