We now finally have details on Kotobukiya’s much awaited first Armored Core V kit, dubbed the AGNI it uses a different config to the Super Robot Chogokin toy (despite looking somewhat similar). It will be released in may this year for 6,090 yen. As Kotobukiya have a record for making thoroughly excellent Armored Core kits, we’re looking forward to this one.

Over at Hideo Kojima’s Twitter feed he previewed a shot of a Revoltech Vic Viper from Anubis. For one it looks lovely and it will be at least affordable. Talking of other Revoltech’s, Naked Jehuty is now out too and our review will be forthcoming. If you can’t wait for the Vic Viper Revoltech they you can still buy the Kotobukiya kit, in addition a RIOBOT toy is also planned.

In a nice move of not making yet another Jehuty toy, Kaiyodo have followed up with a toy of the orbital frame Ardjet this March. As with all Revoltechs, Ardjet looks to have decent articulation and won’t cost the earth. Whilst this feels like extended marketing for the ZOE HD Collection, it’s nice to see one of the lesser orbital frames from Anubis get the toy treatment. You can pre-order Ardjet here.

Over the past few years, realising that the current generation has decayed due to excessive functional standardisation, we’ve had a few “classics” resurrected into HD to stem the tide of mediocrity. Whilst many of these games were originally rather noteworthy, their updated HD versions have often been very disappointing. This is mainly down to the fact that these ports are in fact outsourced in their entirety.

The worst offender thus far has been that of Konami, with a variety of HD re-releases suffering from all manner of grievous problems (many of which the original games never suffered from). So what has happened to the Zone of the Enders HD edition then? Well, firstly it was ported by High Voltage Software (not internally by Konami, as we were led to believe) and they’ve done a pretty poor job. Now, we’ve never thought the Zone of the Enders games were bad but they are functionally flawed. Though the issue here is entirely down to the fidelity of the port itself.

We’ve somewhat held off talking about Chikyuu Boueigun 4 (aka EDF4) for a while now but this news seemed worthy. Considering that this game series was birthed from Sandlot’s nerdy love of classic mecha anime and the tech it produced during the PS2 era, the mecha lineage is a notable one. So when they added mecha to the third game we were pretty excited. However, it wasn’t very useful in-game if we’re honest. This new mecha looks more the part though, almost out of VOTOMS with a nice Shinji Aramaki twist from MADOX-01. Anyway, we’ll be buying this when it’s finally released next year and it should be better than the dire Insect Armageddon as Sandlot are working on this again (yay!).

Over at AmiAmi they have a lovely photo report of the Tamashii Nations Akiba Showroom. From the cool diorama above with the Hanged Man Super Robot Chogokin from Armored Core V, to awesome shots of the alternate coloured Billbine there’s lots of interesting stuff to see here. Talking of the former, there’s also a nice little piece about the designers feeding back on the new Hanged Man toy. Following on in the same vein, HobbyLink Japan are running a Bandai sale at present and there are some very good bargains to be had.

The forthcoming Revoltech Naked Jehuty has been given an Amazon.co.jp listing and it reveals not only its release date, that of January 15th next year, but also the very reasonable price point of 3,480 yen. Again part of the whole never ending PR for Zone of the Enders HD Collection, the design appeared at the end of Anubis and was intended to be Jehuty’s “final” form. Apparently, this toy will also be able to use the other peripherals released for the other Revoltech Jehuty toys.

There’s a pretty cool montage video for the creation of the rather larger Jehuty bust used to promote Zone of the Enders HD Collection. Showing its humble beginnings to its installation in Akiba and eventual removal. What is amazing though is the remixed track of Beyond The Bounds that accompanies the video (the full version being here). Anyway the full video is shown below.

As for our review, the consensus via Twitter and Facebook was a resounding “yes” for us to cover the new HD collection. So expect something in the next few weeks, apologies for the delay but we’re somewhat busy this end.

At this Winter’s Miyazawa Model Exhibition, all manner of kits (and a few toys too) have been revealed to the public. Above is the Riobot toy of Jehuty that Sentinel have been pimping for a while now. As with all the Riobot releases, this does look genuinely impressive and on a par (in terms of detailing) with Kotobukiya’s kits of the design. No word on a price or release date as yet for this though.

Talking of ZOE, we did receive and play a fair bit of the recent HD remake and for those that aren’t following us on Twitter; the framerate and performance is utterly terrible (worse than the PS2 originals). As such we’re in half a mind to review the new release. So if you’re interested in seeing us eviscerate High Voltage Software and Konami for a job badly done, then let us know and a review will be forthcoming. Funcationality-wise though the games are still as flawed as they always have been.

Anyway, if you want to see more of these lovely kits and toys then AmiAmi has coverage here, here and here (be warned, there’s a high level of moe and bewbs).

As part of the marketing drive for the Zone of the Enders HD Collection released tomorrow in Japan, they’re will be a large bust of Jehuty placed in Akihabara on the Shimura Musen building. If followers of the KojiPro twitter account send the hashtag “#ZOE再起動” (the kanji basically says “restart” in case you’re at all curious) attached to photos of the bust they’ll be in with a chance of having a ZOE poster signed by Yoji Shinkawa.

Whilst we get why all this promotion is kicking off, the ZOE games were never all that popular when they were released on the (far more widespread) PS2. So all this feels very odd. We’ll be posting our review of the HD edition when we’ve given it a good playthrough over the next week or so.