Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy from Change!! Shin Getter Robo to review. Specifically, the Getter Robo 1 with Full Mantle that’s on sale. In addition, to give the toy some context, we’ve also linked some anime and gameplay footage of it in action in Super Robot Wars Z 2 at the end of the review.

There are few games that can define a console’s gaming worth, that make people go out and buy the hardware just to play that one game. As a series, Virtual On had suffered somewhat in its console renditions. With the first game being seriously hacked apart to make it run on the much less powerful Saturn. Whilst the game was still excellent it wasn’t what the original arcade version was like to play, even with the TwinStick peripheral.

So when SEGA announced that the sequel, Oratorio Tangram, would be ported to the Dreamcast there was a collective sharp intake of breath amongst fans. Could they really pull it off this time? Porting from Model 3 arcade board down to the Dreamcast, wouldn’t that just be as bad as what happened to the first game on the Saturn? More importantly, would it have a new TwinStick peripheral?

All those questions were answered come the game’s release and, for us, this game ultimately ended up defining the console in so many wonderful ways.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent the Metal Composite Gundam The Origin toy from the manga Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. The latter being a re-telling of the classic TV series and first three movies, as penned by the venerable Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The titular Gundam has numerous subtle differences compared to the original and this toy undertakes those in suitably painstaking detail.

What with Gundam Extreme Versus now finally on its way to a PlayStation 3 release, 4Gamer have done a breakdown on the game as well as a nice nod to the previous 10 years of Gundam Vs games. Bar the obvious “avoid getting shot in the face” advice, most of what is being discussed is stuff we already know (no new detail on the new modes as yet unfortunately). However, there is a shot of the Unicorn Gundam displaying green psycho frame innards. This is rather interesting, as it intimates the Full Armor variant might be present in the game after all. Lots of new shots too, so it’s clear the console port will clearly look spot on. There is now also a specific site for the console version too and you can pre-order the game here.

Over at the Kotobukiya site, the next Armored Core kit on the way finally got a listing. The kit being that of the first Nineball, not to be confused with the version from Ninebreaker or even the epic Nineball Seraph (the latter you can still nab here). We still have fond memories of taking on Nineball in the first Armored Core game, and this kit looks amazing. It will be released in December this year for 5,670 yen, you can pre-order it here.

Following the story trailer, we now have a new Hawken gameplay trailer. It looks lovely but the more we’re seeing of this game, the more it looks functionally a bit dated. It’s hard to say until we actually get our hands on the game but what we’re seeing looks like just another mecha themed FPS. Well, at least it will be pretty!

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In a move that’s not overly surprising, the next in the Composite Ver Ka line will be the Hatsune Miku Fei-Yen we mentioned a while back. This toy line has already graced at least one virtuaroid from the series, that of the mighty Temjin (which we can fully recommend). In many ways, Miku is a good fit for Virtual On and we half expect that one day she’ll surface as a playable character in the series. The toy will be released on the 11th November for 5,040 yen and you can pre-order it here.

Back in 2001 From Software announced their support for Microsoft’s first foray into the console market. With games like Murakumo and Gaia Blade many of the Japanese press and public regarded the Xbox as a possible contender, after all this was a staunch Japanese developer making games for an American console. The thing was that whilst Murakumo was available shortly after the Xbox’s release in Japan, Gaia Blade disappeared into insignificance.

The promotional in-game movie for Gaia Blade that was shown at the 2001 Tokyo Game Show displayed a rather lush “real time simulation” RPG set in a mythical almost ancient Greek inspired landscape. A scantily clad female warrior dispensed with multiple beasts in a pretty brutal fashion.

Roll forward a year to the following Tokyo Game Show and now people were asking what had happened to Gaia Blade. This time there weren’t any in-game movies but instead a few instances of pre-production artwork. Again, set in the mythical world but now with bipedal mecha and the game’s name had been changed to that of Gaia Gear. Admittedly, very few were surprised to see mecha in a From Software game but they were confused after seeing in-game footage of what looked to be an entirely different type of game. The question on everybody’s lips was what in the hell was From Software doing?

A year later a game finally appeared, the name had changed yet again as had the setting but the same design of bi-pedal mecha were present; the world had finally been introduced to Chrome Hound: Age of Arms.

A new MMO mecha game by Gamepot, entitled Gigantomakhia, will be starting its alpha testing as of today. It’s being touted as an MMO FPS/action game, with what looks like customisable mecha as well as on foot sections for the pilots. This sounds awfully similar to the unfortunate Gundam Online that was eventually canned. If that bombed with such a huge license attached to it, Gigantomakhia will clearly have its work cut out for it. Apparently the game won’t run on PC’s using Windows XP and needs DirectX 10 compatible graphics card. The screenshots at least look nice though.

What with the indie mecha game Hawken getting its film rights optioned, it seems that the multiplayer only game will also have something in the way of a story. The trailer below sets up the premise that the full on mecha combat is the result of an over industrialised colony world pushed to the brink of environmental collapse. All we do know is that it’s still preposterously pretty and that we are very curious to see how it actually plays. Eye candy is one thing but there’s a suspicious lack of hands on previews, considering that the game was announced a while ago now. We’re still cautiously optimistic though and at the very least it will look gorgeous.

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