Volguard II / Macross / Zunou Senan Galg retrospective: A mech of a mess | NES Works Gaiden

[@XanthinZarda]

Jeremy Parish: Our taxi driver though the bumpy backroads of the NES and Famicom, who nonetheless provides a pleasant tour of even the murkiest bog mire.

[@willmistretta]

Damn. I need an ornately-framed portrait of Tarkus on my wall now.

[@JeremyParish]

We have one in every room of our house

[@DopeyDragonz]

It's a shame a lot of these Famicom mecha games are so low quality. If I was a young kid in mid 80s Japan, I'd have been suckered in.

[@diamondsmasher]

Used to play Macross, thanks for putting its history in perspective. I remember constantly thinking, “Is this it? What am I missing?” Apparently nothing!

[@SatoshiMatrix1]

These Famicom games are all common on multicarts of the late 80s and early 90s. I played all three of these, along with others like B-Wings and Circus Charlie. They're.....okay on a multicart. I couldn't imagine individually paying to own these games, especially back when they were each full price!

[@AQuestionofCharacter]

Wow. Not just the mind-numbing gameplay but also the music that has all the personality of incessant beeps from a Casio watch.

[@jasonblalock4429]

That's probably the Xevious influence.

[@stanleyteriaca2184]

Jeremy, "Do You Remember Love"?

[@stevemanart]

I played Macross on emulation back in the early 00s, and I was just waiting for the contra style run-and-gun levels in the humanoid form of the ships that never came and I was sad.

[@ThomasMHead]

The base concept for Galg seems like it would have been okay: top-down shooter with branching paths. If they fit in 30 stages, they should have kept it at that. Repeating all those areas to collect 100 parts, when you can be robbed of all of them!? Name the game "Sisyphus".

[@RabbitEarsCh]

I totally didn't realize Night on the Galactic Railroad was 1985. With its profoundly strange soundtrack courtesy of maestro Haruomi Hosono and timeless visuals, it feels like it could go anywhere in the late 80s and seem reasonable.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Nice to see examples of Itano Circus with the Macross retrospective. Yeah, this week had three not good games but at least the commentary is excellent as always. Bokosuka Wars next? Oh boy

[@ginormousaurus8394]

The 1980s Transformers animated series was a co-production of Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions. Sunbow Productions was owned by Griffin-Bacal Advertising. Marvel Productions was formerly DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which was purchased by Marvel Comics' then parent company Cadence Industries in 1981.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Yep, quite a lineage.

[@vix_in_japan]

Saw these a week ago on a Famicom cart shopping trip here in Japan, and instinctively knew avoid! Especially that Macros game…

[@janlentan892]

Bandai and Namco coming together? Seems unlikely.

[@DeepWeeb]

Thank you, Jeremy Parish, for sitting through all that Famicom shovelware we never heard of before

[@RndStranger]

I actually kind of like Volguard II though the power up system in it is needlessly confusing. The gist of it is, the weaker you are when you meet the carrier, the better the weapon you get. So there's a risk-reward mechanic that involves running down your power. Also, each weapon has its own musical theme which have been given lyrics by the developer. I have no kind words at all for Macross. Galg has a boss at the end of it, oddly enough. I don't think it's worth collecting the 100 parts to see it, but it exists. I also love that the box claims the game is an RPG.

[@TheTacticalRPGOdyssey]

That Galg OST is giving me aural PTSD. (Played it on the PowerJoy plug and play)

[@BenCol]

7:39 Damn it, I’m going to have ‘Lonely Solider Boy’ in my head all day now. Though, on the other hand, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

[@daviddalrymple2284]

Imagine spending 4,800 yen for that Macross game. There are a lot of simple NES games that have provided me with 4,800 yen worth of enjoyment: Tetris, Pin-Bot, Blades of Steel and Super Spike V Ball spring readily to mind. But Macross is a game where the fun lasts for about as long as it takes to destroy that fortress twice, maybe 10-15 minutes if you're feeling generous.

[@magus2342]

Explains why JP devs fought rentals so hard.

[@MES082]

There's so many times you can listen Shao Pai Long before you want to throw the cartridge out the window.

[@Kigamine]

SHAO PAI LONG IS A VERY MESSIAH i've heard that song so many times just watching the show i can hear the lyrics from just the instrumental

[@kamulecPL12]

Thanks, Jeremy Parish, for unearthing those rightfully forgotten catastrophes of game design.

[@TheJMaqExperience]

I did a video series where I played through every game on one of those 600-in-1 bootleg systems, and these Gaiden videos have been a godsend in giving me context for all these weird games I’d never heard of!

[@hiryuzerotwo6437]

Thank you for covering these! I always wanted more information on the old Macross games and it is almost never mentioned in the West

[@Lightgod87]

This video somehow unlocked buried memories I didn't remember I had. Now somehow I remember playing Galg in a multigame cartridge, but the memory seems so distant, so I can't clearly remember when or where I played or saw it. Weird, isn't it?

[@rowtow13]

I definitely played that Macross game on one of those bootleg multicarts and I definitely didn't realize it was a Robotech game.

[@chriscroft2323]

holy crap flashing light warning for that macross boss explosion

[@1903tx]

@7:51 My dad had that Tarkus LP when I was a kid and loved the cover art

[@JeremyParish]

Album contender for Best Girl

[@joshmay2944]

It's a pretty great record as well if you like prog rock. And the gatefold LP art is god tier.

[@Obscusion2]

I wouldn't say that Famicom Macross would be the "beginning", since the Bandai Arcadia (Japan's version of the Emerson Arcadia 2001) had a Macross game for it back in 1983, alongside Gundam, Doraemon, & Dr. Slump. From what I can tell, those Bandai Arcadia games may actually be the very first console video games ever based on anime (depends on if you want to count old LCD games as "video games"), as I don't think there were any arcade games based on anime out quite yet, while the Arcadia seemingly came out in Japan just a few months prior to the Famicom & SG-1000. That being said, barely anyone in Japan actually bought a Bandai Arcadia, so fair play to Famicom Macross being the first one to actually "count".

[@dialaskisel5929]

Holy crap! You're right! That is the Album cover of Tarkus!!!

[@Phroggster]

I feel like I'm a part of the shovel, just pushing out these abominations out to the masses, whether or not the people even wanted them. Thanks Jeremy.

[@bradleysmith2043]

"...if you're nasty" hahaha love that little nostalgic easter egg!

[@ttvp]

Dang I can't believe I actually played Volguard 2. It was just included in a lot of some random famicom games, along with 1943, Exerion, and a few others I don't remember off the top of my head. I will admit that the cool robot on the label DID make me slightly excited, but that didn't last long after playing lol. It's not a new development but it's still amazing to see how much shovelware was released for the Famicom that was shielded from us in the USA, and this is barely the tip of the iceberg.

[@ThomasMHead]

Robotech made a big impact on my childhood! I got to play that Macross game because a friend had it on one of those 30-in-1 carts. Yeah, the play was "meh"; but it was the only Robotech around.

[@residentgrigo4701]

Robotech: Battlecry (the PS2 version emulates well) is the best Macross adaptation to this day. The (fan-translated) Japan-only SNES shooter is the 2nd best.

[@magus2342]

Looking at these, it really feels like Winter '85 is when the Famicom Boom really picked up. As though this set is the first few drops of the tidal wave of shovelware that will soon crash onto the system.

[@fiiidget]

What anime is that opening clip w the cat and the train from?

[@nate567987]

night on the galactic railroad it will make you cry

[@TanookiSuit]

Hah nice. I own Macross, it's got just enough redeeming value to keep because how well it does do what little it does, an average shooter with transformation changes to mindlessly rack points time and again with increasing challenge like a very early classic arcade game. But, to that point, cold dead fingers would pull the Super Famicom game from my fingers -- that's god tier of the franchise. :D I await the decade of SFC Gaiden and that game appears.

[@alex_-yz9to]

Ok at first i was wondering why some people said "the death of the famicom" when commenting certain years of its life span came along but now that i've seen these games hit the scene... yeah i can certainly see that lowquality is a universal constant!

[@darktetsuya]

the only one of these I've ever played was Macross, and that was probably in a pirate ROM or I may have had it on one of those bootleg N64-shaped controllers with like "76000" games in it, I'm more than sure it was on there. was an okay shmup from what I played. probably the best one in the lot here, relatively speaking.

[@rory_o]

Woof. You know it is getting bad out there when we get three Japanese shooters without resetting the Xevious reference clock.

[@JeremyParish]

I didn't want to sully Xevious' name by association.

[@jamesmoss3424]

It was for the best that those three games should not been released in the USA.

[@marcelthoma8890]

These poor children who got any of these "games" by a well meaning relativ, and then been stuck with it for the next six or even twelve months.

[@ryuhoshu3303]

"If you're nasty" hahahaha

[@Megared82]

I've read that Super Dimension Century Orguss wasn't chosen for Robotech simply because it belonged to a different animation company. Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada were from Tatsunoko while Orguss was from Sunrise. Though almost everyone who worked on Macross worked on Orguss.

[@JeremyParish]

Makes sense. The rights and production on those are a tangled mess. But, also, Orguss is kinda middling compared to the others, and the whole subplot of Mimsy being driven by the need to get Teenage Pregnant on a deadline wouldn’t have flown on kids’ TV at all.

[@nate567987]

@@JeremyParish production company's all 3 were studio nue animion wise

[@Mr_Redsfan]

I mean, it said “nice play.” What more do you want?

[@FlockAndField]

Emerson Lake & Palmer is practically an Alien reference. Also, am I wrong for seeing Roger Dean in VG arts? And some Weather Report in the sounds??

[@jasonblalock4429]

And to think, the terrible Famicom Transformers game has yet to rear its deformed head.

[@JeremyParish]

Thankfully, this series won't be venturing that deep into Famicom history.

[@johnnygrind77]

I laughed at and enjoyed the, "...if you're nasty" line!

[@johnsimon8457]

In the early emulation days when roms were all scattershot, I remember sorting my NES collection by size, and picking out the smallest one and … Macross at 16kb! Mario is 32kb I’ll have to track down the original Macross show given how much of a smash it was among otaku given its toyetic root’s

[@abraveastronaut]

I had "Robotech: The Macross Saga" on GBA, which I now suspect was meant as a remake of the Famicom game (though I guess there's nothing so earthshattering about the concept here that it couldn't be independently devised twice with the same-ish license). It included a little SD Valkyrie/Veritech figurine. I think cramming the figurine into the cartridge slot would have yielded more fun results than actually playing the game.

[@Choralone422]

I know there have been seemingly endless amount of discussion about how NOA was so awful in how much control they had over 3rd party publishers in the US during much of the NES days, but could you imagine if the US had received a flood of games like this in 86 or 87 during the early days of the NES? I know we had our share of (mostly licensed) stinkers here. However, a flood of games like this here before the NES was firmly established and we could have had a present day where we talked about the video game crash of 1989 or something similar.

[@cj694x2]

Exactly. NOA specifically put all of those policies in place in order to prevent what happened to Atari happening to them. People love to vilify Nintendo for it, ignoring that Sega put similar policies in place themselves, and previously Atari had sued (unsuccessfully) other companies to prevent third-party games from existing at all.

[@MaidenHell1977]

I love night on the Galactic Railroad I love it I love it

[@junethefox5834]

At least that's one thing Robotech has over Macross, a good 2d shooter (Lets forget about Scrambled Valkyrie for a bit okay)

[@Dark.Shingo]

Zunou Senan Galg sounds like someone saw Ghosts 'n Goblins and thought "How can I make doing multiple runs _excruciatingly_ worse?"

[@MiguelPaulettePerez-bj8ml]

I wonder where or if Zone of the Enders and Macross meet...

[@thejackal007]

Each of these looks equally terrible. I love your last line for each one, too. Still, congratulations for not mentioning Xevious in this video!

[@thunderhammerx2966]

Robotech is great; but probably also the most complicated show I've ever watched. It took years to learn it was really three shows standing on each other's shoulders while wearing a trenchcoat.

[@JeremyParish]

Doesn't help that the rewrites on the Southern Cross phase are borderline nonsensical. Most critical plot elements AND the characters' internal conflicts and concerns are only relayed through the end-of-episode narration. The other 20 minutes of each episode usually leave you scratching your head.

[@nate567987]

@@JeremyParish I mean being fair Southern Cross sucks and got cansoled

[@ElihuAran]

You say the humanoid form in the Macross game was slow, but it looks like it's uncontrollably fast, and the jet form looks slow as heck

[@Seth-nt9bf]

The worst part about Galg is that it was advertised as a "Scroll RPG" on its box. Instead it is just a very bland, needlessly repetitive shmup.

[@GamerGoingGrey]

Did I miss the conversion from ship to robot in Volguard II? I heard him mention it but just kept seeing the ship. Did I look away for a moment?

[@JeremyParish]

I forgot to capture footage of it 🙃

[@GamerGoingGrey]

@@JeremyParish Glad to know I'm not that crazy

[@GCSoundArtifacts]

At least, Macross was part of a cartridge of 52 games I had in my childhood. It could be worse... hahahaha... Here in Brazil, we watched both Macross (as "Guerra das Galáxias") and Robotech. I became aware of Robotech first, but, when I got that cartridge, I felt intrigued by the connection with that awful game (with nice rendition of one of the Minmei's song) and Robotech, by 1988 or 89. Only when I got to know Guerra das Galáxias in another channel by 1997, and the mention of the name "Macross", then things started to be clicking in my head. I really couldn't figured out why that amazing anime had such a crappy Famicom game. Now that I'm older I can see that was all about having a delusion... Thanks Bandai/Namco...? More like "thanks, Tatsunoko", despite everything.

[@michaelreddy4697]

The snark is off the charts here. Are you British by any chance ?

[@JeremyParish]

I do like gin

[@Maleketh42]

My favorite Macross fact is that the franchise has featured voice work by Bryan Cranston. I say this because it seems more interesting than the game.

[@charon59]

Man, I got actually mad at the Golg section. Who thought this was a compelling idea? I mean, really?

[@superleviathan]

Americans like to romanticize Japan-only games because they think they're all end-of-generation RPGs like EarthBound Beginnings or Trails of Mana. But watching your videos, we dodged so many bullets.

[@rodneylives]

Volguard II's text font is reminiscent of Compile's oft-used type. Is it known who coded it?

[@JeremyParish]

Couldn’t find details online. Compile isn’t impossible since they also handled Lunar Ball around this point and knew the hardware.

[@user-a5Bw9de]

Zunou Senkan Galg had long been on the Famicom Kusoge Hall of Fame for its tediousness and repetitiveness (including music) worse than Volguard 2 and Macross, but its rank was further bumped up due to a non-gaming element which gave it more publicity: THE first self-proclaimed RPG on Famicom. (RPG element in this game is minuscule, to be polite)

[@nate567987]

orguss was not in robotek because tatsunoko was the company that sold the rights to HG and they were not involved in orguss

[@gsilverfish]

So what are you collecting all those parts in Galg for? Do you transform or what?

[@JeremyParish]

No, you just need 100 parts to be able to complete the final stage. No rhyme or reason, just naked hatred for the player

[@retrojoe85]

Volguard II? It's more like "Vulgar, Too!". For the other two abominations, al least they gave two masterpieces like "To Start Push" and "Nice Play" to the history of wrong typos. These were absolutely common games sadly built into the internal memory of Multigame cartridges and Famiclones: playin' them was a faulty mistake, especially if you consider that in the same cartridge/console you could get Super Mario Bros, Popeye and games with much more substance. 🤐

[@comradestannis]

Subscribed.

[@BasementBrothers]

Oops! All kusoge.

[@raulbargas5021]

That Macros game looks like a Tose game

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, I have trouble believing it's an internal Namco project, since their output was usually so much better. Although Pac-Land wasn't great, so who knows.

[@syntaxerror9994]

That last game would of worked better if you needed one part for every level, but getting to every level requires learning the paths and even backtracking.

[@kaksikymmenta3]

Do you remember love? I do.

[@seanirby8838]

Did Micronics develop Macross, or is there not enough jank in the game for it to be their work?

[@JeremyParish]

Your ship moves at 60fps so it can’t be Micronics

[@dpgreene]

I actually like Galg and probably have put way too many hours into it. It's a fast pace competent shooter and has a decent amount of enemy/stage variety. It's incredibly unfair but as such offers a challenge like no other. Something about the enemy patterns and formations (and those damn side canyon guns) make it a white-knuckle experience at times. Its best played like Star Force, for score or how long you last. The goal of 100 parts, requiring at minimum 4 loops is nearly impossible, especially because the game gets significantly harder each loop. It's almost a cruel joke they even give you that goal.

[@tolindaniel]

Ooh, I'm nasty.

[@MrKeech666]

In regards to all 3 games, all I have to say is MY EARS! Even the worst Sega Master System game wasn't as grating! 😜

[@davidgusquiloor2665]

The Macross game hurts me. It's so sad to take a very beloved series and make a game so mediocre. But that's how it always worked i guess.

[@tekkensentai]

Isn't Macross on the switch online service ?

[@JeremyParish]

Not in the U.S. it ain't

[@tekkensentai]

@@JeremyParish sorry. Maybe I played it on a handheld emulator

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

@@JeremyParish Typical.

[@deboshadow]

Difference between Rick and Armoro the Great Emo is Rick grew as a character. The Great Emo has always been worthless. And Char Pinky the Traitor's Zaku was pink.

[@JeremyParish]

You ok?

[@MrMegaManFan]

Ah yea. Three more Famicom games you can get for a buck. 😎

[@jbanks979]

It’s certainly …..disorienting if nothing else just to look at the different time frames of the US and Japanese NES/famicom, as the famicom was facing its “crap influx” life cycle while NES was just releasing black box games. Everything here looks mostly terrible even for early NES standards, it’s hard to say it wouldn’t have blown minds when compared to Atari’s offerings at a similar time frame. That sound though……

[@sneakyskunk1]

Minmei was such a drip. Sure she could sing, but other than that she was a total flake. Yes, I understand that her voice was instrumental in creating a schism within the Zentradi fleet. That does not mean I have to like her. She chose her own cousin over Rick. Yuck.

[@Riz2336]

I guess this was the trend at the moment, pretty boring looking games

[@changkwangoh]

Robotch Watch @ 2:14