It’s been reported that Takeshi Miyaji has passed away on July 29th aged 45. One of the founding members of Gamearts, at the age of 19 no less, and the creator of the Gungriffon series (as well as Grandia and Silpheed among others) he will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.

The upcoming Macross Frontier Sayonara no Tsubasa hybrid Blu-Ray pack has finally received its first promo. This also shows some actual game footage, which interestingly features several ground based missions (as per the PSP games). Entitled Macross Last Frontier, this looks more developed than the previous Trial Frontier but will still be a bit on the short side. We’re still sure a full fledged PS3 Macross game will be developed off the back of these, as it would be dumb to throw away all this development. Anyway, the game footage kicks in around the 2:30 mark and the disc will be out on October 20th.

As a result of the ongoing beta testing From Software have announced that, in order to polish the game further, they are delaying Armored Core V’s Japanese release until January 2012. In some ways, this is not overly surprising but it is encouraging. The whole point of the beta testing was to uncover and resolve potential problems before release. So it’s good to know that From Software are doing just that. There will also be another live stream for the game on August 5th.

Game Watch has a new piece on Rev 3.01 for Senjou no Kizuna. Despite having two new mobile suits; in the form of the RX-78GP01 Gundam “Zephyranthes” and the AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra, it also sports a new map (that of the California Base). This new level also has a slew of HLVs dotted across the area, which launch at various points too, as well as a large mass driver separating the map. We’ve linked a new video below and it’s also clear that the Rev 3 update also massively improved the game’s lighting and particle system. The update goes live on Friday 29th July. In addition the Gundam you see at the beginning of the video below, if you’re at all curious, is the RX-78-6 Mudrock Gundam that was prominently featured in the rather awesome PS2 game Zeonic Front.

The current Wonder Festival coverage has recently surfaced and there is a veritable panoply of mecha gaming related kits that have been displayed. From the the wonderful Kotobukiya stall showing the first Nineball from the original Armored Core games as well as the Sobrero from Armored Core For Answer. In addition, their Jehuty kit also finally reared its head too. However, the most impressive kits shown are from PLUM’s stall with the suspected Valken kit shown as well as an amazingly intricate Cloudbreaker 01 from Murakumo, the latter was originally shown at this year’s Winter event.

For the most part, the library of Gundam related games on the PSP is a remarkably solid one. With developers like Artdink and Capcom producing some truly excellent games. However, more recently Bandai Namco have become pretty complacent and gone back to their old ways of funding quick hack jobs to harvest some quick cash.

This is no new trait either, as the later years of the PS2’s life also saw a similar trend with woeful games like Gundam Climax UC springing to mind. What with lacklustre efforts such as Gundam Assault Survive, the writing has been on the wall for a while now. So it’s not with great surprise, though with some regret, that Gundam Memories has ventured toward the fecal end of the gaming quality spectrum.

The latest live stream for Armored Core V’s team based setup happened yesterday and is now archived accordingly. The full video is shown below and as always it’s fascinating to watch. What’s very much apparent is how much like Chrome Hounds the operator setup in Armored Core V really is. The tactical overview you get on the level that’s being generated by real players in the thick of combat is still uniquely wonderful. We really can’t wait to play this come October.

Following on from the first Macross Frontier’s movie Blu-Ray film/game hybrid pack (which we reviewed), the second film will also receive the same treatment. Whether this will be a more substantial effort remains to be seen, but the Blu-Rawy will be released October 20th for 7,140 yen. In addition, a deluxe pack will also be released for 10,500 yen featuring a poster, movie pamphlet, art book, film script and custom themes.

Update: 4Gamer has an update, with screenshots of the game, for the new hybrid pack.

At the recent Tamashii Festival a few curious shots of Armored Core V figures have surfaced. These are specifically Super Robot Chogokin figures, which is a tad incongruous as AC’s are very much at the real robot end of the spectrum. Either way, the fact that Bandai Namco are handling the international publishing means we’ll finally get some decent Armored Core toys. For those that may remember, Kaiyodo did a line of toys back in the day for AC2 and AC2AA (of which most of them were utterly woeful). Now that Bandai have stepped in we are genuinely expecting something pretty damn special. No word on pricing or whether the toys will be customisable but the Super Robot Chogokin toys are pretty affordable. We’re assuming the toys will be released alongside the game in Japan this October.

After the rumours we reported a while back, it turns out the Voltron (aka Go Lion) game will be hitting XBLA and PSN this October. There’s even an announcement trailer (shown below). Apparently, it will be an action adventure game of sorts but the trailer does show some genre deviation from that. Unfortunately this is being handled by the same team that did Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, so don’t get your hopes up.