For the upcoming launch of Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus, a 5 metre tall Christmas tree adorned with Gundam model kits will be erected in Akihabara. The first 100 people to buy the new PSP game will have a chance to be pictured with Tohru Furuya, the voice of Amuro Rei. Furuya was also present for the opening ceremony for the 1/1 scale RX-78-2 Gundam in Odaiba, unfortunately he wasn’t allowed to pilot it (something about recent regulations on Newtypes apparently).

At 8pm this evening (Japanese time) you’ll be able to play one of the developers on Oratan 5.66. Their gamertag is “SEGA VOOT360”. The semi-regular official blog also hints at a port of Virtual On Force as well, as there have been many requests by fans apparently (this would also make sense, considering the upcoming HORI TwinSticks would be usable on that port too, making their price tage slightly less painful). Bear in mind that Force has never really received a proper port either, as Virtual On Marz was a remake effectively with a suitably dodgy singleplayer campaign too.

A few places are reporting the upcoming release of a PC only 2D shooter in the same vein as Masaya’s much loved Assault Suits games. Called Gunhound, it basically ticks many of the boxes in terms of a spiritual sequel to something like Leynos II on the Saturn. The game will be released on the 18th December either online (for 4800 yen) or on disc (for 6090 yen).

It looks like G.rev’s Senko no Ronde Duo will be receiving an Xbox 360 port, much like its precursor, sometime early next year. It also looks like there will be a collector’s edition again, which is always nice. As yet, there is no word on a Western release.

Late last week, Silent Line Portable saw its Japanese release. The official site is now also taking AI Arena Battlefield entries, so if you have a copy of the game and have already birthed an AI AC or two you should try and share your creations.

DokoGaTV recently did an interview with mecha designer Shoji Kawamori and it makes for very interesting viewing. Considering that Kawamori is very prolific in both anime and games, his take on how he went about handling the designs for Armored Core are particularly enlightening and that the use of “core” in the game title’s name is by no means an accident either. It also again shows how integrally linked mecha gaming is to the overall pantheon of mecha and that it very often has a tangible functional outcome. Separately, he talks about his early work on Transformers (or Diaclone as it was originally known in Japan) and his hand in creating possibly the most well known design, that of Convoy (or Optimus Prime). His comment about how the mecha in the recent live action Transformer’s films operate, in that they use henshin (shapeshifting) rather than henkei (modular transformation), was also quite interesting as well as being depressingly very accurate.

This is quite a cool little indie game by Teasoft, entitled Shining Blood you control a mecha across five stages via an over the shoulder camera viewpoint. In many ways, it handles a bit like Armored Core 4 and For Answer, especially when airborne. Bar that, it’s pretty standard third person shooter fare, though considering the indie roots it’s damn impressive nonetheless. Not only can you download a PC version but it’s also an Xbox Live Arcade community game too.

Square Enix have been fairly diligent recently at posting new gameplay videos on their YouTube channel for the upcoming Double Helix developed Front Mission Evolved. Much in the same way our hands-on impressions indicated that the TGS demo was functionally rather lacklustre, these videos only seem to confirm that appraisal further.

Over at GA Graphic there is a nice preview of the upcoming Unicorn Gundam Metal Composite toy. This is part of the Gundam FIX Figuration range but uses, as the name suggests, a lot of metal in its production. Unlike the FIX toys, which are at 1/144 scale and mostly plastic, the metal composites are much larger at around 1/100 scale. The Unicorn is also using its metal innards as the literal psycho-frame (the pink bits basically), which is a nice touch. This toy is also being personally supervised by Hajime Katoki, who penned this design originally, and as such it fully transforms between Unicorn and Destroy mode. The price is pretty epic though; at 18,900 yen. It’s released in March of next year and, in case people are wondering, the Unicorn is a playable unit in the upcoming Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus.

On November 19th a patch for Gundam Senki 0081 will be released. This patch adds functionality to the core game as well as various minor bug fixes. The most notable of these are a selection of new custom parts and missions (the latter introducing elements from Zeta Gundam). The Acguy is also getting toned down in terms of its stealth capability and online game timing options have been updated. Overall, it’s a pretty thorough package and makes an already solid game offer just that bit more.