The forthcoming Mobile Suit Gundam Online is now in the throes of its third alpha test. The biggest changes they’ve made to the game are its graphical engine as well as how they’re handling battleships. For those that have managed to sign up for the alpha test, players will also be rewarded with a special wallpaper penned by Naochika Morishita. Still no word on a final release date or how much it will cost as yet.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan we’ve been sent both the Super Robot Chogokin UCR-10/A and Grind Blade from the rather excellent game, Armored Core V. In terms of the series, Armored Core has always had pretty sub-standard toys and only recently, thanks to Kotobukiya, have we had any decent kits. That said, this new toy changes all that for the better. As always, we’ve made sure to include footage of the design in action at the end of the review.

Over at the Yamato website they’ve announced a pre-order bonus for the forthcoming 1/60 scale VF-4G Lightning III toy. If you’re a normal member of the public you’ll get a 5% discount but if you’re a Yamato Fanclub member you’ll also get an additional 5% discount (amounting a nice total of 10% in all). The deadline for all the pre-orders is midday on the 30th July. Whilst the price point still isn’t determined what is more worrying is that Yamato are using this pre-order setup to gauge demand. So if they’re aren’t enough pre-orders we won’t even get this toy. If you’re curious as to how the development of it has gone thus far, then have a look here. It looks really quite lovely and there’s clear diecast in the joints too (this being a very good thing obviously). Either way we’ve got our fingers crossed for this one as we want it bad.

There’s a new update over at 4Gamer for the forthcoming Eureka Seven AO BluRay Hybrid disc. Showing more elements of the game in action (as seen above), it reminds us more of the sadly rather lacklustre PS2 games made by Bandai. No word on what developer is handling this but it could be in-house. In any case, we are still pretty excited about the fact that both the Nirvash type Zero and Nirvash type the END will be playable from the original Eureka Seven. The hybrid disc will be released on September 20th.

As we mentioned previously, the positively regal Billbine will be receiving a Robot Damashii toy this July. Even more wonderful is the fact that Dunbine will also receive similar treatment later this year. For long time readers of this site you’ll know we seriously wub Aura Battler Dunbine and these toys are just exquisite. The fact we’re also getting a Dunbine and one of this quality is really fantastic as far as we’re concerned. In any case, this Dunbine toy will be out in October of this year and will cost 4,410 yen.

Despite the ongoing and thoroughly erroneous myth that all Gundam games are awful, it’s always nice to play a new Gundam Battle game by Artdink. Pretty much every game in the series has given us hours of gaming pleasure (to a greater or lesser extent obviously). So to finally have another Gundam Battle game after Universe announced for the PS Vita, we were more than a little excited. Interestingly though instead of using the Universal Century timeline, the game is solely based around the Cosmic Era from the Gundam SEED saga.

Despite what many think, changing up to develop from PSP to Vita is no mean feat for a developer as small as Artdink. As the handheld is closer to PS3 levels of development, which means exponentially more art resources and greater code risks. Picking SEED was a relatively “safe” choice as after the original Gundam as it’s one of the pantheon’s most successful entries and if Artdink ballsed it up then the precious UC timeline brand would be untarnished on the new platform. Not to mention that Gundam Assault Survive didn’t really help Artdink in securing more UC timeline work.

In any case, we are very happy to report that Artdink didn’t balls up this new game at all and in fact it’s rather good indeed.

Since the game’s release last Thursday, Gundam Battle Operation has already amassed 300,000 downloads. It’s worth understanding that this isn’t the same thing as sales but it’s not bad going. To commemorate this, Bandai Namco have offered some free energy (as in play tokens) via their site, sadly it only allows Japanese mobile phone e-mail addresses to be entered.

After playing it a fair bit though, we think the game is wholly awful. From the mobile suit handling to the truly appalling framerate, it all harks back to Target in Sight. We’re not alone in our scathing appraisal of the game either. We’ve not experienced any lag however, which some people have reported. For those few that are enjoying this though; would you still enjoy it as much if it had cost you the same as another boxed game?

A new promo for E.X. Troopers has been uploaded. Whilst it shows some more gameplay and characters, it still lacks a HUD so we’re not sure how much of the “game” we’re actually seeing. That said, if the boosting setup shown in the video is in any way present in the final game then we’re completely sold. It harks back to the rather glorious, if a little unwieldy (initially at least) Gunvalkyrie. Anyway, the other big news is that Dai Sato will be penning the scenario for the game. This is a pretty big deal, as Sato is responsible for some of the most lucid and eloquent scripts ever seen in anime. There will also be a promotional anime made by Satelight (Kawamori’s studio) too. Following on from that it also seems the game will feature co-op, but after Monster Hunter who’s really surprised about that? Especially in Capcom game where you fight giant monsters. Anyway, the more we hear about this game the more we want it. The new promo is shown below.

As we mentioned a while back, the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus has been given the chogokin treatment (you can buy it here). Following on from that though, we now have the armored parts announced too. Released this December, the armored parts cost a pretty reasonable 5,040 yen. However, as with many of these optional toy parts, these are only available from the Premium Bandai site.

Our good friends at HobbyLink Japan have rolled out a new setup for the site and shipping. The new system will allow you to track the details of your orders in realtime as well as control how you group your items together. Below is a pretty thorough video explaining the rationale behind all the changes and what that will mean to all their customers. Personally, we’re really glad that these changes have happened and they were a really long time in coming but the wait was worth it.