Valve’s Steam digital download service has been having a holiday sale, with daily deals with extreme price discounts, and one of today’s is Mr. Robot for $1.99, down from the usual $9.99. Mr. Robot isn’t what I would normally term a “mecha game”, per se, but more of an Western adventure/puzzle game with some fairly good mechanic designs, but at the current price point I figured I’d let the terminology slide. It’s developed by Moonpod, an indie company who also produced the excellent Starscape, and Mr. Robot was released to what were excessively positive reviews for an indie title at the time of its release.

Even if you aren’t interested in Mr. Robot, checking out Steam’s daily deals until January 3rd is definitely advised, because some of the price drops are extreme, even for a few fairly recent titles. While I and many others don’t feel secure with the idea of owning a digital copy of a game over a physical copy, getting hot titles for a fifth of the price makes the idea a lot easier to swallow.

It seems that Last Raven Portable will retain the data install option previously seen in Silent Line Portable. This feature, whilst appearing to be somewhat trivial, is actually quite a big deal when you consider the issues Armored Core 3 Portable suffered from in terms of its input framerate. In that, apart from some visual framerate stutter, the input lag was actually pretty atrocious (making some missions unnecessarily arduous). Considering the ramping up of difficulty in Silent Line and especially in Last Raven, the data install feature appears to have negated this serious input lag issue (from our play testing on Silent Line Portable at least). In short, having this feature in Last Raven Portable is very much a good thing as the multiple Zinaida fights in the PlayStation 2 original weren’t exactly a walk in the park to begin with.

The Crysis mod almost three years in the making, MechWarrior Living Legends is now finally out in Beta form. For those eager to get cracking with the mod, a list of download mirrors is available here, though you’ll need an account on their forum to access the thread in question. Admittedly, the mod has been delayed over a year now but considering that this is being done for free by a collection of dedicated fans means that the rest of us should learn to be more patient. In any case, they’ve done a truly splendid job and it shows that fan based work is by no means to be sniffed at. It’s also worth noting that this mod is not to be confused with the upcoming multi-platform MechWarrior reboot, though it does seem to give Piranha Games’ effort a graphical run for its money.

The 18 metre tall statue of the RX-78-2 Gundam, that was previously and very briefly displayed in Odaiba to commemorate Gundam’s 30th Anniversary, will be resurrected in Shizuoka outside the JR Higashi-Shizuoka Station. This means that if you’re riding on the Tokaido Shinkansen (between Tokyo and Nagoya), you’ll be able to see it from the comfort of your own seat on the train. There were plans to display the statue in Nagoya, as Nagoya TV helped fund the original TV series and movies, but it seems that deal fell through. The 1/1 scale Gundam will arrive in Shizuoka in July 2010 and be displayed until May 2011, then it will literally move down the road to the Bandai Hobby Centre. Anyway, it’s nice to know that this wonderful piece of Gundam memorabilia won’t end up on the scrap heap anytime soon.

We mentioned not that long ago about a new line of commemorative gaming releases for Gundam’s 30th Anniversary. Well, they’re now out with places like Play Asia stocking a fair few. Our personal recommendations would be Gundam MS Sensen 0079 an FPS on the Wii, pictured above, and Gundam Battle Universe a third person shooter on the PSP. Neither of these games will probably see a Western release so you’d best acquire them now whilst they’re available at their new reduced price point. We will be reviewing both games in the new future though, so also keep an eye out for that.

The new 2D side scrolling shooter Gunhound, in the same vein as Valken and Leynos, has finally been released. For those that still want their games to come in boxes, the game is also on Amazon Japan, although at an increased price point. We’ll be reviewing Gunhound in the New Year but, on the strength of the recent trial version, we’d strongly recommend that any discerning mecha gamer pick this up (so long as you have a decent game pad for your PC, as the keyboard controls are a tad awkward). It’s also worth clarifying that Gunhound is in no way a doujin game but meant as a full fledged commercial release.

The final of the three Armored Core PSP ports, in the form of Last Raven, has received its first promo video and a smattering of coverage. For those unaware, Last Raven was one of the most challenging Armored Core games and ultimately aimed at its loyal fanbase, which wound up a a fair few Western journalists on its PlayStation 2 release (as they found it impossibly difficult for the most part). As a consequence, the original game was very much misunderstood and many of its features overlooked. Notably of which was its very involved branching narrative (though the English localisation was pretty woeful to be fair). The narrative received a large amount of interest, in Japan, and multiple directors were involved in creating various promotional videos for the game (with this being my personal favourite). The current PSP port has subsequently re-used a similar edit to this promo, so you should be able to compare and contrast on how accurate the port is from a graphical standpoint over the original game. This port will be released in Japan on March 4th next year at 3990 yen, along with a nice 60 page artbook containing lots of artwork and interviews.

We previously mentioned the upcoming PC scrolling shooter Gunhound a while back, but the game’s developer’s Dracue have released a trial version of the game online (you can download the installer here). Considering that this has been been made by a small team of people, the final results are impressive and refreshingly well crafted. The game is entirely in Japanese obviously, so pad configuration maybe a bit of fiddle. That aside, it plays an awful lot like Leynos and Valken but that is very much a good thing (though with lots of lovely aesthetic nods to VOTOMS, as the other Hound in the demo sports a commander type radar from Roots of Ambition). The full game is released on the 18th December.

The anime adaptation of Harutoshi Fukui’s Gundam Unicorn novels will be premièred in Japan as a download via the PlayStation Store. Much like the recent anime Xam’d that saw its release via the same service, Gundam Unicorn will have its first (of six) episodes available on February 20th. There will also be HD and SD versions available, costing 1000 to 700 yen respectively (so you can also watch it on your PSP). This release is notable as it pre-dates the disc versions by almost a month and considering how hotly anticipated this new Gundam series is, this should further cement the PlayStation 3’s and Sony’s standing in the (frankly massive) Japanese anime market. The Unicorn Gundam is also a playable unit in the just released Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus.

Nippon Ichi America sent out a release giving the release date for Sakura Wars in the US as March 23rd, 2010. There seems to have been a bit of confusion early on, as some sites were reporting February, but the March date is the more recent one and straight from the horse’s mouth. I’m actually glad for the delay, as I think it’s wise to give Sakura Wars a bit of space from the other January and February releases, which given the amount and quality of the games coming out after Christmas, I’d be worried an already niche title like Sakura Wars could get crowded out.

Unfortunately, it seems that the previously announced Special Edition will be PS2 only, and that the Wii version will only have a standard edition available. The Special Edition comes with a bonus artbook, poster, and special outer cover, along with both the English and Japanese voices, while the regular edition will only feature the English dub. To try to compensate for the lack of a special edition for Wii owners, however, Nippon Ichi America is saying they’ll offer the Wii version at an “attractive price point.”