Over at Gigazine, they’ve got a pretty mad piece on a chap called Kogoro Kurata who’s basically building his very own armored trooper (which he’s calling the “Kuratasu”). The chap has already made a 1/1 sculpture of an ATM-09-ST Scopedog but this will actually move. Using a quadrupedal design, each leg will contain its own wheel propelled by a diesel engine under the torso. The arms and the legs will also use the engine to power the hydraulics. At first glance it seems to share the lens setup on the head from the X-ATH-P-RSC Blood Sucker from The Last Red Shoulder but the overall design understandably looks far more industrial. When all’s said and done though, this is really quite awesome indeed. Of all the mecha that could be made in real life, the AT’s from VOTOMS have always been one of the best contenders. We wish Kurata-san the best of luck with his endeavours!

In a truly momentous move, the first three Mobile Suit Gundam movies have been uploaded to YouTube, with English subtitles too no less. These three movies, which should really be viewed in one sitting, act as the foundation for the main UC timeline and more importantly cemented the success of the saga in Japan over 30 years ago. If we’re honest, these films are genuinely special and unique in the world of anime. Whilst the animation is pretty dated, the characterisation and narrative are timeless. If you haven’t seen these movies before then you really have no excuse not to now. All three are linked below.

In a very rare move, the lovely people at From Software have done a video touring the studio. With Eiichi Nakajima as our host, he does a whistle stop tour of the office and quickly introduces us to various people around the studio whilst giving an overall take on why they enjoy developing different games from what has gone before. The likes of Toshifumi Nabeshima (pictured above), basically the father of Armored Core, also make a brief appearance. The video is linked below and it’s also subtitled in English, in case you were wondering.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy from Change!! Shin Getter Robo to review. Specifically, the Getter Robo 1 with Full Mantle that’s on sale. In addition, to give the toy some context, we’ve also linked some anime and gameplay footage of it in action in Super Robot Wars Z 2 at the end of the review.

There are few games that can define a console’s gaming worth, that make people go out and buy the hardware just to play that one game. As a series, Virtual On had suffered somewhat in its console renditions. With the first game being seriously hacked apart to make it run on the much less powerful Saturn. Whilst the game was still excellent it wasn’t what the original arcade version was like to play, even with the TwinStick peripheral.

So when SEGA announced that the sequel, Oratorio Tangram, would be ported to the Dreamcast there was a collective sharp intake of breath amongst fans. Could they really pull it off this time? Porting from Model 3 arcade board down to the Dreamcast, wouldn’t that just be as bad as what happened to the first game on the Saturn? More importantly, would it have a new TwinStick peripheral?

All those questions were answered come the game’s release and, for us, this game ultimately ended up defining the console in so many wonderful ways.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent the Metal Composite Gundam The Origin toy from the manga Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. The latter being a re-telling of the classic TV series and first three movies, as penned by the venerable Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The titular Gundam has numerous subtle differences compared to the original and this toy undertakes those in suitably painstaking detail.

What with Gundam Extreme Versus now finally on its way to a PlayStation 3 release, 4Gamer have done a breakdown on the game as well as a nice nod to the previous 10 years of Gundam Vs games. Bar the obvious “avoid getting shot in the face” advice, most of what is being discussed is stuff we already know (no new detail on the new modes as yet unfortunately). However, there is a shot of the Unicorn Gundam displaying green psycho frame innards. This is rather interesting, as it intimates the Full Armor variant might be present in the game after all. Lots of new shots too, so it’s clear the console port will clearly look spot on. There is now also a specific site for the console version too and you can pre-order the game here.

Over at the Kotobukiya site, the next Armored Core kit on the way finally got a listing. The kit being that of the first Nineball, not to be confused with the version from Ninebreaker or even the epic Nineball Seraph (the latter you can still nab here). We still have fond memories of taking on Nineball in the first Armored Core game, and this kit looks amazing. It will be released in December this year for 5,670 yen, you can pre-order it here.

Following the story trailer, we now have a new Hawken gameplay trailer. It looks lovely but the more we’re seeing of this game, the more it looks functionally a bit dated. It’s hard to say until we actually get our hands on the game but what we’re seeing looks like just another mecha themed FPS. Well, at least it will be pretty!

In a move that’s not overly surprising, the next in the Composite Ver Ka line will be the Hatsune Miku Fei-Yen we mentioned a while back. This toy line has already graced at least one virtuaroid from the series, that of the mighty Temjin (which we can fully recommend). In many ways, Miku is a good fit for Virtual On and we half expect that one day she’ll surface as a playable character in the series. The toy will be released on the 11th November for 5,040 yen and you can pre-order it here.