Over at 4Gamer they have a nice piece on a lot of the new parts for Armored Core Verdict Day. Whilst we’ve seen some of these images, there are a lot of new ones. From the Heat Machinegun, which sounds worrying, as well as a plasma missile. The latter having shades of the Kojima missiles from For Answer. Though the beefy physical blade (shown above) does look awfully boss. The September 26th release is still on track and you can pre-order the (Japanese) collector’s edition here.

What with the beta for Gundam Breaker already out, it seems Bandai Namco have also been listening to players in regards to improving the game. So we’ll be seeing operators, voiced by seiyuu, helping you out in game as well as allied wingmen. The latter looks more like these will be non-kitbashed units too, which is interesting. The PS3 version will released on June 27th for 7,980 yen. No word on the Vita release as yet though.

There’s a nice big update for Super Robot Wars Operation Extend over at 4Gamer. Mostly showing lots of new screenshots of the 3D battle animations it also shows the game map (as seen above). This is not like the previous grid base approaches but is instead radial and more along the lines of Super Robot Wars NEO. It’s pretty clear that Operation Extend is likely a re-purposed NEO, with a much larger unit roster. We’re still not sure about the whole download only approach but bear in mind the last few PSP have also been available to download too, so this isn’t something massively new (though the episodic nature may be a bone of contention to some). Either way we’re just happy to see Patlabor finally.

Over at Famitsu there’s a new update on Armored Core Verdict Day, primarily covering the new solid shields (shown above) and the return of weapon arm parts, the latter will have interesting ramifications to the current hanger setup for weapon switching. They also make a big deal that there will be a greater amount of part variety over the last game, specifically catering for more energy type (KE, CE and TE) variance. In addition, we now also have details on the first live stream for the game. Hosted on the 12th April, it sounds like it will follow the same format as previous live streams. Once it’s archived online we’ll be sure to post it here.

In an interested move, Banpresto have announced a new PSP downloadable entry to the Super Robot Wars canon. Called Super Robot Wars Operation Extend, the game will be broken up into eight parts. The first part will cost 500 yen with the subsequent parts costing 1000 yen each. Buying all of them together will cost 6,480 yen. No word on a starting release date but all eight parts are expected over the course of this year. The actual game itself though is based upon Super Robot Wars NEO and will have similar map based commands (rather than the traditional grid system). In addition, the battle animations will be a stylised 3D with a few 2D elements thrown in. The roster will also be pretty sizable with lots of great 80’s real robot shows in the mix. In short, we’re looking forward to this but having it released like this will take a bit of getting used to.

Today, the YAMS-132 Rozen Zulu gets added to the Gundam Extreme Full Boost roster. Hot off the tails of the recent release of Gundam UC episode 6, the Rozen Zulu is a nice complement to the current stable of Unicorn mobile suits. Weighted at a cost of 2000, the Rozen Zulu has a multitude of weapons to include its incom claws, mega beam shield, and psyco jammer that traps the enemy. Gameplay wise, it looks reminiscent of Zeong with decent offensive options while moving. Make sure to check out the reveal video below!

We now know that Gundam Breaker will be released on 27th June for a pretty standard sum of 7,890 yen (thus disproving the theories that this would be another freemium game). In addition, the beta version of the game is now available to download via (Japanese) PSN. It has a few levels and some initial customisation. Gameplay-wise it’s pretty close to the Gundam Musou games but with more restricted boosting and firing. Pretty standard arcade fare really. What’s especially interesting is that the game is directly connected to Gundam Perfect Games, a website that’s dedicated to Gundam related gaming. This means you can upload your kitbashed creations for all to see. This alone is a pretty nifty feature. It will be interesting see how Bamco treat this beta release, and whether anything useful in terms of balancing will come out of it.

As we mentioned previously, the moderately lacklustre Virtual On Marz will be getting a game archive release on (Japanese) PSN on the 21st March for a very reasonable 800 yen. In addition to this, the newly released PS3 specific HORI TwinSticks will work with this version of Marz. After this release we will have had all the Virtual On games ported to this generation of games consoles. We can only hope that SEGA will follow through and give us another arcade iteration of this classic series.

Considering Yamato’s absence from a variety of shows as of late, their official site going down and the emptying of their offices, many people have assumed that they’ve gone bankrupt. Considering no-one from Yamato is willing to comment on what’s happening, it’s only helping to fuel the uncertainty. That said there may be a merger occurring between Yamato and Arcadia but again due to lack of concrete facts on that, this may just be wishful thinking. Personally, if Yamato were to go under then that would be an incalculable shame as their various Macross toys have been amazing. Whilst they’ve also had some quality assurance issues over the years their output, for a relatively small business, has been thoroughly world class. Once we know more on the company’s status we’ll let you know.

Some nice juicy news for Armored Core Verdict Day has surfaced today. The main point of good news is that the game world will be reset at the end of each game season (or if one team dominates all areas, effectively winning that season). The season resets will also have each group revert back to their starting positions, so no one group will have the advantage over the other. This is a big improvement over the previous game and harks back to how the various factions in Chrome Hounds were handled. Following on from that there will also now be a total of 56 maps in Verdict Day. This naturally includes the levels from the previous game (though we imagine they’ll be tweaked) but this is quite a big jump up in terms of playable areas. Hopefully these won’t be night and day versions of the same map, as that would be a bit bloody cheeky really. Finally players that relegated to jetpack status during a match will be able to take photos. These will be stored in the player’s garage and propagated through the game’s status updates. Whether this feature will work with the (Japanese) Armored Core Official Partnership site remains to be seen but it would be pretty great if that were the case.