As with Banpresto’s other mecha gaming offerings, the closer a game gets to release the more extensive the trailers get. Until, finally, you get close to 10 minutes of actual gameplay footage for Japanese high street game stores to run on a permanent loop. With Another Century’s Episode P’s release a few weeks away we’ve finally been graced with the full promo video of the game. What’s especially wonderful about this particular video is that it pretty much confirms the fact that the old boosting mechanics from the PS2 ACE games have returned for the new PSP version. Whilst this is clearly good news, it is a little sad that the game does suffer from obvious draw distance/fogging issues. It’s patently clear that the PSP version’s game engine has literally been ported from the PS2 but it doesn’t appear to be overly optimised. Admittedly, the ACE games have always had large environments so expecting a PSP to be able to resolve that as well as the PS2 games did is probably a bit unfair on our part (as even the PS2 games suffered with some fogging as well). It’s just that Artdink have raised the bar in terms of mecha gaming on the PSP, with their various Gundam Battle and Macross games, so ACE P has some stiff competition. In any case the full promo is shown below and you can pre-order the game here.

The nearly released Virtual On Force has been recently reviewed in Famitsu, nabbing a 7,7,8,7 score (or 29/40), which is by no means a bad score – quite respectable in fact. However, it’s nowhere near the almost mythical heights that the Dreamcast port of Oratan reached; as that attained the very rare 39/40. At the time that amounted to a pretty big deal, still does to an extent. That said Force is indeed flawed, compared to the previous two games, but it is an awful lot better than the hacked up port that was Marz. It’s nice to see that Famitsu have called this one pretty accurately though.

Famitsu has some nice new coverage explaining how the new combination attacks in Another Century’s Episode P will work. Unlike the same attacks in ACE 2 and 3, it seems that these will be more manually controlled as the player will need to hammer their targets within a time limit. Successful face raping of the enemy in question will also net the player more ACE points for upgrading. With the game’s release in a few weeks, it will be interesting to see how gamers take to this after the pretty appalling ACE R. In any case you can pre-order the game here.

The upcoming Level 5 developed Danball Senki has finally had another promo video released. It shows a bit of the customisation, boasting 2500 available parts, and more of the battling gameplay. Like we mentioned in our TGS impressions, it was a cool little game and we’re looking forward to its March 17th release next year. Still no word on a Western release as yet though.

One of the largest Perfect Grade kits has finally been released, that of the ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam from Gundam SEED Destiny. Coming in at a whopping 26,250 yen, like the other Perfect Grades it’s hardly very affordable. However, this price tag isn’t without reason; as the sheer engineering involved in the manufacturing of these plamodel beasts is suitably epic. Unsurprisingly, this mobile suit has been in numerous games over the years and the upcoming Gundam Musou 3 will also feature the mecha. As with almost all Bandai Gundam kits, Hajime Katoki has a hand in the sculpt and engineering. This can sometimes cause issues with the sculpt on certain designs (original design here), as he has a habit of somewhat standardising them. The Strike Freedom seems to be mostly okay on this front though. In any case, you can buy this impressive kit over at HLJ and they’re even holding a Perfect Grade sale too.

With Gundam Musou 3 near release in Japan, 4Gamer has some cool new screenshots of the game’s Partner Strike system as well mobile suit customisation. Though we’re mostly nerding out on the shots for the RX-78GP01-Fb Gundam Full Vernian “Zephyranthes” from Gundam 0083 (pictured above). Despite being one of our favourite Shoji Kawamori designs it’s also been somewhat in the news as of late, mostly due to Linkin Park’s fascination with the mobile suit. Unsurprisingly, the game’s site has also reciprocated this current interest with showing a new special video of the mobile suit. Naturally, as this is Gundam 0083 we’ve included the series’ two very lovely opening animations (in HD no less) below. That said, we still think that Back to Paradise would have been a better intro song.

4Gamer has announced that it will be hosting an interview session of sorts with the team behind the 360 port of Virtual On Force as well as with Juro Watari, the series’ creator, himself. The session is scheduled for 26th December, which also happens to be my birthday. Whilst the pimping of the upcoming, and utterly redundant, Softbank strategy guide is unfortunate the radio session should be an interesting – unless of course they start talking about how great women’s breasts are again. The game is released on December 22nd in Japan and you can pre-order it here.

With the launch of Gundam Musou 3 literally days away now, the official site has been stepping up with semi-regular video vignettes. Entitled Specials these show around 30 seconds of gameplay footage of a certain mobile suit pretty much owning small armies of enemy mecha. We’ve collated a few of them below, including the latest one – that of the Syd Mead designed CONCEPT-X 6-1-2 Turn X from Turn A Gundam. Enjoy!

Following on from the announcement recently, 4Gamer have some nice coverage of the upcoming Artdink developed Macross Triangle Frontier on PSP. Again, we’re pretty much spooging over the fact that Macross II is getting a campaign and that we get to play with a VF-2SS Valkyrie II again.

To commemorate the forthcoming release of Virtual On Force, the 360 port of Oratan 5.66 is having its price cut in Japan. Specifically from 1200 MSP to a very reasonable 400 MSP. Like the previous price cut, this too will be for a limited time only – from December 14th to the 27th. There’s no word whether this deal will make its way outside of Japan, as the timing is linked to Force’s Japanese release.