Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy from the original Macross TV series to review. Specifically, the VF Hi-Metal VF-1J in Hikaru Ichijyo’s colours. In addition, to give the toy some context, we’ve also linked some anime and gameplay footage of it in action in Macross Ultimate Frontier at the end of the review.

A group of intrepid fans have translated the entirety of Front Mission 5: Scars of the War on the PS2 into English (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to see the news post about the translation, posted 29 December 2009; for some reason there’s no way to link to individual posts). The amount of work that went into this project is simply colossal, and is a testament to the power of dedicated fans. The Front Mission games are a series of incredible tactical RPGs, along with a few, more action-oriented side games, with both incredibly realistic mecha and storylines. The mecha in the game (“wanzers”) work by a part system not completely dissimilar from that of Armored Core’s, so the tactical RPG portions are also unique in terms of game mechanics, as more control is given to the player to develop specializations and strategies with their given team. The translation team gave a long but very interesting interview that goes into more detail about the project and just what makes the Front Mission series so special that it engenders such dedicated fans.

Those of you looking for something a bit less epic will likely be happy with an also recent translation of Metal Storm for the NES. While an English version already existed, it had the opening intro and boss text cut out, along with some other changes. Not only is that mecha’s sprite impressively detailed for an NES game, but the gravity-reversing mechanic is used not as a gimmick but as an essential gameplay feature, requiring the player to fundamentally change the way they looks at the game’s stages and enemies’ attacks.