IGN has an enlightening interview up with some of the people behind the upcoming new entry in the MechWarrior series. After the announcement trailer was released, after a bit of “ooh” and “ahh”ing at the pretty robot graphics, I was left with a lot of questions about what direction they were attempting to take the new MechWarrior, and the interview is uncharacteristically insightful. Not only do these guys really seem to care about what they’re doing, but they sound like they’re capable of doing it, too.

The latest issue of Famitsu has announced another PSP port for the Gundam vs Gundam line of games. Now, we already reported that Gundam vs Gundam Next is getting ported to the PlayStation 3 but it also seems a PSP version is also on the cards and slated for a December release this year. Interestingly, the PSP port seems to be getting additional playable mecha in the form of the Reborns Gundam and 00 Raiser from the second season of Gundam 00 as well as the Altron Gundam and Wing Zero from Endless Waltz.

What with this years’ Tokyo Game Show around the corner, the Japanese games industry marketing machine is going into overdrive. The upcoming Front Mission Evolved, being developed by Double Helix, has been given another trailer. Unlike the first, this teaser is predominantly CG footage and not in-game (which is a bit of a shame really). That said, the wanzers have been recreated faithfully enough it seems so there’s at least that aspect to be thankful for.

In a recent update to the official Silent Line Portable site, a new data install option was disclosed. This is especially good news for anyone who bought the previous Armored Core 3 Portable, as it spent half the time reading game data straight from the UMD (rather than caching it like it did on the PlayStation 2 version) and consequently sapping your PSP battery dry. Now, you’ll be able to install all the necessary data onto the PSP’s memory stick negating this issue entirely. Considering the lengthy bouts of furious multiplayer we had on the original Silent Line, the fact that we won’t need to spend quite so much time re-charging our PSP is nice to know. For those interested, there’s also a promo video for Silent Line Portable going the rounds. The port istelf looks to be pretty solid, more so than the last effort at least.

The recent Armored Core Championship Tournament 2009 Season 1 Finals were held in Tokyo over the weekend. This was for the recent release of Armored Core 3 Portable. There were over 40 participants with only 13 qualifying. The three levels used for the tournaments were “Arena”, “Wasteland” and “Abandoned Factory”. Even Toshifumi “Mr. Armored Core” Nabeshima himself was there for the fans and thanked them cheerfully for their diligence in terms of their mad skillz. The winner was a rifle user, one who manually fired shots (something that was prevalent at the final for the PlayStation 2 version back in 2002). For more info Dengeki has the scoop.

The hugely expensive HORI TwinStick EX for Oratan 5.66 has been prototyped for the team at SEGA (in Japan). The cheerful column over at the official game blog has a few up close action shots of the peripheral. The release is still slated for around November/December for those that were brave enough to pre-order it.

Here is the latest promo video for the upcoming PSP game Macross Ultimate Frontier. This is the sequel to the previous Macross Ace Frontier, also developed by Artdink (who in turn have helmed the Gundam Battle series as of late, though the older of us will most probably remember them for making Carnage Heart). Ultimate Frontier boasts even more variable fighters to choose from now and the addition of several extra Macross series (notably that of Macross Dynamite 7, Macross Zero and the somewhat ill-fated Macross II). The game is out at the beginning of October in Japan and like the previous game it most likely won’t make the jump abroad, as the rights surrounding Macross are quite awkward (courtesy of Robotech and Harmony Gold). The music in the video is also a new Fire Bomber track made specifically for the game as well, as anything involving Yoshiki Fukuyama makes everything so much better.

The successful Capcom Gundam arcade games are finally getting a decent console port for this generation, in the form of Gundam vs Gundam NEXT. The last iteration of Gundam vs Gundam got an admittedly quite competent PSP port but it lacked online multiplayer and it had a few minor performance issues in AdHoc versus. The NEXT update will now get an exclusive PlayStation 3 release and considering the recent Gundam Senki boasts some pretty impressive (and thoroughly stable) online multiplayer options it’s logical to assume that a series of games based on the quality of its human versus setup will follow suit. Not much is known about the release as yet though, as in date, pricing and any additional mobile suits but the base set of playable mecha will obviously make the transition. So, for those that have been gawping at the awesome potency of the Unicorn Gundam in various shaky cam videos it’s nice to know we’ll get to initiate Destroy Mode within the comfort of our own homes in the near future.

At the recent CEDEC conference venerable anime director and writer Yoshiyuki Tomino weighed in on the state of games. Now, Tomino is all about the context of his statements and whilst he proclaimed games to be “evil” this was wholly meant in relation to a game’s creative worth. In that, without the creative quality to back up a game’s existence it’s very much a waste of resource and hence “evil”. He cited Tetris as qualitative benchmark to this and that functionally games haven’t really outmoded this, which is actually pretty accurate. So his comment was in relation to games themselves and not something unrelated.

Naturally, a few places have got a little carried away and focused purely on the “evil” comment without comprehending the context of his speech. Some have even gone as far to think Tomino actually hates games, which is pretty facile considering the fact he wrote and directed Overman King Gainer in which the main protagonist is a very skilled gamer and hence able to pilot the titular mecha. Finally, some have said the comment is hypocritical in relation to the creation of multiple Gundam games over the years but Tomino has no involvement in these tie-in games whatsoever so the linkage is not at all valid to be honest.

After all the location tests, SEGA have now finally released their new Ring Edge powered 10 vs 10 mecha brawler, Border Break. For those that have been following the blog and news of upcoming model kits, the fact the game is finally out (in Japan) is a wondrous addition to that. Naturally, there are no announcements as to its Western release but considering the game’s extensive use of touch screen functionality it probably wouldn’t last longer than five seconds in an arcade outside of Japan.