Robotech: Crystal Dreams – Guide and Walkthrough

Robotech: Crystal Dreams was a Nintendo 64 title in development by GameTek announced in May 1995. Originally titled Robotech Acadmey, the game was one of the most anticpated for the new system. Sadly it went through a number of development issues. It was previewed at the 1998 E3 trade show, but was cancelled shortly afterwards.

On 3 December 2003 one of the programmers from GameTek released the image files for Robotech: Crystal Dreams as far into development as the game had gotten. His site also contains a lot of information about the development, concept art, and other links related to its history. If you are interested in the game, I recommend checking out his site: http://www.opusgames.com/games/rcd/rcd.html

The story was concerned with a conflict set between the events of the Macross Saga and Sentinels. This conflict was called the Crystal War and began when a group of Zentraedi folded out of space near Venus. Players took control of Kyle Bartley, a disgraced RDF pilot, as he comes back into service to fight these invaders and a mysterious entity called Eboliar, and reconnect with his former Zentraedi lover Vala Norri.

This guide is based off the incomplete release of Robotech: Crystal Dreams. Being an incomplete game, many features are not available. This guide outlines the basics of playing what is present and offers an as complete as possible walkthrough of the missions that are available.

Robotech: Crystal Dreams was never completed, meaning that it is neither bug-free nor are all features completed. This section will guide you in the basics of controlling your Veritech fighter, but please note that sometimes the controls are unresponsive. Likewise certain weapons can be a little buggy.

This section is very similiar to the help file provided with the game file. If you have read that, and you should, this is largely superfluous information. It is provided here for quick reference (in the case of controls) and for completeness sake.

Weapons are somewhat limited in the final release, but would have been expanded in the finished game. Currently there are two types of lasers, one gunpod weapon, and four types of missiles. The gunpod can only be used in guardian and battloid mode, while the nose lasers can only be used in fighter mode. The second type of laser that can be used is the turret laser, which is weaker than the nose laser but can be used in any mode.

The missiles are bit more varied. Ballistic missiles fire two missiles directly ahead of you. Cluster missiles fire four missiles at your current target. Guided missiles are missiles you can control by holding the L-trigger and moving it with the analog stick. Homing missiles fires one missile at your current target.

These controls are for the second player. This is how the developers were able to demonstrate combat and fighter models. Spawning a new enemy fighter or craft with these buttons will cause it to appear some distance in front of your current position. Its speed and trajectory will be random. Shortly after it will attempt to target and attack the nearest opposing fighter or craft.

There are a couple of issues with these configurations. The joypad controls section does not work. Saving data with the memory pak option will create a file, but it does not actually save anything. Changing the control setting to "modal" will result in the controls not working.

Using the option to create a custom veritech has a few choices available to you. There are a couple of preset color schemes and tail designs. You can cycle through these if you wish. Trying to use the option to create your own design will crash the game, so I do not recommend you try it.

This menu lets you examine the models for all fighters and craft present in this build of the game. You can use the analog stick to rotate the model. Holding the A-Button and moving the analog stick will move the model futher away or closer. Holding the B-Button and moving the analog stick will move the ship around the screen. Holding the Z-Trigger and moving the analog stick will spin the model around.

Hitting C-Right will toggle ship animations on and off. If they are on and you are looking at a veritech you can transform it. To see it in fighter mode, press up on the directional pad. To see it in battloid mode, press down on the directional pad. To see it in guardian mode, press right on the directional pad. Hitting left on the directional pad will make the legs of a model move. Lastly, hitting C-Up can sometimes make a model do a weird animation.

Most of these options are self-explanatory. Options that alter basic game mechanics tend to cause problems, but can be amusing. For the sound and music options you can cycle through the tracks and hit L-Trigger to turn them on or off, while Start will exit back to the menu. Most interesting is the Play Character Dialogue option to view the game's story dialogue. Doing this after playing around with the Test a Face menu can cause the wrong faces to show up.

There is a multiplayer mode available in this build. The menu offers deathmatch mode for two or four players. The four player mode works, but the two player mode seems to crash the game. Players start quite a ways away from each other, but you can engage in a dogfight and destroy one another.

Originally Robotech: Crystal Dreams was conceived as having an open world in which missions would come and go, allowing you respond or not. There wasn't going to be a set mission structure. Independent missions were conceived seperately from the main game. In this version of the game, you only have access to some of these latter missions.

This mission seems to be intended to get you familiar with piloting and destroying your targets. It begins by describing how to find targets and how to speed up or down. Fly to your first target and take it out. This will spawn another drone. Fly to it and shoot it down. You might want to use homing missiles for this if you are having trouble doing it with the lasers.

After the second drone is shot down, two more drones will spawn. These two will move more erratically than the previous drone. Destroying these two will give you a congratulations message saying you have completed the mission. If you wish to keep going, four more drones will spawn, but you can end the mission at any time by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission is about view controls and transformations. It begins by having you look around the cockpit by holding the A-Button and moving the analog stick. Tap the A-Button to recenter your view. It will then guide you through external views by holding down the A-Button and hitting down on the directional pad.

After this you will be guided through transforming between fighter, guardian, and battloid modes by tapping the B-Button. This is done still in external view, at the end of which it will remind you that you can switch back to your cockpit view by tapping the A-Button. When you do this the message will not change as the mission remains incomplete. You can quit the mission at any time by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission isn't working very well, but it will let you do some basic combat. The mission text will tell you to transform into guardian mode. Doing so will not, however, change the text so it doesn't really matter. A battlepod piloted by Kergen Krashavera will be attacking you as soon as the missin starts. Destroying him will cause another enemy to spawn, and so on if it is destroyed. This is probably the best place to get a feel for combat, so give it a shot. You can quit the mission at any time by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission is the same as the previous one, except I think the enemy is supposed to be a missile pod and there is no mission text. The Zentraedi pod is still piloted by Kergen Krashavera. Destroying it will spawn another one. Whenever you wish, you can quit the mission by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission takes place in orbit of Saturn. There is no mission text here and no enemy fighters or craft. Instead asteroids spawn continuously in front of you. You can either shoot these down or dodge them. They will damage you if you run into them. There are not very many of them at a time sadly, but it shows they could have been an interesting hazard in the final game. As always, you can quit the mission by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission is just like the previous one, but with the addition of comets to the other asteroids. The comets look and function like asteroids, except they have a trail behind them. This mission also seems to spawn a lot more asteroids at a time then the previous one, so it is all around the better mission to blast asteroids in of the two. There is no objective here, so you can quit the mission at any time by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

These missions do not work in this build. Selecting one of them will simply desposit you in empty space. To resume elsewhere, quit the mission by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

This mission, as the title suggests, is what was shown at E3. You can play it as is or you can use a second controller to spawn various additional fighters and craft to add to the mission. In orbit around Earth are the SDF-3 Pioneer, a factory satellite, and a Zentraedi scout ship.

Approaching the Zentraedi scout is supposed to make it fold to Saturn and take all other fighters and craft within a kilometer with it. It is then supposed to fold back and forth every two minutes thereafter. I have found that this is somewhat inconsistent; sometimes this occurs and sometimes it just hovers there. Most of the time when it folds it doesn't take anything with it.

There are not any scripted events here, so beyond flying around and defeating spawned enemies there isn't much to do. Sometimes your chat log will get flooded with the word "Gold," but it doesn't seem to do anything. You can quit the mission by selecting a new mission from the pause menu at any time.

This mission is a mirror to the previous mission, only you start at Saturn instead of Earth. There is a cluster of Zentraedi ships in orbit of Saturn, specifically a flagship, scout, destroyer, command ship, and cruiser. Approaching the Zentraedi ships will cause them to fire at you and prompt messages from Kergen Krashavera.

Like the previous mission, there are no scripted events other than the messages from the Zentraedi commander. You can spawn enemy fighters and craft from some dogfights around the hostile capital ships, but that's about it. You can switch to another mission at any time by selecting one from the pause menu.

These missions do not work in this build. Selecting one of them will simply desposit you in empty space. To resume elsewhere, quit the mission by selecting a new mission from the pause menu.

Robotech: Crystal Dreams is (c) GameTek.