The upcoming and curious Blu-Ray hybrid game addition Macross Trial Frontier has been given a decent amount of screen time in the lead up to its release at the beginning of October. Around the 2:18 mark, the gameplay footage kicks in and to anyone that’s played the recent PSP games it will all look pretty familiar (though far shinier admittedly). This isn’t exactly a surprise, as this development was telegraphed somewhat when the hybrid pack was announced. Still, it’s nice to see that Artdink have made their mark on contemporary gaming at least in terms of this game’s functional heritage. Whether they were part of the development for this port remains to be seen but considering the striking similarity I can only surmise that someone at Artdink was involved at some point.

Over at Comiket, Takara Tomy have unveiled the next set of Video Game Robotics gashapon that were meant for a June release (that are now scheduled for December instead). In total, the series will contain four mecha from four different games. They are the PDF-802 X-4+ from Power Dolls 2, a PC turnbased strategy game with mecha designed by none other than Hajime Katoki. Followed by the HIGH-MACS 12 from the original Gungriffon and then the V-MH GLORY from the super rare Metal Slader Glory adventure game on the Famicom (later ported to the Super Famicom). The last mecha, of the four, is apparently a new blast runner from the upcoming Border Break Air Burst. However, all this may sound and look wonderful but the last set of gashapon in the range were pretty awful and they cost 700 yen a piece, these new toys cost 400 yen each. Considering the poor quality of the previous set, reducing the price for the new one doesn’t exactly bode well really.

Over at Gundam.info they’ve released a flash based full 3D photo viewer of the full scale Gundam in Shizuoka. As you can see, we’ve linked it above as well. The four buttons along the bottom, from left to right, allow you to choose the various views of the Gundam (either full body day, fully body night or torso day) as well as move around it from left to right. The final button opens the viewer in full screen mode, which we’ve deactivated here (as it didn’t agree with our blog setup for some reason). In any case, it’s nice to see the Gundam from all angles finally.

4Gamer have again got a nice new selection of screenshots for the upcoming Front Mission Evolved. It’s clear that the PR campaign is in its last desperate throes, as the game is released in September. From more angry characters, minus gratuitous bewbs, and surprisingly large mecha (though somewhat meagre when compared to Armored Core For Answer’s Arms Forts) there’s definitely lots of interesting and shiny content to peruse though.

In the latter half of September, Yahoo will be releasing an augmented reality app for iPhone 3GS and 4 users that will allow visitors to the full sized Gundam in Shizuoka to see a companion MS-06S Zaku II in Char’s colours alongside it. Whether this will also make their phones run three times faster remains to be seen.

4Gamer has a nice new batch of HD screenshots for the upcoming Front Mission Evolved. Overall, the game is still looking nice and the September 28th release date seems to be still on track. The update also covers the game system setup a bit as well, though with nothing really new to report since we last talked about it. As the awful acronym for the game’s bullet time (as in “E.D.G.E.” or the more idiotic “Emergency Defense Galvanosynaptic Enhancer”) is still receiving large amounts of PR spooge. Though it seems that Square Enix will be doing something right in terms of releasing toys for the game, for that we happily tip our cyborg top hats in their direction.

As we reported a while back, Bandai’s new flagship Super Robot Chogokin toyline has received its first entry in the form of Mazinger Z (as lovingly photographed over at R-Side). In addition, the Tamashii Festival has been in full swing showing off Bandai’s upcoming toy wares. Amongst them was the rather brutal looking Mazinkaiser SKL, from the upcoming series of the same name (with its latest promo here).

In any case, considering Mazinger’s formative influence on the Super Robot Wars games not to mention the fact that said Original Generation mecha (such as the Alteisen and Cybuster) will also be receiving Super Robot Chogokin renditions in the near future, means that this new Bandai toyline is worth keeping a gaming eye on.

What with the release of the Xbox 360 port for Virtual On Force getting ever closer, it seems that there are concerns that this series of games may not entice newcomers. With this is mind, 4Gamer has covered the announcement of a new EX Option. This effectively allows the player to grade the difficulty of the offline singleplayer campaign as per their burgeoning skill level (such as increased health, as pictured above). To be honest these kind of difficulty nullifying features tend to rub me the wrong way, especially considering the previous 360 release of Oratan 5.66 succeeded off the back of its untainted learning curve. Admittedly, this EX Option is entirely at the player’s discretion but this addition to Force reeks of management not development, as any gamer with half a cognitively active brain wouldn’t bother with this.

4gamer has a selection of HD screenshots for the upcoming BluRay hybrid Macross Frontier movie, including the game portion for Macross Trial Frontier. It’s clear that there’s Artdink functional lineage at work here, especially in the HUD but whether they’re involved in the development of this remains unclear and somewhat unlikely. As they have Carnage Heart EXA to be getting on with, not to mention that porting a PSP game to the PS3 is a pretty big ask on the part of Bandai Namco. In any case the hybrid BluRay disc is out on October 7th for 7,140 yen.

As part of a summer campaign for Senjou no Kizuna, to tie in with the game’s recent Ver 2.17 update, players will be able to win new mobiles suits to play with. The four mobile suits in questions are the RX-78-6 Mudrock Gundam, the MSM-10 Zock, the RGM-79L GM Light Armor and the EMS-10 Zudah. In order to unlock each suit, the player needs to either win a match as either Federation or Zeon, for the Mudrock and Zock respectively, or lose with either side to get the weaker GM Light and Zudah. On a separate note, seeing the Mudrock in action since the excellent Zeonic Front is very welcome indeed. This “summer battle” campaign will only be in arcades for a short while though, starting on August 12th to the 25th. However, the camapign will also be extended in September as well. If you want to see the new suits in action, there are videos on the campaign page at the official Senjou no Kizuna site.