It seems that Famitsu finally broke the news that Virtual On Force is indeed on its way to the 360, like Oratan 5.66 before it. This won’t be the first home console port for Force either, as Virtual on Marz tried to make the leap to the PS2 back in 2003 (with pretty lacklustre results). One of the main reasons for its failure, despite a functionally surreal singelplayer campaign, was down to how it neutered the four player versus the original arcade game offered. Something the arcade scene has embraced to this day, despite the fact that the game hasn’t had any meaningful updates since 2002. In any case, the fact that Force is getting a release on XBLA means the HORI TwinSticks will at least have some further usage. What will be interesting to see with this port is how SEGA plan on dealing with Force’s player card/VR balancing setup. As the original arcade game effectively punished newer players with crap starting VRs. Force is also quite notorious amongst the fanbase for other reasons too, read our feature on the series to find out more.

Update: The official site is now live for the 360 port and includes a pretty cool advert to promote the game.

The forthcoming Another Century’s Episode R, or just ACE R, received a nice spread in this week’s Famitsu as well as an official site update. The main news was down to the increase in the number of playable units that will be featured in the game. It’s worth clarifying that these updates, whilst enlightening, aren’t entirely comprehensive. As the three previous games ended up having far more units in the game than was initially disclosed. We’ve listed all the units and their respective pilots announced thus far below.

To commemorate the year since the XBLA port of Oratan 5.66 was released, Yamashita-san has posted a somewhat vague but interesting entry to the official blog. Now, we already know that the port did very well but it turns out that the sales figures also exceeded SEGA’s own internal expectations (though actual concrete sales figures weren’t specified unfortunately). Couple this with the various online questionnaires over future Virtual On ports as well as newer entries into the series and this starts to make more sense. The most obvious follow on from Oratan is a home port of Force, something that Marz tried rather dismally to cater for. Despite SEGA not supporting Force in terms of updates, the arcade community is still very active across Japan so a proper home version (with online multiplayer) would make a lot of sense. It would also help justify the crazy price tag of the limited edition HORI twinsticks that were released not that long ago. Considering that After Burner Climax is also doing quite well, a game that Yamashita-san’s team also worked on, there’s probably an understandable amount of chin stroking going on within SEGA when it comes to their pretty epic arcade gaming back catalogue. Apparently, there will be one more final Oratan 5.66 column quite soon and with any luck some more overt announcements might surface. We’re hoping for an all new game, as that’s what most fans actually wanted (scroll down to see the questionnaire results).

Updated: Turns out SEGA are already planning a Force port for the 360. Thanks to Excellen Browning for the heads up.

Those indomitable people over at FrontMission.info are in the process of finally translating one of the most interesting entries into the Front Mission saga. Specifically, the far more RTS focused Front Mission Alternative. Unlike most other Front Mission games, Alternative didn’t use the fixed turn based approach to strategy, instead it opted for a real time command system using a form of waypoints. In terms of development Alternative was actually meant as a means for Square Enix to recoup the very large development costs for Front Mission 2 at the time, as it shared much of its core technology. As a consequence, the game was released less than three months after Front Mission 2 (a game that the above translation team are also studiously working upon). In any case, it will be wonderful to think that more people will be able to appreciate Front Mission Alternative in the not too far off future, especially with the far more action focused Front Mission Evolved around the corner. The team have also been kind enough to put together a trailer for their upcoming release, which we’ve linked below.

The much anticipated Lost Planet 2 has been released today in Europe and the US (the Japanese release will follow next week). This is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition released way back in 2006, a game which bore many thematic similarities to Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Due to the player having to battle large insect aliens, called Akrid, in a variety of mecha. We will be reviewing the game shortly as well as covering the new Kotobukiya toys on their release, so keep an eye out for that.

Earlier in the week, Last Raven Portable finally made the jump to the US PSN store. This is obviously the digital version so the disc reading/input framerate issue seen on the UMD versions (without the data install) won’t be an issue. Word of warning though; the original Last Raven, which we reviewed, was a total bastard in terms of difficulty (probably more so than any other Armored Core game to date). The new PSP port hasn’t been sympathetically handled in terms of the controls so expect a greater level of functional anguish. We will be reviewing it shortly though and whilst it’s a competent port (more so than Armored Core 3 Portable was at least) it’s not really meant for those without actual robot fingers.

Game Watch has just covered the recent Senjou no Kizuna 2010 Tournament, as well as hosted a brief interview with the developers of the very successful arcade game. Though the real meat of the coverage is the in-game video coverage taken from the live feed that’s often displayed to punters in the arcades (of which we’ve linked a fair few below, in HD no less). In many ways Senjou no Kizuna laid the ground work for games like Border Break to follow, though it’s still nice to see a game succeed despite its pretty dated hardware. You might also want to keep tabs on Namco Bandai’s YouTube Channel, as they’ve been pretty diligent with uploading much of the tournament replays. There is a PSP port of the game and, all things considered, is actually moderately decent – though it does lack any form of online multiplayer capability (something that ultimately defined the arcade version, along with its amazing cockpit obviously).

In the latest issue of Gundam Ace, several pieces of Hajime Katoki’s reworked Gundam Senki 0081 designs have been showcased. Specifically that of the re-used Kunio Okawara design, the RX-78-7 or “7th Gundam” as it is more colloquially known. Up until 0081, this design hadn’t actually been featured in any part of the canon UC timeline narrative and was instead relegated to a mere mobile suit variation (or MSV). The above design, the FA-78-3 Full Armor 7th Gundam was part of an exclusive DLC pack for the game and also received its own HG UC kit.

The latest iteration in the successful Gears of War franchise, Gears of War 3, will now be featuring small bipedal mecha. Shown in recently in a Russian games magazine, the C.O.G. Silverback (pictured above) will be featured in the game. For VOTOMS fans this may look a bit familiar as it uses a fair few aesthetic and functional cues from the ATH-06-WP Diving Beetle, which was prominently featured in the Kummen story arc in the TV series. Even the scale of the Silverback is pretty close to the Diving Beetle too, though the former is closer to power armor as the pilot effectively wears the mecha really (rather than sit inside a defined cockpit). Gears of War 3 is set for an early April release next year.

After almost a year of waiting, Mektek X has released MechWarrior 4 to the public. The gates were actually opened to the free release a few days ago, but the flood of MechWarrior fans crushed the MTX client with their sheer enthusiasm, but it now appears that the problems are (mostly) worked out and the client is now chugging along fine. If you do have any additional problems, they do offer a beta release of their client in addition to the current version, which is supposed to be less dependent on the client being able to connect to the website, in case the problems that the original flood created show up again. Obviously there are still a lot of bugs for the MTX team to work out, but their hard dedication seems to finally be paying off: MechWarrior is back. Polish up your Death From Above skills while waiting for the upcoming new MechWarrior game.