You’ve seen the pictures, and you know the price. So it’s either now or never: threeA’s Metal Gear Rex replica goes on sale in just a few. At 9 am Hong Kong time, to be exact.

Which is 1 am GMT for the rest of the world (for you lazy Americans reading this, that’s 8 pm east coast/5 pm west coast, fyi). And that’s a little less than two hours from the time of this writing.

Unfortunately, at this exact moment as well, threeA’s exclusive online retailer is running somewhat sluggishly. One hopes that everyone interested in nabbing will be able to do so with minimal of technical issues.

As many have been already speculated, the production run for this is assumed to be quite low, so this might be one’s only chance to pick Rex up. Though Tomopop also notes that Sideshow Collectibles will be selling it later down the road.

But who knows if they’re offer free shipping (which makes Bambalandstore asking price of $490 a tad easier to swallow).

No doubt gearing up for this year’s GDC, a new gameplay trailer has been released for Hawken. It’s still looking nice but there’s an awful lot of tearing going on. We also love the new HUD a lot and it seems very reminiscent of Armored Core V’s approach too (this being obviously a good thing). We’re still keen to get our hands on with this as it looks to be very gritty and visceral. Roll on the game’s December release we say!

Now that we have Super Robot Wars Z 2 Saisei-hen to look forward to, there are some more juicy bits of information about the game. First is the new Emblem items, these will be very rare/difficult to acquire but will afford some very nice bonuses. Notably, the Iron Emblem will quadruple your experience accrued once equipped. Following on from that Nekki Basara’s song powers will be able to make enemies like the Vajra, from Macross Frontier, retreat. Even the more standardised abilities, like the Zero System on the Gundam Wing Zero (pictured above), will get a reworking. As always, you can pre-order the game here.

The recent 360 port of Virtual On Force will be re-released under the Platinum Collection this April. The main benefit we’ll get out of this is that the game will only cost 2,940 yen this time around. There’s also still some chance of an actual sequel too, as the new 360 ports of Oratan and Force have rekindled the interest in the series again. What with big hits like Border Break and Gundam Extreme Versus also blitzing the arcades, we may be getting a new Virtual On some day soon.

Bandai have announced that one of the next Robot Damashii toys will be that of the original XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero. Whilst we’re not fans of the anime that much really, we do like the designs a fair bit (barring the mecha chicken variant of the Wing Zero in Endless Waltz obviously). This release has been hinted at for a fair while now as well but we’re glad it’s finally going to happen. Released this June for a very reasonable 4,410 yen, the toy even transforms.

To help promote the release of the new Fight It Out song for Gundam Extreme Versus Full Boost, Bandai Namco have released the arcade game’s new opening movie. Whilst this is, admittedly a very shiny, CG movie it does bely some interesting tidbits on potential future mobile suit unit additions to the game. From the obvious CB-0000G/C Reborns Gundam and RX-0 Unicorn Gundam “Banshee”, what we’re most excited about is the fact that the MS-08TX (EXAM) Efreet Custom (pictured above) could be on the cards too. Considering that we’re massive fans of the original Saturn Blue Destiny games, the fact we may have another mobile suit to play with from it makes us so very happy. If that wasn’t enough, Bandai will also be doing a limited edition HG kit of the new Extreme Gundam Leos type, which is basically a re-coloured version of the previous HG kit. Anyway, we’re not sure at all about this new song for Full Boost, but we’re still pretty pumped for the game nonetheless, especially if we get some more Blue Destiny mobile suits.

It seems that Bandai have decided to produce what looks to be a very nice 1/60 scale DX Chogokin of the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus in Alto Saotome’s colours. Priced at 14,700 yen and out this June, it will apparently be using much of the newer engineering that has been spearheaded by the VF-25 “Renewal” toys. From the site it’s not clear whether the full weapon set seen in the anime will be present, as the current gunpod in the shots is only that of the standard MC-17A rather than the AVPAGC/MEDC30-EX-A Anti-Vajra MDE anti-gravity particle cannon. Hopefully, the super parts will also become available at a later date too. Either way, this is an interesting choice on the part of Bandai as the design, whilst obviously very nice, is pretty short-lived in the anime and it would have also required them to create all new moulds for the toy too.

After a fair while, Kotobukiya have finally revealed their release plans for the forthcoming Vic Viper LEV kit from Anubis. Coming in at 5,670 yen and released this June, the kit will also come with its own stand. The latter makes a lot of sense as the design itself doesn’t have feet in the traditional sense and it also transforms into the classic Gradius inspired fighter the mecha takes its name from. As with all Kotobukiya kits the detailing and the sculpt look suitably impressive and considering the engineering at work here we’re surprised the price tag wasn’t higher. In any case, if you’re a fan of the design then you can pre-order the kit here.

At a recent display of upcoming Kinect games in Japan, a slew of titles have finally been properly revealed (notably that of the Panzer Dragoon-esque Crimson Dragon, which looks to be pretty exciting). However, whilst the production team for Steel Battalion Heavy Armor where present the demo they showed was the same as last year’s TGS. Doing their best to stress the fact that the game is perfectly fine, it seems that it very likely isn’t. Bear in mind that this is a joint venture between Capcom and From Software so the recent releases of Dark Souls, Armored Core V and soon Gundam Unicorn means that From Software’s resources have clearly been stretched pretty thin already. Hopefully this is more Capcom trying to take time to help From Software get things right, as Bandai Namco have had a habit of rushing the developer resulting in a fair few cut corners (the respective framerate issues in both Dark Souls and Armored Core V are very clearly testament to that). That or they’re having trouble showing the underside of a vertical tank’s foot?

Whilst the current roster of mobile suits in the forthcoming Gundam Extreme Versus Full Boost is basically a combination of the current game’s lineup plus the PS3 version’s DLC, there aren’t that many new units for the game. Well, that’s changing already as apart from the scant few new additions we’ll also have the LM312V04 Victory Gundam, ZGMF-X56S Impulse Gundam and the GSX-401FW Stargazer Gundam added to the game’s playable selection on release. We always quite enjoyed using the standard Victory Gundam on the older Gundam Versus games as it was quite a resourceful, yet cheap, unit. Hopefully that same economical ass-kickery will be present in its re-introduction.