Over at Gpara there’s some new coverage for Front Mission Evolved and what’s interesting about this little nugget of PR, is that it focuses a lot more on the characters of the game. What’s most striking to me is that the characters themselves look a lot more anime inspired than I was expecting (especially from a Western studio). Considering that the original Front Mission’s characters were penned by Yoshitaka Amano, you’d expect a nod to this kind of artistic heritage but seeing it nonetheless warms the cockles of our merciless robot heart. Naturally, the update over at Gpara also goes into lots of nice nerdy detail on the garage as well as displaying more pictures of the wanzers in action. Still no word on an actual release date though.

Update: Here’s also a fascinating insight into the mecha design behind Front Mission Evolved, as its primary designer Skan Srisuwan at Imaginary Friends is penning the new wanzers. What’s reassuring, despite the man’s obvious talent, is that he’s quite open about his influences. Such as Hajime Katoki for one and not to mention the Yutaka Izubuchi designed Hygogg kit on his disk, all of which clearly shows in terms of the game’s overall aesthetic for the mecha. Thanks to LegaiaRules for the heads up.

Over at Famitsu they have uploaded lots of very nice screenshots for the upcoming From Software developed and Banpresto published Another Century’s Episode R. There have also already been a fair few blog posts by Banpresto producer Terada-san about the game, with some of these being misinterpreted rather negatively.

It’s clear that ACER is in a similar position to the original ACE, where the line-up of mecha is quite focused so as to allow the development of the engine and other code tasks to have a chance to work out (as this is the first time the series has graced the PS3, so an all new code base would obviously be required). Bear in mind though that ACE featured a total of 9 series initially and ACER goes all the way up to 11 (ACE2 had 14 series and ACE3 had 17 in total in case you’re wondering).

That said, the screenshots thus far look absolutely bloody fantastic. The game is apparently around 70% complete too and a Summer release is planned for it.

In the latest issue of Famitsu, From Software and Banpresto have announced another instalment into the successful Another Century’s Episode series; Another Century’s Episode R exclusively for the PlayStation 3. Now for those that played the last PS2 game, this new game might be a bit of a shock. As the name of that game had, well, the word “Final” in the title. Well, it seems that it was only final for the PS2 series at least as we now have a very new and very shiny ACE game on the way.

For those not versed in the ACE games, these are basically third person action interpretations of Super Robot Wars. As they utilise mecha from disparate series all in one game, however the main focus has mostly been that of real robots as supers would cause all sorts of problems. Admittedly, mecha like Shin Getter Robo have made the cut but their ability sets have been drastically limited. In any case, the full list of mecha series in ACER is as follows: Super Dimension Century Orguss, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Char’s Counterattack, Crossbone Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Overman King Gainer, Full Metal Panic!, Code Geass, Genesis of Aquarion, Macross Zero, Macross Frontier and various Banpresto originals

Personally, we miss not having Dunbine and Layzner in the ACE line-up. Those were, what we like to think, as the good old days.

The amazing Border Break has finally received it’s Ver 1.5 update today. This features all manner of new maps and mecha, not to mention new character customisation. The game itself is also still doing very well in the Japanese arcades, still no word on a home based console port though.

The upcoming Double Helix developed Front Mission Evolved, has received some new screenshots over at the official Japanese site. These show some interesting functional developments for the series, notably that of the wanzers sporting hover legs. It may appear that with each passing burst of PR from Square Enix that Front Mission is changing more into something like Armored Core. However, for those unaware of Front Mission’s roots; customisation (both visual and functional) played an integral part of the original games. The addition of hover legs is admittedly a nod to the realtime – not turnbased – functionality that debuted in Armored Core 2 but that’s not to say it has been wholly copied either (after all Armored Core owes much of its functional inspiration to the Assault Suits games). The point we are somewhat clumsily making is this though; hover legs were notoriously awkward to use in the older PlayStation 2 era Armored Core games and it will be interesting to see whether the team at Double Helix have learnt from this. As the more recent Armored Core games solved the issue by merging the functionality of ground based legs and hovers, to allow all AC’s to traverse water (something that was normally the exclusive remit of the hover leg types in the PlayStation 2 games). This merging of leg functionality is clearly not present in Front Mission Evolved though – as the screenshots show – so how they’ve solved their handling issues will be interesting to see. In any case, more screenshots from this recent update are linked below.

The upcoming Kihei Senki Legacies has received its first trailer. This series, as we previously mentioned, is fueling the semi-frequent zeitgeist in anime that gamers make great mecha pilots (a posit will heartily concur with!). However, this premise does go beyond the narrative background of the series itself. As the entire show appears to animated in 3D CG, in a manner not too dissimilar to the recent OVA Freedom.

America has finally received a game from the long-running Sakura Wars series. It may have taken a decade or so longer than the fans had anticipated, but I’ve got a copy of the PS2 Premium Edition in my grubby little paws right now, and can confirm that, yes, this this release has actually happened, after years of false hope, wild rumors, and constant delays.

We’ve written about this game before, but for those of you who haven’t been playing along at home during the thirteen-year wait to see one of these games in English, here’s the short version: Sakura Wars is a strategy RPG series that started out on the Saturn and was one of the few landmark titles that Sega was able to develop for their ailing competitor to the original Sony PlayStation, and quickly grew to popularity in Japan because of its (then) unique combination of sexy, steampunk robots and sexy, talkative women, with game mechanics that rewarded the player for their ability to chat up girls with better units to use in the strategy RPG portion of the game. While it did well enough to get live theater performances in Japan, anime hadn’t yet hit any sort of popularity in America and at the time no one was willing to take the chance on what would be an incredibly niche product.

Times have changed, though, and Nippon Ichi’s American branch announced they were bringing over Sakura Wars 5 as Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love on both the PlayStation 2 and the Wii, and unlike all the other false starts over the years, I have physical evidence that the game is out in my native language. After all these years, it’s finally here.. While our younger audience probably fails to appreciate why Sakura Wars’ strategy RPG gameplay paired with visual-novel style focus on relationships was so shocking to gamers on this side of the Pacific back in the nineties, old men like myself (23 years old) remember when both strategy RPGs and dating sims were extremely niche genres, never mind a game containing both. Seeing a game in the series make it to market not only fulfills a personal dream of mine, it also shows how cosmopolitan the video game marketplace has become. So what are you waiting for? Grab either the PlayStation 2 or Wii versions now!

Expect us to review this at some point in the future, although given the site’s nature, we’ll probably have more to say about the pretty robots than the pretty girls.

Over at Game Watch they have a nice new breakdown of the Lord of Elemental DS port. Covering all the main characters and their respective mecha. The official site has also received an update and what’s most interesting for us, is that the original Super Famicom music is playing in the background. This may mean that the original maybe intact in the DS port, with any luck at least. The only concern we have at the moment is that the “System” part of the site is still under construction. Now, we’ve already had a fair few Super Robot Wars games on the DS, all of the pretty well wrought too. However, Lord of Elemental’s setup was intentionally quite straightforward for the time. Whether that’s retained or updated somehow is still very much unknown. The game is still set for a May 27th release in Japan at 6,090 yen and you can pre-order it here. Still no word from Atlus on whether this will be released in the West though.

This has been going the rounds as of late, as it seems that a live action Gaiking is in production. The teaser trailer shows that, much like Michael Bay’s recent Transformers films, this Gaiking remake is massively over detailing its designs. The reasoning behind this is obviously because some muppet thinks that this makes the mecha look more realistic; the problem is that they picked Gaiking.

Gaiking is a super robot with MASSIVE horns on its head and a giant mouth in its chest. I mean, honestly, it’s hardly a realistic place to start. Yet going to all that realistic detail in the cockpit and all the visual kibble adorning the mecha’s body is utterly missing the point. At least with the recent animated sequel a few years back they managed to at least get the tone right. This just looks very silly, simply because it’s taking itself desperately seriously. Super robots are meant to be preposterous fun, making them realistic just makes it all very dull.

Gaiking was also one of the mecha mecha in the Shogun Warriors toys/comics line. These were basically a means to sell totally disparate Japanese mecha toys from separate series all under one line back in the late 70s and early 80s (a bit like a super robot version of Robotech). The only heartwarming thought about all this is that Go Nagai might get to finally see some Gaiking royalties if this is actually made.

The original Gaiking and its recent sequel have also been featured in numerous Super Robot Wars games over the years. Our personal favourites are Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 and Super Robot Wars K. Both games come highly recommended.

Thanks to Plastic Pals for the heads up.

At the recent Tokyo International Anime Fair a rather interesting new anime series, called Kihei Senki Legacies, was announced. Now, we know this is primarily a mecha gaming website – so why cover an anime series announcement?

Well, the first reason is that the mecha design is being helmed by Kunio Okawara. The granddady of real robot mecha design and a designer that has worked on numerous mecha games over the years. The second reason is down to the narrative premise of Legacies; as the series’ protagonist is an ardent gamer and as such is ideally equipped to pilot the Omega 99 pictured above (which looks like an interesting fusion of Gundam and Patlabor design sensibilities, with a dash of Mr. T thrown in for good measure).

Now this is not the first time a mecha gaming nerd has fronted an anime like this, as Overman King Gainer did it not that long ago. What’s interesting about all this is that gaming is entering more into the world of mecha anime, as it’s normally the other way around – with games referencing anime based functionality to form the base rulesets for the mecha.

The TV series is planned to have a 52 episode run and there’s no word on a release date as yet.