The 26th Miyazawa Model Exhibition is currently underway and despite the worryingly deluge of moe related nonsense, there are some mecha trinkets that are quite interesting. With the GFF Metal Composite Gundam Unicorn, pictured above, being paraded before its grand release at the end of this month. There are also various Kotobukiya kits on display as well, from Border Break to Armored Core and even Virtual On.

Talking of Unicorn, the recent Blu-Ray release in Japan has managed to shift 56 thousand copies in its first week, which is pretty damn good. It will be interesting to see how the series develops though, as that will have an inevitable knock effect to the gaming side of things. It’s clear that Japanese fans want some of that Universal Century timeline though. With any luck the Project Pegasus team that helmed One Year War on the PS2 might even get a shot at making a new Unicorn themed effort. That would be, as they say, “seriously sweet”.

It’s a good time to be a Supreme Commander fan. Supreme Commander 2 was just released and now Stardock’s Impulse service is selling Total Annihilation for $9.99.

Total Annihilation was a real-time strategy game released all the way back in 1997, considered to have been ahead of its time and which won considerable acclaim from critics. However, the game never gained quite the foothold or presence that Starcraft did in the minds of the average gamer, and remains mostly a forgotten classic, only living on in occasional critics’ lists of favorites and in the free Spring RTS engine, an attempt by fans to clone the original Total Annihilation’s gameplay (anything with a Gundam RTS mod deserves mention).

Supreme Commander was a “spiritual successor” to Total Annihilation, an attempt to bring its massive scale of combat, large selection of units, an interesting economy/base construction model, and the crowd-pleasing nuclear superweapons back into the minds of gamers, and it being re-released at the time that Supreme Commander is getting its own sequel allows fans to relive history as they step into the future.

More importantly, though, Total Annihilation’s early geometric 3D mecha are simply way, way cool. Most early 3D is considered terrible by the standards of today, but the low-poly units of Total Annihilation seemed to have been designed with the day’s limitations in mind, and thus they still hold up today as somewhat abstract art. The tanks and mecha in Total Annihilation ooze style out of every jaggy line.

Both games feature a “Commander” unit, a giant mecha, which uses atomic-level manufacturing to build an entire economy on far-off planets literally from the ground up, which is an interesting inversion on how mecha usually are used in games: the “Commander” is more or less the player character, and while their large mecha is by no means weak, it’s a central unit because of its production capabilities, and not because of its arsenal, which as a mecha fan I always thought was a nice way to work the idea of a “hero mecha” into an RTS, because you can relate to the Commander mecha’s role as, well, a Commander on the battlefield rather than as simply a powerful named “hero” unit as exist in most other RTSes.

The second episode of the most recent addition to the Universal Century saga, Gundam Unicorn, is slated for a release in Autumn of this year. At this rate, there will be 2 episodes a year, so from this we can assume that the 6-episode OVA will last 3 years. The second episode is entitled Akai Suisei, or Red Comet, which is a reference to Char Aznable’s nickname as he used a red mobile suit most of the time (with the exception being in Zeta Gundam, when he piloted the golden Hyakushiki under the comical moniker of Quattro Vagina). The useage of the term Red Comet also belies the origins of Unicorn’s main antagonist; Full Frontal.

Considering the expected length of the Unicorn OAV, it’s fairly safe to assume that Bandai will take the plunge with a dedicated gaming tie-in. The fact that the Unicorn Gundam has been prominently featured in Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus a full-on Unicorn game is hardly beyond the realms of possibility. Here’s hoping Team White Dingo helm it and it lets you pilot a plucky Jegan or ReZel, as the grunt units are always more fun in these kind of games.

Both Tollmaster and I were recently involved on the selectbutton podcast talking all about the wonder of mecha games (the podcast link is here).

From Gigantic Drive to Omega Boost and a slew of other games, we generally covered a fair bit of ground. It’s also worth clarifying, as well as apologising for, that I’m the monologuing British chap and the reason for the long spiels is due to the fact I had to join in via Skype (rather than use Ventrilo, as per the other guys). The problem was that, unlike Ventrilo, I couldn’t control when I signed off so I had to keep talking in an increasingly incoherent stream of consciousness type of way. Thankfully, Tollmaster kept the whole thing together with his hot blooded spirit and guts. Anyway, give it a listen and feel free to head on over to the forums too.

There was a recent gathering regarding the astronomy and physics that ensconce the Gundam mythos. Entitled Introduction to Gundam Astronomy: Where’s Side 7? Are Space Colonies Possible?, it featured luminaries such as Harutoshi Fukui (novelist and writer of the Gundam Unicorn novels), Jun Fukue an astronomy professor and of course Yoshiyuki Tomino.

As Tomino has a habit of doing, he seemed to spend a lot of the meeting pissing on other people’s chips. From saying that the whole premise is unrealistic to it being “just an anime”, Tomino even goes so far as to calling people who design the titular mecha to being somehow “empty”. Despite coming across as overly curmudgeonly, Tomino has a history of playing devil’s advocate and generally inciting debate – so interpreting his comment’s at face value and taking offense, is missing the point a bit. Considering that much of the technological and scientific background was openly based upon Gerald K. O’Neill’s work as well as the practical output of the JPL, shows that Tomino is just trying to get people to use a modicum of insight to question the saga as a whole rather than accept it blindly for what it is – something that the sprawling fanbase does do on occasion.

The upcoming DS remake of the Super Famicom game (screenshot above), The Lord of Elemental, received its first trailer. It’s clear that this is not just a straight port either, as it’s very obviously been given a graphical facelift to bring it into line with the last few DS SRW games. Famitsu also has some nice coverage of the game as well.

It’s worth also mentioning that the original game was thematically quite similar to Aura Battler Dunbine, with the ethereal Cybuster bearing an uncanny resemblance to Sirbine – an aura battler from one of the Dunbine OVAs. Even the original box art to Lord of the Elemental looked much like one of Yuji Kaida’s model kit box covers. The in-game footage below does look promising though and it’s nice to know another decent SRW game is on the way to the DS, as Gakuen was rather disappointing and Frontier Exceed was just a pointless moegasm.

It turns out that the fantastically talented Hidetaka Tenjin is having a second book published, with the first being his brilliant Macross specific Valkyries. Simply titled as Hidetaka Tenjin Works the book contains a total of 84 illustrations; 34 from Gundam, 10 from Macross, 6 from Votoms, Aquarion, Eureka Seven, Patlabor as well as other fighter jets.

The PSP games Macross Ace Frontier and Ultimate Frontier also had box covers by Tenjin as well, so they are notable from a gaming standpoint. He’s no stranger to other games too, as he penned the amazing cover for Gradius V.

It’s also worth pointing out that much of the amazing CG work seen in Macross Zero was assisted by Tenjin, so he’s not just your average model kit box art illustrator. The book is released later this month and you can pre-order it here.

The first ever Original Generation focused Super Robot Wars game is getting ported to the Nintendo DS. Specifically, the Super Famicom entry of The Lord Of Elemental. This was an interesting SRW game on many counts, such as exclusively featuring OG mecha as well as rendering them at actual size (not in SD). Not to mention the oblique viewing angle, seen in many SRW games since. It’s also a game that many older Japanese gamers view with a fair amount of fondness, as the original game was released almost 15 years ago now. It seems that Banpresto are shrewd enough to cash in on nostalgia and port an already existing title to obviously fund the development of other projects. In any case, due to this being an OG title there’s an excellent chance it will receive a Western release. The game will be released in Japan on May 27th for 6,090 yen.

Over at 4Gamer there’s a new update on Gundam Assault Survive’s map system. As suspected, it does sound to be remarkably similar to how parts of the Dynasty Warriors games operate – in that maps are accessed in-game depending on completing criteria in a certain section, as well as both allies and enemies escaping to other maps as you’re playing.

There also seems to be hints of including the narrative from the original Gundam novels, as the G-3 Gundam seems to be part of a story mission and that was only ever used in the novels (though admittedly many other games have already used the G-3 as an unlockable). It’s worth pointing out that the finale in the novels is dramatically different when compared to the TV series and movies, so it will be interesting to see if it’s included or not.

Finally, we’re also happy to see the re-emergence of both the Xi Gundam and Hi-Nu Gundam from Gundam Battle Universe, again mobile suits featured in novels. Despite being wonderfully potent units to play with, both designs are suitably lovely in an aesthetic sense too.

The game is still scheduled for release on March 18th.

For those that like some mass produced spirit in their mecha, the recently HGUC kit of the D-50C Loto from Gundam Unicorn appears to have serious knee joint issues. Set at 1/144 scale the kit is also tiny, to the extent that it can double as one of the feet on the Soul of Chogokin Dancouga!

The Loto is also part of the wider canon, as it acts as the base for the Guntank R-44 seen in Gundam F-91. In any case, if you were thinking of buying this kit – then you might want to hold off until Bandai resolve this flaw.

The mecha from Gundam Unicorn were recently featured in Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus, though the Loto was absent from the roster there are rumours that it could be included in the upcoming DLC.