REVIEW: Magincross
Game Title: Magincross
Genre: Horizontal shoot-em-up
System: Watara Supervision
Developer: Sachen
Release date: 1992
Genre: Horizontal shoot-em-up
System: Watara Supervision
Developer: Sachen
Release date: 1992
Quite what the inspires a developer to knock-out a boatload of games from a genre that is fundamentally unsuited to the hardware that they appear on is a genuinelly perplexing one.
Shoot-em-ups are, of course, have an immesly broad appeal, yet when the Supervision, a system that has a great deal of trouble handling fast moving sprites and suffers from both ghosting and sprite flicker, is stuffed full of a game-type that requires both good visability and pinpoint movement, it is still difficult to imagine why a developer like Sachen didn't move in a different direction.
The fact that the not-at-all subtely named Magincross is clearly designed to trick illiterate anime fans and small children into believing it is a Macross title might explain its presence on Watara's equally inappropriately named beast.
Sadly, Magincross doesn't even make more than that perfunctory effort to disquise it's nature as little more than a cheap knock-off of the NES title Chou Jikuu Yousai - Macross, which means it's a standard horizontal scroller with one unique, or, in this case, plagiarised, twist. Instead of simply playing as the archetypal shmup ship, a push of the A button while holding left or right on the d-pad will cause your ship to moph into an alternate mode. These are all but identical to their Macross variants: a thicker ship with a wider bullet or a giant mech with a spread gun (similar to the one you control in the far better Sachen effort Armour Force for the Mega Duck).
It's somewhat telling, however, that before reading the instruction manual, we didn't even realise that this was a feature of the game and even more revealing that, after discovering the ability, we've yet to find a practical use for it. This is because, as with many fast moving Supervision games, it can be hard enough to avoid being hit by things you can't properly see, without accessing an ability that makes your sprite twice as vulnerable as Magincross's giant mech-bot is.
As a result we tend to stick to just using the default ship and have had no trouble polishing the game off without ever transforming. This leads us to believe that the gimmick was only included so as to further plunder the original source material, as it does not seem to have any in-game benefit.
Shoot-em-ups are, of course, have an immesly broad appeal, yet when the Supervision, a system that has a great deal of trouble handling fast moving sprites and suffers from both ghosting and sprite flicker, is stuffed full of a game-type that requires both good visability and pinpoint movement, it is still difficult to imagine why a developer like Sachen didn't move in a different direction.
The fact that the not-at-all subtely named Magincross is clearly designed to trick illiterate anime fans and small children into believing it is a Macross title might explain its presence on Watara's equally inappropriately named beast.
Sadly, Magincross doesn't even make more than that perfunctory effort to disquise it's nature as little more than a cheap knock-off of the NES title Chou Jikuu Yousai - Macross, which means it's a standard horizontal scroller with one unique, or, in this case, plagiarised, twist. Instead of simply playing as the archetypal shmup ship, a push of the A button while holding left or right on the d-pad will cause your ship to moph into an alternate mode. These are all but identical to their Macross variants: a thicker ship with a wider bullet or a giant mech with a spread gun (similar to the one you control in the far better Sachen effort Armour Force for the Mega Duck).
It's somewhat telling, however, that before reading the instruction manual, we didn't even realise that this was a feature of the game and even more revealing that, after discovering the ability, we've yet to find a practical use for it. This is because, as with many fast moving Supervision games, it can be hard enough to avoid being hit by things you can't properly see, without accessing an ability that makes your sprite twice as vulnerable as Magincross's giant mech-bot is.
As a result we tend to stick to just using the default ship and have had no trouble polishing the game off without ever transforming. This leads us to believe that the gimmick was only included so as to further plunder the original source material, as it does not seem to have any in-game benefit.
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The game does at least feature a nifty little animated intro, although Galactic Presidents please note: If you don't want something bad to happen, don't use a calender system with an 'X' in it!
Plundering the source material is something that Magincross does quite shamelessly. Listen carefully to the theme tune and you'll hear something that is a barely disguised riff on the original NES game and, we presume, something familiar to fans of the anime.
Unlike with Sachen's other horizontal shooter, Thunder Shooting, this does at least justify why the developer has again opted for music over sound effects. However, it doesn't take away the fact that there is just something fundamentally wrong with a shooter where you can't hear things exploding in response to being hit by the rapid-fire pew-pew of your space cannon. Space may be a soundless vortex but that doesn't mean we want that kind of scientific accuracy in a videogame. We didn't like it when Cybernoid did it on the C64 to make way for an awesome chip tune! We certainly don't like it when it's replaced by the sort of tinny orchestra that Watara's creation is capable of piping out.
Unlike with Sachen's other horizontal shooter, Thunder Shooting, this does at least justify why the developer has again opted for music over sound effects. However, it doesn't take away the fact that there is just something fundamentally wrong with a shooter where you can't hear things exploding in response to being hit by the rapid-fire pew-pew of your space cannon. Space may be a soundless vortex but that doesn't mean we want that kind of scientific accuracy in a videogame. We didn't like it when Cybernoid did it on the C64 to make way for an awesome chip tune! We certainly don't like it when it's replaced by the sort of tinny orchestra that Watara's creation is capable of piping out.
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Starting at Level 00 only makes the game feel even shorter than it is. The repetition of bosses, while true to the original, is not exactly awe inspiring either.
But, what of the gameplay?
Well, it's certainly a whole lot more polished than Thunder Shooting. Enemies move in much fairer patterns than they did in that game, sweeping on-screen in organised, if slightly flickery, waves, instead of randomly appearing in the middle of the screen to wipe you out. Your own craft has a feeling of weight behind it (although it gets a little zippy when you collect all the speed-up tokens) and the powerups generally seem worth collecting this time around.
Unfortunately after just 3 short levels with the same boss at the end of each of them (each only slightly stronger than the last) you'll have saved the universe and the kettle won't even have finished boiling! The game does try to compensate for this by giving you only one life and no continues, but because it also apes the NES game's rechargeable life bar, this doesn't really present the challenge that it might have done in a one-hit-kill style shooter.
Magincross, then, feels very much like something quickly knocked out in order to cash in on the popularity of both the franchise and game it is attempting to clone. In doing so, it bolts on features from both, without ever really taking the time to give them a purpose. The engine is solid enough but, like a child who asked Santa for a Gameboy and instead unwrapped a Supervision on Christmas day, you can't help but feel shortchanged by what's actually under the hood.
Well, it's certainly a whole lot more polished than Thunder Shooting. Enemies move in much fairer patterns than they did in that game, sweeping on-screen in organised, if slightly flickery, waves, instead of randomly appearing in the middle of the screen to wipe you out. Your own craft has a feeling of weight behind it (although it gets a little zippy when you collect all the speed-up tokens) and the powerups generally seem worth collecting this time around.
Unfortunately after just 3 short levels with the same boss at the end of each of them (each only slightly stronger than the last) you'll have saved the universe and the kettle won't even have finished boiling! The game does try to compensate for this by giving you only one life and no continues, but because it also apes the NES game's rechargeable life bar, this doesn't really present the challenge that it might have done in a one-hit-kill style shooter.
Magincross, then, feels very much like something quickly knocked out in order to cash in on the popularity of both the franchise and game it is attempting to clone. In doing so, it bolts on features from both, without ever really taking the time to give them a purpose. The engine is solid enough but, like a child who asked Santa for a Gameboy and instead unwrapped a Supervision on Christmas day, you can't help but feel shortchanged by what's actually under the hood.
Score 4/10
