A portable companion to the Xbox/PS2/GameCube version.

GBA Robotech lets you choose from five pilots; Rick, Roy, Max, Ben and Miria- plus six hidden ones- to take into battle against the Zentraedi, each one with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Playing for the most part like a good old fashioned 16-bit side-scrolling shoot-em-up the Macross Saga of Robotech is broken into 10 stages each named after the episode that forms it's basis. 8 are side-scrolling and two are isometric and land based.

The scrolling levels are fairly run-of-the-mill in design. The veritech you control can transform into any of the three mode although you'll probably stick to fighter in most cases. You only have two attacks: a rapid fire Gunpod and a very limited supply of missiles that never seem to go where you want them to. Enemies appear in uninspired formations and more often than not simply fill the screen with bullets rather than anything more skillful.

Power-ups appear infrequently which provide you with more interesting attacks for a strictly limited time. Other power-ups provide support craft or a shield or missile increase.

The Destroid levels break add a little to the variety of the game but are the least enjoyable sections. The goal is the same for both; navigate around the maze of rocks/buildings to the landing pods, the green dots on the radar, and then destroy them.

To spice up the otherwise tried and tested gameplay rather than simply adding points to a score the player is awarded experience points for shooting down enemies. These points are then totaled up at the end of the stage and can be used to boost you stats.

The graphics are big and bold and all the smoothly animated sprites are pre-rendered giving a similar style to the 32-bit Macross title 'Do You Remember Love'. Good quality digitised sounds are used throughout and to good effect and the series original score accompanies all the action.

The game is quite easy and the accurate and responsive controls can't mask the fairly simplistic gameplay which gets tiresome after a while.

Interestingly this game features both two player co-op and four player versus multiplayer. Of course each player needs a copy of the game. The versus mode is set around the Destroid levels with all-against-all and team battles and a tag mode with each player searching for Minmei dolls.