Macross II: The Role-Playing Game came out in 1993. Palladium tried to cash in on the surefire success of Macross II.
What the hell is Macross II? you might ask even as a knowledgeable anime fan.
Well, the original Superdimension Fortress Macross was a seminal hit show in Japan in 1982, got made into Robotech in the West, and influenced both the Transformers and Battletech franchises. It had transforming mechas, space battles, high drama, suspense! Also giant aliens falling to the power of idol pop singers.
In 1992 they decided to make a sequel for the tenth anniversary of the original. Imaginatively titled Macross II: Lovers Again, it concerned another invasion by aliens just this time they had their own singers.
It was not well received. It was not bad as such, but it wasn’t what audiences wanted, and once more sequels to Macross were made, was treated as the red-haired step child of the franchise.
But it is distinctive in being the only Macross series that got a (western) RPG system made for it. By Palladium even, which means it is broadly compatible with R.I.F.T.S, the Turtles RPG, and wherever else they put that system. Yes, the Robotech game as well. They point out in the introduction that it is NOT the same as Robotech.
I have never played this. The only reason I have it at all was because by 1995 it was marked down to pocket money prices in my local game store, and I also was an anime fan.
And to be fair, that cover still looks so incredibly cool!
And the game did teach me important lessons as well. They had less to do with anything about the game itself, and more with the presentation. Because as snazzy as that book looked like, I couldn’t even imagine what sort of scenarios I was supposed to run in it. Replay a series I didn’t even watch (and which AFAIK never was released in my country)? Create scenarios based on the meagre information in the rulebook? What sort of scenarios was this even supposed to have?
I don’t know.
I still don’t.
With more of the Macross franchise under my belt I think I could come up with some scenario whatever it is. After all nothing I could come up with could beat the concept of Macross 7 in silliness. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I should come to an RPG and know what it is supposed to be about, and the Macross II RPG basically was nothing more than geeks statting up their new favorite series in their homebrew system.
I mean really, a lot of the main book was taken up by A. character concepts (mostly military) and B. robot stats
If you think about the old adage that space taken by a subject in the rulebook equals time in the game the designers clearly intended this game to mostly take place in various examples of transformable mecha.
They even had a sourcebook (imaginatively titled Macross II Sourcebook One) which had… more variations on mecha. Each with 3-4 pages of description just like in the core book. That is weapon descriptions. And more variations on different concepts about soldiers.
In fact one of the later sourcebooks tried to introduce new ideas for scenarios, and it seems that the expectation was that all the scenarios so far were one-on-one space fights between giant robots.
No, really, the more I think about it the less it makes sense. Maybe it’s a difference with gaming cultures, but it seems this whole game is literally only about fighting against each other in giant robots to the point that the third book tells you you might want to do something else for once? And I would get it more if it was a wargame, but it isn’t. I just don’t really see how they intended this to be run.
I think I am missing context here though. Palladium games had its own universe of RPGs back then, maybe you were supposed to pick up how this was supposed to work from others (Turtles was their big hit) and just transfer it over. I don’t know. Maybe I am just missing something obvious. I just think this game was very unhelpful as someone’s second RPG.
Maybe I should try to run a game in it. Could be a learning experience.