Over the next few months, Mecha Damashii will begin to start on some more retro reviews for mecha games that have made a mark on the genre. Whilst we’ve already done a fair few features to this effect, as well as recently reviewed games like Metal Wolf Chaos, the plan is to review games that people think are worth the coverage. The first two of these reviews will be for the original arcade version of Virtual On as well as the epic Steel Battalion. Past that, we’re curious to know what you – the readers – would like to see covered. From Metal Warriors to Remote Control Dandy, what games do you think need the reviewing treatment? Naturally, feel free to comment below!

4Gamer has some coverage about the upcoming Virtual On Force, as on release both the standard and memorial box versions will come packaged with a special promotional code for Border Break Air Burst. This will allow Border Break players to gain access to a new a paint scheme for their blast runner, one that is unobtainable within the game normally. Not wishing to miss a trick, players that are only subscribed to the monthly paid Border Break.NET service will be able to use the new paint scheme. There was also a cool press conference for Air Burst about a week ago, where they showed the new game off quite nicely (the video is here in case you’re curious).

Following on from this Game Watch also had some interesting coverage regarding the new training mode in the 360 port of Force. It’s partly based on the one seen in Oratan but will have a great emphasis on structured training levels for novice players (as Oratan’s setup was much more open ended by comparison). What’s also very curious is how the game will handle the various VR types from the arcade, as these were triggered off ranking via the card system. The unfortunate follow-on of this was that often the better performing players received a wider array of VR’s to choose from, leaving the novices to struggle with the default versions. Whether this system has been carried over to the online element in the 360 port still isn’t known but from the description it seems that VR’s are awarded in the new “Mission Mode” now. The latter worries us slightly, as that would make this port of Force a bit too close to Marz for our liking. That said, the Missions also feed into how much you can upgrade your wingman AI – so that could be interesting at least. Finally, the article mentions a graphical option that renders the game with various HDR effects, such as bloom and some specular elements on the surface of the VR. We saw these on the TGS demo we played and they did look nice. The fact they are optional is pretty nifty though (as that very much appeals to our purist tendencies).

The next Earth Defense Force, or Chikyuu Boueigun, game “Insect Armageddon” is no longer being helmed by Japanese developer Sandlot. Instead, D3 have given the franchise to Vicious Cycle. Whilst this may not initially appear as being very much to do with mecha, then please allow us to elaborate.

Sandlot were formed from the ashes of a team at Human Entertainment who had made the rather brilliant Remote Control Dandy. This was a unique mecha game as it had the player control a giant mecha limb by limb from ground level. The subsequent effect of this was one of epic scale. Sandlot pretty much made this their functional calling card from that point on.

Their first “game” was on the PS2 and it was pretty much a glorified tech demo for their engine, tying in with the recently released Tekkouki Mikazuki the “trial edition” game was packaged with the series’ soundtrack. Again this had the player control a mecha from ground level, emphasizing its scale.

This then allowed Sandlot to get investment to make Gigantic Drive with the original Enix (before the merger with Squaresoft). Whilst it was received well in Japan the Western version, entitled Robotic Alchemic Drive, garnered a vocal cult following.

So where do the Chikyuu Boueigun games come into all of this then? Well, the tech that had been built up over two games was now sitting around and it was ripe for a B-movie interpretation (with giant alien ants obviously). Packaged as part of D3’s “SIMPLE 2000” budget line, the first and second games sold very well allowing Sandlot to invest in other games along the way (such as this little beauty).

In short, the mecha functional core based around the emphasis of scale in a destructible environment that birthed these games is integral to what made them work in the first place. Even the first 360 game was developed by Sandlot, so to see them absent on the new game is very sad indeed. In any case, the trailer for the new game is shown below and don’t forget to read our feature on Sandlot too.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080 to review. Specifically, the new GM Sniper II from the Robot Damashii range. The gaming significance of this design is also quite interesting and this review is meant as a companion piece to the forthcoming “White Dingo” version.

The upcoming Super Robot Wars L has received its first set of TV adverts in Japan. The adverts show the insert animations for most of the new mecha featured. The somewhat cunning and more than a little bit misleading aspect of how these have been depicted is that Banpresto have linked them all together as an edited whole. In reality, the inserts are very short-lived in the game and the vast bulk of the actual animation is sprite based and reliant on the heavy re-use of assets from the previous DS and even GBA titles. That said from what we played of the game at TGS it was at least fun, so we’ll see on the game’s release at the end November whether the budget animation will wind us up. The videos are linked below.

Now that the new SRW OG anime “The Inspector” has kicked off in Japan, we now have both the opening and ending animations online. The opening’s song is, unsurprisingly, performed by the indomitable JAM Project and is called “MAXON”. It practically oozes tamashii. The ending is, on the other hand, a bit more sassy and is “Bokura no Jiyuu” by Aki Misato. Despite the obvious mecha portion of the animation, the other element that needs mentioning is the prolific amount of jiggling bewbage, with the ending animation attaining somewhat of a critical mass in this department. This is by no means a new development when it comes to the OG mythos but it may catch some people a bit off guard – as in people that aren’t sexually repressed teenage boys. We’ve linked both segments below.

A chap on flickr by the name of m_o_n_k_e_y has been rendering various cool mecha in Lego form. Specifically, he’s moved onto the vertical tanks from the original Steel Battalion games on the Xbox as designed by the wonderful Junji Okubo. The above model is based on the Vitzh, that’s basically the grunt of the VT forces. The guy has even had a crack at the internal cockpit as well, which is pretty cool really. Thanks to Persona for the heads-up on this.

The ongoing Tamashii Nation 2010 show has received various bits of coverage, with AkibaHobby’s being one of the most extensive. From the White Dingo GM Sniper Mk.II variant Robot Damashii shown above (still no release date though), to a veritable avalanche of Super Robot Wars OG toys, from the PTX-007-03C Weißritter, to the the R-Series (as in R-1, R-2 and R-3). The latter offers the potential for a chogokin SRX down the line (with some anime/engineering magic). In any case, this year’s show has had a lot of surprises.

Notable of which is the teaming up of Studio HalfEye and Bandai to make a new transformable Escaflowne chogokin, most probably based on the older and very expensive garage kit. Hopefully it will be better than the awful Yamato toy. Whilst it’s somewhat kept quiet, Escaflowne did receive a PSone game back in the day (but as you probably guessed it was a bit dire). Even the Ver.Ka Temjin made a showing too, as well as a brief presence from Dann of Thursday from Gun X Sword.

All said and done though and it is admittedly not in a mecha game at all, we’re also very excited about the announcement of the Gunship from Nausicaä in Bandai’s new Formania line. Put simply, it looks bloody amazing.

Along with a slew of other toy announcements today, Bandai have finally come clean on the fact they are indeed going to release Robot Damashii toys of both the L-Gaim Mk.I and Mk.II respectively. If you remember the Heavy Metal L-Gaim mecha, designed by the glam-rock-tastic Mamoru Nagano, topped the wishlist of fans for new Robot Damashii figures not that long ago.

Unsurprisingly, with such a classic Yoshiyuki Tomino real robot series it’s been featured in numerous games over the years. From a variety of Super Robot Wars titles to the more recent first two Another Century’s Episode games (not to mention Real Robots Final Attack, but we prefer to ignore that little “gem” if we can).

L-Gaim has also had quite an impressive toy history too, from lovely HCM figures to a very recent and utterly amazing Soul of Chogokin Spec toy. These new Robot Damashii figures will hopefully be a bit more affordable though. Currently there’s no word on whether the L-Gaim Mk.II toy will retain the transformation but it’s quite a simple sequence so it’s quite likely it will. Both toys will be release early next year in Japan and can be pre-ordered here and here. What with us being massive L-Gaim nerds, we’ve also linked the lovely openings from the series as well as a few game clips of the respective mecha in action below.

Update: GAGraphic has some nice shots from the current Tamashii Nation show.

4Gamer has finally nabbed the Japanese release date for the upcoming Gundam Musou 3 as being the 16th December. They’ve even done some more comparison shots with the last game on how the cel-shading works now. As we said in our impressions, the game was fun and looked decent, though obviously more of the same. We’ll be picking this one up in December.