What with Nintendo in the throes of a somewhat epic PR campaign for the upcoming release of their latest handheld, the Nintendo 3DS. It turns out that Bandai Namco haven’t exactly been idle. Whilst we reported a good while ago that a Gundam game was planned for the launch of the system, not much was known as to what type of game it would be. Well, now it seems the aptly titled Gundam The 3D Battle will be something in the same vein as Artdink’s Gundam Battle series, but with the apparent improvement that the 3D will allow players to gauge enemy distances more accurately (though whether that’s actually the case remains to be seen obviously). Whilst the approach they’ve taken is not a bad one, we were more hoping for something cockpit based like the old Blue Destiny games on the Saturn as well as the more recent and suitably panoramic Senjou no Kizuna, as this would have intensified the field of view. The game will feature the narratives from Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam and Char’s Counterattack (the latter being pictured above). All said and done though, the game does remind us an awful lot of the PSone games that Bandai did back in the day for Zeta Gundam and Char’s Counterattack. In any case, the game will be released in Japan on March 24th for 6090 yen.

4Gamer once again delivers the goods, this time with an announcement of some interesting DLC for Gundam Musou 3, including a mission consisting solely of Acguys. The lowly mass-produced aquatic unit from the original Mobile Suit Gundam has developed a cult following of sorts over the years, mostly due to its bizarrely incongruous cuteness. Most people – the lucky ones -gloss over the unit on first impression, but eventually you start to see the big ol’ teddy bear underneath that gigantic undersea Zeonic death machine, and nothing ever looks the same again. Welcome to the cult of Acguy.

Bandai, never one to ignore their fanbase, have a very special version of the Acguy in the new Gunpla Builders line, although I dare say that they are playing with fire. You can’t try to modify a cosmic horror/cuteness like the Acguy without putting your very soul into peril. Whatever vein of madness Kunio Okawara struck upon should remain forever undisturbed.

And on the opposite side of the cute/awesome spectrum: there’s also a stage featuring the Einerad support unit from Victory Gundam, because nothing says ‘manly’ like taking your giant bug-eyed robot and putting it inside a giant racing tire, complete with giant guns on the top. It’s a damn shame that Victory Gundam was produced as a cartoon series and not as a heavy metal concept album, because a picture of this as the cover art would have made it go triple platinum. People say that Victory Gundam can be the most depressing Gundam series, but if you think about it, it’s really just the most metal.

4Gamer has a piece on the recent interview with Juro Watari where, apart from drinking beer, he does talk about various aspects regarding the series’ history. Notable points are further information as to why Hajime Katoki was chosen to design the mecha, as V Gundam was also airing around that time, to the almost perennial question about an all new Virtual On game.

Unsurprisingly, Watari is pretty cagey in terms of information for a new game but tries his best to say some positive (though non-committal) things. There have been rumours that G.rev are working on a new Virtual On game, which would make sense as their Senko no Ronde games are very similar in some ways, but Watari has yet to confirm or deny this. The fact that Watari didn’t outright deny the fact a game is in development is reassuring anyway.

It’s also no big secret that post the arcade version of Force, there were at least two attempts to do a new game (once on NAOMI 2 and another on Lindbergh). In many ways Border Break, and the Ring Edge board, were a result of this unnamed sequel’s pre-production. Either way, what with the recently released port of Force and the massive success of the Oratan 5.66 port there’s reason to be hopeful that we might get a new game.

In any case, the piece also has a rather cool gallery of fan collected Virtual On memorabilia too.

In the latest issue of Famitsu, Banpresto have announced a sequel to the successful PS2 game Super Robot Wars Z (a game we liked quite a bit too in case you’re wondering). Entitled “Super Robot Wars Z II: Hakai-Hen” the game will be exclusively released on the PSP on April 14th. Naturally, the big part to these announcements is the introduction of new mecha series to the fold. Well, SRWZ2 doesn’t look to disappoint as it not only includes the likes of Gurren Lagann but also VOTOMS too. So both ends of the mecha spectrum, super and real, have been thoroughly catered for it seems. Interestingly, this will be the first of two games with this entry covering the first half or season for the respective series (with the second game to cover the latter half). Apparently the game has also been in production since March 2009, so at least Banpresto have properly invested their time into this one. The new game will also feature Dancougar again, so we’re naturally pretty happy about that. The full list of series are linked below.

Update: Famitsu has updated their site with some coverage of the game and the official site has also been launched too.

The upcoming DLC pack for Gundam Musou 3 featuring the GNX-Y901TW Susanowo (as piloted by the anachronistically titled MISTAH BUSHIDO) and a new mission called “For the Future” will hit this Thursday. 4Gamer has some nice screenshots of the new mobile suit too. The pack will cost 600 yen (PS3) and 480 MSP (360) respectively.

Over at Anime News Network they’ve got a cool little story of an unknown cosplayer donning a full blown GN-0000 00 Gundam from Gundam 00 at Melbourne’s Manifest. This being the base unit from the second season before it later combined with the GNR-010 0 Raiser. You don’t normally get the 00 Gundam on its own very often in game, instead most games opt for the beefier 00 Raiser. However, the Yuke’s developed Gundam Meisters on the PS2 did feature the 00 Gundam as an unlockable unit. Still, it’s pretty impressive work on the part of the cosplayer and we tip our steel rimmed hat to them.

A post on the Mommy’s Best Games devblog almost-but-not-quite announces a PC version of Explosionade, along with a map editor, to be in development. The original Xbox Live Indie Game version was spectacular and we are excited at the prospect of a wider audience being able to play this fantastic game. At 80 Microsoft Points, or one US dollar in real world currency, it was exactly the sort of game we hoped for when the Xbox Live Indie Games section was first announced: insane, amazing, and cheap.

Being able to pop open the hood and design your own maps for Explosionade is definitely an appealing prospect, especially given that the difficulty of the original was perhaps too low in order to accommodate the non-hardcore crowd, but there are some concerns that it might be difficult to do much with the game’s assets that the original game didn’t already do–the game’s design was pared down with a laser to only the bare essentials, and Explosionade made smart use of what it had. When you need to pay employees and are (reportedly) eating wild scorpions to cut personal expenses, selling your product for only a dollar is risky business and you have to make everything you do count.

The trailer for the ExplosionadEditor is enough to convince anyone of the absolute necessity for its release, though, and I’m reminded of just how much fun Bangai-O DS’s level editor was. It really is unfair of them to release this trailer, and lord their ability to make their own levels over us, while we wait patiently for mecha goodness to rain down like manna from heaven.

Following on from the combination attacks in a previous update, 4Gamer now has the scoop on the Cross Over Attacks in the forthcoming Another Century’s Episode Portable. Unlike the the previous attacks of this kind, where only the player had to connect prior to the attack initiating, your ally will also need to be in the vicinity for the attack to work. In addition, once the attack is triggered the player will be momentarily prone; adding more risk to this feature. Following on from this, the update also shows new shots of the GN-0000+GNR-010 00 Raiser, Type-0/0A Shinkirou and VF-25S Messiah. The game is still slated for a January 13th release in Japan and you can pre-order it here.

The magnificent bastards at the Romhacking Aerie told me to drum up support for a possible Christmas release of their Super Robot Wars J translation, and when the 25th of December came and went with nary a sighting of Santa carrying a sack full of binary patch code, the caterwauling of fans crying out in unison caused such a disturbance in The Force that Jedi in a galaxy far, far away could feel it, to say nothing of the psychic pressure our more local Newtypes had to put up with.

However, it was all a ploy to teach us the true meaning of Christmas: being surrounded by friends and family and not by Game Boys. Now that Christmas is over, we can finally get back to ignoring our family again because, yes, the fan translation is now out. Carefully follow the directions included in the readme, which detail the patching procedure and suggest utilities to use if command-line interfaces give you the heebie-jeebies.

The release of Super Robot Wars games into English through fan translations are always marked as grand occasions, because although most fan translations deal with games which are unreleased in English, most of them still have the theoretical possibilities of release through either an updated version or a classic game download service such as the Wii’s Virtual Console. The Super Robot Wars games, however, have no such chance at release because of the legal issues surrounding them. They’re much beloved for their combination of multitudes of fans’ favorite mecha anime series into the same game, but this combination produces a legal snarl of epic proportions as different companies all claim ownership of the rights to these properties in the West, making negotiations prohibitively expensive at best and utterly impossible at worst. As such, make sure to enjoy the fruits of their translation labors.

4Gamer has a selection of new screenshots for the next Artdink developed Macross game on the PSP, Macross Triangle Frontier. From the moe-tastic Academy mode to new shots of various variable fighters strutting their stuff. The Academy mode allows the player to basically attend Mihoshi Academy as a student and build up their character’s attributes there, these then carry over to the game itself. In addition a 1000 plus event triggers are tucked away in the Academy mode, meaning that much of the game will rely on the player having to wade through a dating sim in order to blow up robots. That aside, the game will also still support custom soundtracks as well as a new data install setup. The game is still slated for a February 3rd release next year and you can pre-order it here.