Posted on : 25-03-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : News

Not wishing to miss a trick, Bandai have followed up from their pretty damn fantastic Robot Damashii Xi Gundam with the news of a Robot Damashii Penelope to be released this August. Like the RX-105 Xi Gundam before it, the RX-104FF Penelope is a webshop exclusive and will come in two variants. A standard release at 23,760 yen and a “Markings Plus” version for 28,080 yen, the latter basically comes in a two tone white and grey colour scheme. Though for an extra 5,000 yen. Pre-orders started today and partly brought Bandai’s site down with it, which was somewhat amusing to see.
Considering that we’re getting this much love from Bandai towards Hathaway’s Flash and the inclusion of the mobile suits in Gundam Extreme Versus Maxi Boost leads many to believe there are other plans for the series. Especially as we saw a Gustav Karl surface in the final episode of Gundam Unicorn, fans are thinking Bandai might start an all new novel only timeline when it comes to the anime. Either way, we now have a frankly massive Penelope to look forward to and we’ve already pre-ordered ours.


Posted on : 23-03-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Posted on : 17-03-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : Features

We’ve tried to avoid doing these kinds of lists over the years. Mainly because they end up being contentious and misinterpreted. That said it’s about time we got around to doing this. Especially as other places have attempted similar lists and ended up being laughably parochial and clearly ignorant with it.
Before we start, there are a few a disclaimers. “Best” in this context means that these games are obviously great fun to play but they also went on to influence other games as well as approached mecha gaming in a unique way. They might have even resolved design issues that had plagued other titles too.
The games listed are also not necessarily based on our reviews either, as some we have yet to even cover, but more how they have defined mecha gaming over the years. These are also games that we regard to be very well wrought, based on our years of experience from playing lots and lots of mecha games.


Posted on : 16-03-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Hardware: PC

If you’re wondering what happened to Hawken, well Adhesive Games and their publisher Meteor sold the game in a bankruptcy sale to Reloaded Games. This is the same Reloaded Games that picked up APB after it tanked. So while there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Hawken, it definitely looks like a train in this case.
The real shame is that back in 2011, Hawken could have been something amazing. The final game was decent too but the freemium model utterly ruined it. If they had released the game as a singleplayer only XBLA or PSN game, like they planned to originally, then things would have likely turned out for the better. Shifting to a freemium setup with a customisable mecha game, where you paid for parts, was never going to end well.
So here’s to good mecha games ruined by capricious and short sighted publishers. Hopefully Hawken won’t die off quite yet but it could have been so much more.


Posted on : 01-03-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : Videos
Posted on : 14-02-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Posted on : 13-02-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : Videos
Posted on : 08-02-2015 | By : Cacophanus | In : News

Wonder Festival 2015 Winter has now come to end and it was a good one. Apart from the legion of amazing garage kit figures on show and on sale, the future commercial announcements were decent this time around. The mother of which being Fewture’s transformable EX Gohkin Garland (shown above) from the first Megazone 23. Now we’ve already been graced with toys of this from Yamato back in the day but they all had serious quality issues (the joints often shattered). This will be different though as most EX Gohkins use a lot of diecast and go through rigorous quality assurance. No word on a price or release date but we want this, really quite badly. Apart from the Garland, we had a lot of cool stuff on show from Sentinel and Megahouse. The former had the amazing Metamorforce Dancouga and also showed the prototype Black Wing too, so a Final Dancouga is an option again. The latter showed off the upcoming Orguss toy and it is utterly pristine and will be a definite purchase come its release in March. Arcadia also had a good Macross showing too this year.
If you want to check out some photos then feel free to go here, here, , here, here, here and here. We will also be doing an event report for Forbes in the next few days too, so keep an eye out for that.

