I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

[Jonpachi]

I haven't spent much time with Plus, but the two ACA games are unmissable in their own ways. The first plays like a slightly less scrappy version of Thunder Dragon, and is a really fun and rewarding clear barring a couple of nasty chokepoints, but Macross II is quite simply the best caravan shooter ever made — a secret-hunter's paradise.

Is part II only a Caravan game? Is there a regular saga as well? No interest if it's just a speed/score affair.

[dmk1198]

I like Ace Combat,
For me, it's the total opposite. This has big bad cool ass After Burner vibes!
I loathe the console exclusives

Pretty cool

Yes enjoyed this on mame
Game finished after sinking first ship is that right? Graphics were very cool but £16 steep for such short game 15/20 mins

[SavagePencil]

I haven't spent much time with Plus, but the two ACA games are unmissable in their own ways. The first plays like a slightly less scrappy version of Thunder Dragon, and is a really fun and rewarding clear barring a couple of nasty chokepoints, but Macross II is quite simply the best caravan shooter ever made — a secret-hunter's paradise.

Is part II only a Caravan game? Is there a regular saga as well? No interest if it's just a speed/score affair.

From watching replays, no I don't think it's a caravan game. I think they were alluding to how much hidden shit there is in the environment (lots of little medals that appear by shooting the right location) that would align well with a short time to set the highest score experience.

[Jonpachi]

Awesome. Thanks all. I'll pick them both up.

[BrianC]

What's up with them? It's been a long while, but I'm sure I got pretty far into AF3 without any issues?

From my experience with 2 and 3:

-higher lag than other ACA releases
-no multiple autofire settings, just ON and OFF, and ON is less than 30hz (this I noticed when my timing for killing things in SW2 was off the other night) - later ACA releases often have several rates to choose from
-can only map one button for autofire, instead of having multiple buttons for multiple types of autofire
-in Original mode, you can set your lives to 99 and still have your score registered on the leaderboard
-in High Score mode, you are locked into playing Aero Fighters 2/3, there is no way to play the japanese version in High Score Mode
-even worse, autofire is disabled for High Score mode! This is not the case in other aca titles and just makes the whole experience a tedious slog.

I think the ACA NeoGeo releases also lack the option to start on the 2p side with the p1 controller, which is a preference option in some of the more recent ACA games.

[Klatrymadon]

I haven't spent much time with Plus, but the two ACA games are unmissable in their own ways. The first plays like a slightly less scrappy version of Thunder Dragon, and is a really fun and rewarding clear barring a couple of nasty chokepoints, but Macross II is quite simply the best caravan shooter ever made — a secret-hunter's paradise.

Is part II only a Caravan game? Is there a regular saga as well? No interest if it's just a speed/score affair.

It's made up of three roughly ten-minute courses (Beginner/Medium/Expert) with three stages each, so it doesn't exactly follow the Compile/Hudson caravan structure but it's definitely geared towards the same kind of score-attacking and optimisation. Crucially, it's played against the clock — you want to score as much as you can before you get to the stage's boss, then speedkill the boss so that you can destroy bonus waves for the remaining few seconds. (It shouldn't give you much trouble but there's also a "clear score", a kind of quota you have to fill on each stage in order to keep playing.)

There are enough stages to prevent it from feeling slight, but yeah, this one's all about the speed, eventually!