The near launch title for the 3DS, Gundam The 3D Battle has received its first promo video via the official site (shown below). It also turns out that this game is in fact being developed by Artdink and will be part of their ongoing Gundam Battle series. Whilst we weren’t impressed with the recent Gundam Assault Survive, the other games have been mostly excellent (with Gundam Battle Universe being notable). What does slightly freak us out though is the insanely large lock-on icon seen in this new game and whilst we get it’s meant to be in 3D you do feel they’ve overdone it a bit. It’s also painfully obvious that the game will re-use much of the same content seen in the PSP Gundam Battle games too, however we are happy to see that Gundam Unicorn will be represented in the game (which is at least something). Famitsu also has a selection of nice screenshots and it also seems that the cover art has been penned by Naochika Morishita yet again. The game is scheduled for a March 24th release at 6,090 yen.

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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.

The newly announced Nintendo 3DS, which sounds suitably wondrous, is also getting some cool third party games too. Even Bandai Namco are jumping into the fray and offering new Gundam and Super Robot Wars games specifically for the handheld. From a Gundam perspective, if they go down the action route, we could have something pretty mindblowing on a 3DS. As for SRW, there’s not much scope for sight bending functionality – as the games are predominantly turn-based strategy orientated. Still, it’s nice to see that the 3DS will be getting a slice of mecha gaming in the near future.