Change or die.
- "Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I might have been if things were different? It's one of my darkest fears: if you took the war out of me, would there be anything left?"
Robotech: Battlecry is a 2002 Mecha Game published by the now defunct TDK Interactive, based on the Americanized anime series Robotech. It follows the story of Jack Archer, a former mecenary in the Global Civil War turned Veritech pilot serving under the RDF as a member of Wolf Squadron. Together, with his allies, Jack works to protect humanity from the giant aliens known as the Zentraedi while also trying to determine if his life of war has all been worth it.
Robotech: Battlecry was the first licensed video game from Harmony Gold's Robotech license. The game made use of Cel Shading graphics and featured multiple voice actors from the original series voicing the new cast as well as reprising their old roles as cameos.
The game's story begins at the beginning of the anime before quickly jumping ahead to the SDF-1's return to Earth and the Rain of Death event. The rest of the game takes place during the reconstruction era of the anime where the main Zentraedi forces have been defeated and are integrating into human society while a few fringe insurgent groups are looking to start war anew.
This video game provides examples of:
- Airborne Mooks: The Zentraedi Fighter Pods fill this role, as the Zentraedi's main air unit. Another airborne mook is the Cyclops Recon Pod.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The first mission of chapter five involves the Zentraedi attacking Base 6.
- Big Bad: Zeraal, after the Rain of Death.
- Blood Knight: Kiyora.
- The Cameo: Rick Hunter, Roy Fokker, Minmei, and Lisa Hayes all make brief appearances in the main story. It helps that most of cast from the show are voicing other characters in this game.
- Cel Shading: Part of the initial wave of Cel-shaded video games.
- Child Soldier: Jack's opening narration reveals him to be this. His parents were killed in the Global Civil Wars and when the military was getting desperate for pilots he enlisted "young".
- Defeat Means Friendship: In Jack's backstory this is how he became friends with Roy. The two fought against each other in the Global Civil War and afterwards when the SDF-1 was gathering pilots for the Veritechs, Roy sought Jack out already knowing his skill.
- Defiant to the End: In the final mission when Zeraal teleports himself and Jack to the other end of the solar system, both Jack and Zeraal decide to go down fighting each other rather than just let roll over and die.
- Degraded Boss: Glaug Officer Battle Pods. You first encounter one as a boss (piloted by Skarrde) at the end of Chapter 2. By Chapter 4, Officer Battle Pods start to appear as regular enemies.
- Developer's Foresight: In the mission "The Enemy Within", despite the fact that you can only disable Hiro's Destroid, it is actually possible to kill him using the One Hit Kills cheat. Doing so leads to some unique dialogue and, obviously, a mission failure.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Kiyora. You finally kill her in Chapter 5, allowing Zeraal to take center stage.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Kiyora gets really into her fights with Jack and makes some questionable sounds when you do enough damage to her. In their last battle she's stripped out of her pilot suit down to her underwear behind her power armor and wonders if she's in love with Jack since she thinks about him day and night, specifically crushing him underfoot.
- Downer Ending: Jack is stranded in Space, and as the narration finishes, he starts coughing due to lack of air.
- Duel Boss: The first, third and fourth fights with Kiyora are just you and her with no interference.
- Elite Mooks: Male Power Armor. They have a buttload of health points and a laser cannon capable of doing a lot of damage to the player's mecha. They also have a resistance to missiles, so the easiest way to take them down would be the Sniper mode.
- Elsewhere Fic: This game is an Elsewhere Fic in video game form, as the characters from the anime only make a few appearances.
- Escort Mission: Several of them, and they are quite annoying as the escortee is often defenseless. One of them has you escorting Minmei!
- Fighting Your Friend: One boss fight has Jack defending the Zentraedi Skarrde from his friend Hiro. To clear the mission, you must disable Hiro's mech while keeping him from killing Skarrde.
- Framing Device: The narration is revealed to be Jack making an audio log of the events of the game minutes before dying from lack of oxygen.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The super Veritech add on can only be used for space missions and narratively speaking Jack would have the additional thrusters and armor equipped at the base before launching into space with it. However there's nothing stopping you from equipping it against the final fight with Zeraal, even though the mission where you fight him takes place immediately after Jack was caught in a space fold and wouldn't have had access to the super Veritech armor.
- Guide Dang It!: During Jack's first rematch with Kiyora, you have to save Izzy from drowning first before doing anything else. This involves grabbing her cockpit in Guardian mode and then putting her down on the shore away from the water. Although doing this is nothing new at this point, this type of objective is always indicated with a large glowing green safe zone for which to place an object you're ferrying in Guardian mode. However unlike every other level that has this kind of objective no such zone appears which leads some players believing they have to hold onto Izzy while fighting Kiyora in Guardian mode the entire fight, which makes the mission way harder than it actually is.
- Harmless Enemy: The Zentraedi Scout Pods, who have no armaments but can jam your radar, making it hard to know where enemies and allies are until you destroy them.
- Have a Nice Death: If you die fighting a boss they'll taunt you with a voiceover line on the "Retry" screen.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Jack starts to show signs of this after his fight with Gorian where he muses that he is happy that he killed him and laments what's becoming of him. In the ending during his Final Speech, Jack prays that he's helped more people than he harmed during his life as a pilot.
- Heel–Face Turn: Skarrde, who gives intel to Jack because Jack saved Skarrde from Hiro.
- Humongous Mecha: Why you're here.
- Informed Flaw: The Male Power Armor are said to be especially weak to the sniper function on the Battlloid mode. This is partially true since the Male Power Armor is resistant to missiles from the Guardian and Fighter, but Male Power Armors have a sniper laser of their own which will shave off half your health if they hit you with it, and unlike you they can move while firing it which means trying to counter-snipe when they are alerted to you makes you an easy sitting target. If you can't kill them with the sniper, you better get in their face quickly. The sniper is also useless against Gorian, a Male Power Armor wielding boss.
- Logo Joke: A zentradi Battle Pod walker blunders into a huge metal disc, and shakes its "head." This causes the gigantic coin to roll around and fall over, crushing the mech into paste underneath it and revealing the Vicious Cycle Software logo, to the amusement of both the player and the unseen personification of the Vicious Cycle itself.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Given that most Macross games are
blocked from release in the US, it is refreshing to finally have a region-local game that includes control of this awesome ability. - Mecha-Mooks: Being a video game based on a Mecha Show, the majority of your enemies are made up of this.
- Mooks: The Zentraedi Tactical Battle Pods (and their light and heavy artillery variants) are the standard, most common enemies that are faced throughout the game. There are also the scavengers, who make up the few non-mecha examples of this trope.
- Mirror Boss: Kiyora is the closest thing the game has to this. Her Female Powered Armor can fire missiles just like the Fighter mode, shoot down missiles with her machine guns like the Battlloid, and has crazy maneuverability and speed like the Guardian and Fighter. You can unlock her to use in multiplayer and you'll find that she has two different modes she can swap between on her armor just like the Veritechs.
- Mission Control: Lisa Hayes, initially, and Helena Chase. Izzy and Hiro also take up this role at certain points in the game.
- Original Character: The entire cast are all original characters that don't appear in any other Robotech works with the only exceptions being the handful of cameos of characters from the original series.
- Recurring Boss: Kiyora. You fight her no less than four times over the course of the game before finally putting her down for good in the final chapter.
- Red Is Heroic: Jack's the main hero of the game and his default paint scheme is red.
- Remixed Level: The game has several of them, mostly the ones set in Granite City.
- Saved by Canon: As an Easter Egg in the FPS Robotech: Invasion, Battlecry's counterpart/sequel, some hidden graffiti can be found reading "Jack Archer Lives!"
- Ship Tease: Jack gets a few of these flirting with his CO, Helena Chase. Unlike the mainline series with Rick and Lisa, however, it doesn't go anywhere.
- Time Skip: 75% of season 1 is skipped; Justified as Jack's fighter was Portal Cut by the Hyperspace Fold and he was only along for the ride during the first and last 3 episodes. Enforced by Harmony Gold not being legally allowed to make derivative works based on Super Dimension Fortress Macross and that was as much as they could get away with.
- Timed Mission: Several missions require you to complete them or deliver a vital object within the time limit or you get a Game Over. The second boss fight against Kiyora and the fight against Hiro are closer to soft timed missions since, although there's no timer, they will destroy Izzy and Skarrde respectively if you take too long defeating them.
- Transforming Mecha: Also why you're here, and a big selling point of the game; your Veritech can seamlessly change from fighter jet to giant robot to fighter-jet-giant-robot hybrid at any point in the game.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: The first fight with Kiyora. Although she will leave after you shave off a portion of her health, you will learn that if you want to be effective in combat, especially against the bosses, you're going to need to get used to swapping between the different modes to do things like turn on a dime, shoot down enemy missiles and keep up with her insane speed.
- Wolverine Publicity: The cover of the game's box art is Rick Hunter's Veritech and paint job. Although you can get these for yourself in game, the main character is actually Original Character Jack Archer whom's paint job is red. Rick does appear in the game, but only for two missions and at this point he has moved onto using Roy's Skull One fighter.
- Worthy Opponent: The Zentraedi remnants under Zeraal all come to view Jack this way, including the Big Bad himself. By the end of the game, it seems like every Zentraedi (except Skarrde) wants to fight Jack to the death.
- Villainous Crush: Kiyora's growing obsession with Jack eventually borders (if not outright crosses into) this, with an unhinged Kiyora asking at the start of their final battle if what she was feeling was what Micronians called "love", much to Jack's disgust.
