The wonderfully talented composer Kinuyo Yamashita is in a bit of a pickle over her English Wikipedia page. Despite being a credited composer on multiple games and having her own Japanese Wikipedia entry, it seems that the English side of things refuse to acknowledge her large body of work.

The reason we mention her here is that she recently composed the score for the PC shooter Gunhoud (which we will review soon, we promise). A few peeps, including the indomitable Eric Caoili over at Game Set Watch, noted that the Gunhound’s music bore a striking similarity to the various Castlevania games. Well, that’s because it was written by the same very gifted lady.

In any case, get on over to Wikipedia and help sort this nonsense out. It might also be worth showing that full blown orchestras have performed her work too, just saying. After all, what the world be without the wondrously memorable Vampire Killer?

Over at 4Gamer there’s a nice update on Gundam Assault Survive’s shop and unit upgrading setup. For those that already played the Gundam Battle games, this meta-game back-end with all the unit upgrading will sound very familiar. However, it seems that Artdink have learnt from Macross Ultimate Frontier and allowed the player to short cut this grind with direct purchases. In addition, Assault Survive is unique in the sense it’s featuring non-UC timeline series, such as Gundam SEED above. It will be interesting to see how they resolve the disparate abilities of the mobile suits from Gundam 00, that all use the suitably mysterious GN drives as a form of power and propulsion.

Capcom have announced that the upcoming May release for Lost Planet 2 will also have DLC for both platforms. Entitled “Battle Stage Pack 1” the multiplayer DLC will feature two levels called “Return Island” and “Spiral Corridor”. The latter is especially interesting as it appears to be set underwater. The PlayStation 3 will also be receiving a demo on the 1st March, that allows up to to four human players to get involved. Whether this is the same as the 360 demo from a while back remains to be seen, but it is likely.

For the upcoming release of Armored Core Last Raven Portable, From Software will be offering a new service to players that choose to upload their arena replay data; Battle TV. This basically allows other players to access other people’s replay data online and view it for themselves. Whilst this is pretty interesting, it does beg the question why they didn’t offer an infrastructure option instead of setting up an Armored Core specific replay library. Players will be able to start uploading their videos on the 4th March and a special replay data movie will be assembled shortly after the service starts, showcasing a variety of “mad skillz” most probably.

These are a pair of custom PC cases using the GZ-X1BPD-100 tower case, based upon the RGM-79 GM and MS-07B Gouf respectively (though they bear more resemblance to the Gundam Ace “Saku” parodies really). Both cases light up with their own LEDs, green for the GM and red for the Gouf. These are currently on display at TSUKUMO eX in Akihabara.

Over at Game Watch they’ve covered the upcoming update for the cockpit-tastic Senjou no Kizuna. The update in question, Rev 2.12, includes an all new map set outside a colony as well as a much needed layout change on one of the pre-existing Jaburo maps. In addition, the article talks about a tournament in March of this year. In any case, it seems that Banpresto have been stepping up their updates as of late especially since Border Break has taken off recently.

At this year’s AOU show, SEGA have showcased quite a few titles but the one that’s the most interesting to us is the wondrous Border Break. Specifically, that the game has received quite a substantial update. From two new maps, to a whole new blast runner and not to mention new parts, it seems that Border Break is still very much a viable enterprise for SEGA.

While doing a bit of research on the commercial version of Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2, a freeware mecha game similar to the Gundam Versus series of game with an English fan translation, I found that not only was the commercial version already out, but it had received an official English translation all the way back in July of last year. While it unfortunately falls into the massive gulf that exists between “free” and “not free”, with the $20 price tag not doing anything to close that gap, it’s a rare example of a Japanese doujin game seeing official release outside of Japan.

Looking around a bit more, though, led me to discover that CuriousFactory, the fellows involved with that English release, have brought over a few other mecha games in the past (link may not be entirely safe for work, depending on how your employer feels about little cartoon girls wearing only a belt for a shirt), specifically three different shmups.

I can’t speak to the actual quality of these games, because I’m not much of a shooting game aficionado, but what’s most interesting to me is that all three of the mecha shmups are from the same doujin circle, ASTRO PORT, and all three feature entirely different mecha art styles. Armed Seven has a distinctly Armored Core/Real Robot feel, Supercharged Robot Vulkaiser looks like it would have fit right in with the cartoonish 70s Super Robot animes, and Witch-bot Meglilo has a cute female robot girl as the protagonist.

The CuriousFactory games list has links to downloadable trials for all of the games mentioned above, so feel free to give them a whirl.

It turns out the next game in Capcom’s Gundam Versus series of arcade multiplayer games will be called Gundam Extreme Versus. The game will be using a System 357 board, basically a PlayStation 3 in an arcade cabinet, and will feature almost every Gundam series (along with Crossbone Gundam and MS IGLOO). The fundamental gameplay won’t be changing much from Gundam vs Gundam Next though. The game will be beta tested over the Summer for an Autumn release in Japan.

As for the rumour we reported about this game being Gundam Unicorn specific, well that turned out to be false. That said, we were originally told merely that a Unicorn specific arcade game was in development. We assumed that this meant the upcoming Gundam Versus iteration, but it seems that there is another Gundam arcade game in the wings (maybe an update to the hugely successful Senjou no Kizuna?). Considering that the series will start airing tomorrow it’s fairly obvious that Bandai Namco want to capitalise on Unicorn as best they can.

Over at Game Watch there’s an interesting update about the additional designs being featured in Last Raven Portable. Much like the last two PSP ports getting designs from the more recent Brave New World narrative, it seems that this game will receive a series of designs from Armored Core Retribution, a similar but older Dengeki side story. In addition to the three new designs in the arena, each of them wield a new shield arm part. The game is still scheduled for an early March release.

Separately, Silent Line Portable also received its Western release at the beginning of this month. Available via the American PSN store (for $14.95), From Software are similarly publishing this entry too. Admittedly, we were very much disappointed with the first PSP port but after putting a lot of time into the Japanese release of Silent Line Portable we are far more impressed. It’s still flawed though and partially limited in terms of controls due to its host hardware but it is by no means the abject catastrophe that Armored Core 3 Portable was. Here’s hoping that Last Raven Portable builds on this to produce something more functionally cogent.