The upcoming Shin Gihren’s Greed on PSP has received its first promo video. From the admittedly somewhat dated in-game visuals to the awesome rewrites of Gundam history, we’re not sure about this one yet. Whilst it’s very cool to have Amuro scream that the “Unicorn isn’t for show”, paraphrasing his line from Char’s Counterattack, but we had hoped the game element would have been improved somewhat. Admittedly this is a turn based strategy effort but after the recent Super Robot Wars Z2, you can’t just port an old game and expect that will be enough. That said, the re-animated footage does look suitably boss. The full promo video is shown below.

This year’s Tamashii Festival happened over the weekend in Akihabara and a slew of places have covered it, from GA Graphic to Gigazine (with the salient reports of diecast toys and Gundam being of note). As always, we love these events as they show off recent as well as forthcoming toy releases from Bandai. We especially love the fact that the Alteisen was this year’s poster boy for the show (shown above). So it’s still very much apparent that mecha gaming and their toys are still very much intertwined.

A live concert will be gracing PlayStation Home next week with both Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee from Macross Frontier. Entitled Super Live, it’s a follow on from the previous concert earlier this year. This new Super Live effort will also come with a variety of virtual outfits and paraphernalia, so they’re not missing a trick with this one. Whether this is part of the build up for a home release of the second film is not yet known, though all we care about is that Artdink get to release the full fat Macross PS3 game they’ve very obviously been working on.

Another live stream for Armored Core V is planned for the 21st July, naturally you can check out the stream at Famitsu or you can watch it on From Software’s much more reliable UStream channel (though weirdly they’re linking the same videos). The reason for this new live stream is to show the closed beta in action, so this will likely be very interesting as gamers will be rinsing the game rather than squeaky tarento going incoherently crazy. 4Gamer has also laid down the gauntlet by announcing their formation of a team for the closed beta. We are seriously beginning to think that this shit is going to get real pretty damn soon.

4Gamer has the scoop on a new update to Gundam Extreme Versus next week on the 20th July. Whilst it features the wonderfully evil XM-X2 (F97) Crossbone Gundam X-2 Kai, piloted by the suitably toffee nosed Zabine Chareux, the update will also include the somewhat controversial GNT-0000 00 Qan[T]. Controversial in the sense that the Quan[T]’s main functional remit is to make conflict redundant, through mutual telepathic understanding via sparkly green fairy dust. How this will be implemented in the arcades remains to be seen but we expect a logarithmic increase in hugging and love-ins post matches involving the new suit. Either way both new suits look lovely in-game and we’re seriously losing our minds over the lack of a home console port.

Game Watch has a new piece on the forthcoming Rev 3 update for Senjou no Kizuna, aka that Gundam arcade game with the palpably awesome cockpit. Emphasising its palapable awesomeness, the new revision will feature a “real frame” cockpit (pictured above) too. Apart from some additional unit unlock changes, the update is a bit sparse and seems to be more a framework for further additions (much like Rev 2.5 was really). Considering that the hardware that runs this game is now eight years old, we’re moderately impressed that it’s survived this long.

Over at 4Gamer they have an update regarding Konami’s upcoming Steel Chronicle, which is sort of a Border Break/Monster Hunter clone. Basically the location test will start today and to commemorate that Konami have released some footage of the game in action. To be honest, it looks pretty awful and really rather pedestrian/dull. Hopefully the location test will garner some useful feedback in order for Konami to improve, what appears at least, to be a woeful arcade game.

Over at Famitsu there’s a new update regarding Armored Core V’s story. Specifically that the game seems centered around freeing a city from a dictator of sorts, in an almost Seven Samurai homage (as you’re obviously a paid mercenary). The shot of a giant MT (above) is also encouraging as the Arms Forts in AC4 and ACFA were very cool so to see them back, at least in some way, makes us happy. The other cool element is that there will also be an underground city, where the former resistance hide out, which is a nice nod to the original PSone games (as well as AC3 and AC3SL) too. In any case, the game is still on track for its October 20th release and we really can’t wait!

The lesser appreciated Gihren’s Greed series of strategy games will receive another iteration in August on the PSP. Entitled Shin Gihren’s Greed, the game will feature new parts of the UC timeline, such as Gundam Unicorn. For those not versed in the series, the Gihren’s Greed games effectively allow players to rewrite Gundam history based off the decisions and outcomes of various battles. So this means you can have Char pilot a red custom RX-78-2 (which also travels three times as fast, obviously). Due to the various licenses involved, these games have never been officially released abroad so much of the narrative nuance and references are pretty much lost on the foreign fanbase due to the lack of localisation. In any case, you can pre-order the game here.

Apologies for the lack of updates as of late. In any case, along with Level 5’s Gundam AGE on the way it seems that the Gundam The Origin manga penned by the artistic luminary that is Yoshikazu Yasuhiko will also be animated. The Origin manga is an interesting choice as it’s not overly popular in Japan (compared to the Crossbone Gundam manga) but it does fill a fan based desire when it comes to re-animating the original series and movies. Narratively, The Origin deviates from the original series in lots of interesting ways and the designs themselves are a bit different too. Whilst the gaming connection with this new project isn’t as overt as with Level 5’s Gundam AGE, we’re already seeing new merchandising rear its very pretty head so gaming won’t be far behind.