4Gamer has a nice big update on Masou Kishin III, showing off the main mecha and characters. The special Valsione from the anime series, that we covered previously, also gets more eye candy too. Still no word on whether winkysoft is handling this but we’re cautiously optimistic that they will be. The latter is a big deal, as they made all the previous Masou Kishin games and some of the best entries into the normal Super Robot Wars canon too. In that, the games they made were far more strategic than the more brute force approach seen in the recent games. Pride of Justice is still set for its August 22nd release and you can pre-order it here.

Over at Hideo Kojima’s Twitter feed, he recently posted some photos of Yoji Shinkawa posing with a large prototype of ThreeA’s new Metal Gear RAY toy. This is a follow up to the equally large Metal Gear REX released by ThreeA last year. Whilst we love Shinkawa’s designs, we were pretty disappointed with ThreeA’s REX toy. It lacked any real diecast and subsequently felt very cheap. In addition, the colour scheme was also completely wrong and all the lightning felt out of place too. No word on price or release date for this new RAY toy though but it will probably be similarly priced to the previous REX toy.

This year’s Shizuoka Hobby Show is under way and as always it has a huge amount of new model kits on display. With Hasegawa’s new Myzr Eta kit (shown above) from Virtual On Force being notable. Bar that, there’s obviously a large amount of new Gundam related kits on the way and it seems the HGUC range seems to be getting a lot of interesting new entries. If you’re curious about the show then both CyberGundam (here, here and here) and AmiAmi (here, here and here) have lots of photos. HLJ also has a nice breakdown too.

The beta for Gundam Breaker has passed half million downloads since its launch. That’s not at all shabby for basically a glorified demo. In addition, save data from the beta will also be carried over to the full game come its release on June 27th. Finally, those that buy the game at launch will get all manner of parts perks with the MSN-00100 Hyaku Shiki (pictured above) being one of them. You can pre-order the PS3 version of the game here.

In the upcoming Masou Kishin III players will be given a special bonus code in the initial run of the game. This will give a different version of Valsione as seen in the Super Robot Wars OG: The Inspector anime series. This is not to be confused with Valsione R, which is a different mecha entirely. However, this redesign from the anime will have different attacks and animations from the standard Valsione (so it’s not just a simple re-skin). As always, these kind of little bonuses appeal to us and we’ll be definitely nabbing the game come its August 22nd release.

A YouTube user by the name of wipp er has uploaded an impressive fanmade anime intro for Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam. Written by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino and drawn by Yuichi Hasegawa, the Crossbone Gundam manga series spans several series (Crossbone Gundam, Skull Heart, Steel Seven and Ghost) and is a direct sequel to Gundam F91 and pseudo prequel to Victory Gundam. The series has spawned some very iconic mobile suits, designed by Hajime Katoki, that have graced several video games such as the Super Robot Wars Alpha series on the PS2, Another Century’s Episode R for the PS3, the G Generation series on various consoles and of course Gundam Extreme Versus for the PS3 and its arcade sequel Full Boost.

It has taken the creator of this animation around two years to complete and arguably has done a fantastic job capturing both Hasegawa’s character designs and Hajime Katoki’s mechanical designs in an animated form. If this video doesn’t get your mouth watering for some animated Crossbone Gundam goodness, I don’t know what will.

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Whilst this is not the first toy of Sakura Shinguji’s pink custom koubu from the Sakura Taisen series, this new Variable Action toy from Megahouse looks to be one of the best. Released at the end of September for 7,800 yen, it has a nice sculpt and what appears to be decent articulation too. Sadly, it doesn’t look like it comes with a Sakura pilot figure (though this likely helps to keep the price down). If you are one of those that enjoy pink steampunk mecha then make sure to pre-order yours here.

The second livestream for Armored Core Verdict Day will be happening on the 17th May (you’ll be able to watch it here). The main point of discussion will be about the new UNAC system, which is the new AI setup that harks back to earlier Armored Core games and allows AI wing-mates to help you out on missions (in the absence of human players).

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Those wondrous people at Sentinel have previewed the upcoming Riobot Detonator Orgun toy set for release this July at 9,800 yen. This is from the anime of the same name, which was Masami Obari’s take on Tekkaman. Orgun was also featured in Super Robot Wars W on the DS. In any case, this figure looks absolutely gorgeous and is something we’ll be definitely picking up this July (you can also pre-order it here).

Bandai Namco have announced the third entry into the Masou Kishin series with a new promo for Pride of Justice (shown below). The game will be released on both PS3 and Vita and seems to be using the same engine used on OG3. What’s unknown at this point is whether winkysoft will be developing this, as they’ve done all the prior Masou Kishin games (though this would be an obvious technical step-up for them). Whilst the engine is being reused due to the Masou Kishin character list a lot of this will be new animations and art for the game. In any case, both versions of the game are released on August 22nd for 7,480 yen (PS3) and 6,480 yen (Vita).

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