Today is a very special day indeed, as it marks the 15th Anniversary of one of the most influential mecha games ever made; the wondrous Virtual On. The series’ creator, Juro Watari, somewhat tearfully remembers the day over on the official Virtual On Force blog and that the actual day the game should have had its final rom delivered was on the 24th, a Friday. Apparently, the team were balancing the game right up until the last minute and specifically Bal Bas Bow’s floating arms caused a lot of issues. The latter had the last remnants of the team working until 9pm and after they finally nailed it, they went over to the main Sega office building with the final rom disc only to find the department was shut! So the official day that Virtual On was birthed was on the Monday, the 27th. Watari also goes on to say that at the time making a mecha game such as Virtual On was a huge uphill struggle, as the overriding belief was that a game like this could never be made. So for him to look back on the past 15 years feels somewhat miraculous and that the real “Force” behind Virtual On is its passionate base of players. In any case, Watari is suitably and justifiably upbeat about the Virtual On games he’s worked on over the years and for those that have yet to sample the delights of the original game, we can thoroughly recommend the SEGA AGES PS2 port. Finally, our first retro review will be published shortly and it shouldn’t be too hard to guess what it will be!

We mentioned this a while back but it seems that Linkin Park are proper Gundam nerds (UC nerds no less too). Their album A Thousand Suns has subsequently been released in Japan with a cutsomised HGUC kit of the RX-78GP01-Fb Gundam Full Vernian from Gundam 0083 (pictured above). The reason for all this Gundam cross promotional high fiving is due to the fact that one of their song’s, The Catalyst, has been used as the background music for the opening movie of Gundam Extreme Versus. You can buy the Gunpla album set over at HLJ in case it tickles your fancy.

With an update for Gundam Extreme Versus planned for November 29th, 4Gamer have kindly reminded us that the awesome MSN-06S Sinanju will be very much present. Whilst the article talks a fair bit about the recently released second episode from Gundam Unicorn, the in-game screenshots of the Sinanju are pretty spooge worthy. Still no word of a PS3 port but considering the host hardware the arcade game is built upon it should only be a matter of time.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent a toy from Virtual On to review. Specifically, the Composite Ver.Ka Temjin. In addition, to give the toy some context, we’ve also linked some gameplay footage of it in action from the excellent SEGA AGES PS2 port at the end of the review.

As we suspected the White Dingo variant of the GM Sniper II is now available for pre-order as a Tamashii Web special purchase. Fear ye not though, as places like Tokyo Hunter are stocking the toy on your behalf (as Tamashii Web specials are Japan only purchases unfortunately). Considering how much we loved the recent GM Sniper II toy, we literally cannot wait for the White Dingo version as the Dreamcast game that birthed it is very close to our heart.

4Gamer has a pretty epic breakdown of the upcoming Border Break Airburst update set for release at the end of November. Whilst Airburst is basically “Ver 2.0” of the original Border Break, the game has a considerable amount of improvements over its precursor. Notably the new dropships that can carry multiple blast runners across a map to invade heavily fortified sections. The dropship even packs some quite notable firepower too, though at the expense of a suitably “shoot the core” weakspot in its rear. We’ve also linked a video of the new dropship setup below, though it kicks in about halfway through in case you’re wondering.

The moderately fourth wall breaking Mokei Senshi Gunpla Builders Beginning G OVA has finally had its first few episodes released. Despite being a bit “we put a Gundam show in a Gundam show so you can watch your Gundam show while you watch a Gundam show” the slightly awesome sight of seeing a pimped out Senjou no Kizuna cabinet used as a full blown linear seat is rather impressive. In terms of the show’s narrative setup, the arcade cabinets are the means by which Gunpla builders spar with one another. Using a Haro styled 3D imager, the tech then attributes abilities based off the kit. It’s a bit like Barcode Battlers in a way but with Gundam kits and insane arcade gaming production values. To be fair we’re not far off making an arcade game that works like this, but if the 3D imager could also detect colour I reckon we’d see a lot more red painted Gunpla – for the obvious stat boost. The first episode is shown below (unsubbed) and you can buy the kit of the Beginning Gundam, featured in the show, here. It’s also worth pointing out that the area where most of the combat scenes are set is actually around Shizuoka, where the full scale Gundam is based.

We meant to cover this earlier, but the much anticipated Gundam Extreme Versus was released a few weeks ago in Japan. Following up on its success, the game will also have a Gundam Vs Mobile element that will allow players to theme the HUD of the game. In addition, on the 27th October, a new EX Scene level will become available featuring the GF13-001NHII Master Gundam as an antagonist and subsequently as a playable unit too. 4Gamer has some nice shots of these updates in case you’re curious. No word on a console release as yet but expect something in the New Year in terms of an announcement apparently.

Over at this year’s All Japan Plamodel Hobby Show (photo report here) amongst the panoply of various kits Hasegawa have finally revealed their kit for the fully transformable Myzr Delta VR from Virtual On Force and Marz. This was a continuation of the Viper and Cypher series, so it was an excellent airborne unit as a consequence. GAGraphic also has some nice shots of the kit and the video below (around the 3 minute mark) has some lovely footage it as well, we’ve linked the full video below anyway though. In addition to the Myzr Delta kit Kotobukiya also had their upcoming SAV-07-D Belgdor kit on show too.

4Gamer has some coverage about the upcoming Virtual On Force, as on release both the standard and memorial box versions will come packaged with a special promotional code for Border Break Air Burst. This will allow Border Break players to gain access to a new a paint scheme for their blast runner, one that is unobtainable within the game normally. Not wishing to miss a trick, players that are only subscribed to the monthly paid Border Break.NET service will be able to use the new paint scheme. There was also a cool press conference for Air Burst about a week ago, where they showed the new game off quite nicely (the video is here in case you’re curious).

Following on from this Game Watch also had some interesting coverage regarding the new training mode in the 360 port of Force. It’s partly based on the one seen in Oratan but will have a great emphasis on structured training levels for novice players (as Oratan’s setup was much more open ended by comparison). What’s also very curious is how the game will handle the various VR types from the arcade, as these were triggered off ranking via the card system. The unfortunate follow-on of this was that often the better performing players received a wider array of VR’s to choose from, leaving the novices to struggle with the default versions. Whether this system has been carried over to the online element in the 360 port still isn’t known but from the description it seems that VR’s are awarded in the new “Mission Mode” now. The latter worries us slightly, as that would make this port of Force a bit too close to Marz for our liking. That said, the Missions also feed into how much you can upgrade your wingman AI – so that could be interesting at least. Finally, the article mentions a graphical option that renders the game with various HDR effects, such as bloom and some specular elements on the surface of the VR. We saw these on the TGS demo we played and they did look nice. The fact they are optional is pretty nifty though (as that very much appeals to our purist tendencies).