As per the recent column on the official Japanese Oratan 5.66 site, it turns out that the game will be receiving a pretty decent price drop. From 1200 MS points to 800, however this is only from March 30th until April 6th (as it’s part of Microsoft’s Deal of the Week scheme apparently). At present this price drop is for the Japanese release only, the column also apologises for the lack of updates recently – which is rather sweet really.

Update: It’s been confirmed that the price drop for Oratan 5.66 will coming to the West as well.

Despite the lovely Armored Core 5 artwork displayed in AC Chronicle Art Works there are also two interviews within the small book. One with series producer Toshifumi Nabeshima and another with two designers; Miki Masahiro and Satake Daisuke.

Nabeshima talks more about AC5’s change in functional approach, emphasising that the game will be more about tactics and using the geography of level rather than high-speed finger work. This harks back more to the original PSone games, especially the first, as many levels were set within city type environments and were more tactical as a consequence (the reduced size of the AC’s is also to do with this too apparently, as it would make it far easier to take cover). The other interesting element is that apparently you won’t just view your AC from behind and that you will have some form of camera control. Apart from that, the approach they’re taking is one of coarse realism and that you’ll have to “think” more in combat. The narrative will mirror this too apparently, as the characterisation won’t be simply friend or foe but instead more grounded and realistic. Again, like the older games, they’ve opted to keep the characters “faceless” so much of this will be inferred through dialogue and in-game text. This doesn’t really bode well for a Western release, as this kind of narrative has never been localised properly in terms of the series’ history.

As for the two designers, Masahiro worked on Chrome Hounds and is helming the main mechanical design of AC5 (as we suspected, as he is an internal designer). Whereas Satake is assisting him and comes from working on both Nexus and Ninebreaker (interestingly he designed the Mayfly head that adorns the new Nineball on the cover of Ninebreaker), they both also recently worked on Demon’s Souls. Over the years they’ve penned multiple designs for the Armored Core games as well, which helps to explain why Shoji Kawamori’s involvement was scaled back after Silent Line and why parts began to look more angular. They also talk a fair bit about how the realism in AC5 is dictating the design of the respective parts, citing a new revolver hand gun and vertical missile launcher. In any case, having a mecha desginer from Chrome Hounds and his assistant who contributed to Metal Wolf Chaos can only bode well for AC5, as those designs were truly exemplary and fit the new realistically grounded approach that seems to be the new direction for Armored Core as a whole.

This is one of those things you just don’t think will ever happen: Tail Concerto, a mecha platformer on the original PlayStation with a cult following, is apparently getting a sequel (of sorts) entitled Solarobo Sore Kara Coda E for the Nintendo DS (made by none other than CyberConnect2, the developers behind the .hack and recent Naruto games – not to mention being the team behind the original Tail Concerto).

The original Tail Concerto was extremely cute and what we know about Solarobo so far suggests that the game is going to be taking place in an equally cartoonish world, full of talking cats and dogs, so those of you expecting to go on a grimdark cyberpunk mecha adventure on your Nintendo DS might need to rein in your expectations a bit. However, the artwork and screenshots (kindly ignore the huge splash image there) we’ve seen are good enough for me to temporarily cast aside my general rule against Talking Humanoid Animals (Who Aren’t Also Ninjas).

While the cute look might turn some people off, the original Tail Concerto is generally well-regarded as a good, if a bit short and simple mecha game and I for one welcome different kinds of art styles within the mecha genre. If only because with different art styles come drastically different rule sets, which add vitality to the very specific genre of ‘mecha games’. Sometimes, playing as a bubble-shooting steambot mecha piloted by a canine cop is just what you need between bouts of emotionally-sensitive teenagers inexplicably in control of billion-dollar pieces of military hardware to keep the mind fresh.

A bunch of new screenshots for Front Mission Evolved have been going the rounds, coupled with the semi-updated dev diaries we clearly have a PR campaign in its latter stages on our hands. Admittedly, there are still no actual release dates as yet but with box shots getting previewed it’s obvious we have a release fairly imminent. Naturally, we’ll be the reviewing the game once its out – so keep an eye out for that. In any case, we’ve linked the other screenshots below and whilst they show the game has come along a fair bit, they still don’t look that amazing really. Anyway, see what you think.

The much loved full size Gundam that was displayed in Odaiba last Summer, will be getting an upgrade of sorts at its new home outside the JR Higashi-Shizuoka Station. Specifically in the form of a lit beam saber pointed into the ground. This will also be a time limited display as well, starting July 24th until January 11th of next year. After that, there is still a chance it could become a permanent fixture in Nagoya. The reasoning behind the move to this city, rather than Tokyo or Osaka let’s say, is because Nagoya TV funded the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series (as well as many other mecha shows from the early to mid-80’s).

Update: To coincide with the new home of the full size Gundam, Bandai are releasing a new 1/144 kit of it on the same day. To make matters more bizarre, the full size Gundam is now officially being referred to as a 1/1 scale “Gunpla” – which conjures an image of the whole thing being built on sprues!

We meant to cover this earlier but over at the Raven Republic they have a very nice selection of shots from the AC Chronicle Art Works booklet that was packaged with Last Raven Portable in Japan. Within it are some early design sketches for the mecha we saw in the trailer. It’s interesting seeing this on a few counts, mostly because it looks as though the design-work has been handled internally (rather than by a named designer, such as Shoji Kawamori as per the original games) and it definitely shows the gritty aesthetic shift back to the series’ roots. Whoever is penning the base artwork for the game is clearly very talented but with a series like Armored Core that’s to be expected really.

Last Raven Portable also received its English trailer recently, via From Software’s YouTube channel. So it shows that a Western PSN release should be relatively soon.

Update: Raven Republic have found a full gallery of scans from AC Chronicle Art Works over at Armored Core Universe.

Gundam Assault Survive has been released in Japan today. This is the successor of sorts to Artdink’s range of Gundam Battle games, with a few new elements from Dynasty Warriors thrown in for good measure. This is also the first Gundam game Artdink have made that branches out from the Universal Century timeline, as it features mecha from both SEED and 00.

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.