You can now pre-order the Todd Guiness and Tokamak Rovsky coloured Robot Damashii Dunbines via Bandai’s online premium shop. These are shortlived units from Aura Battle Dunbine, leaving only Show Zama’s iconic mauve Dunbine to hold out for the remainder of the series. Whilst we already bought the other Robot Damashii aura battlers we may pass on these but it’s pretty cool that Bandai are at least doing toys of them. Buying both toys will cost you 8,400 yen and they will be released in April of next year.

It seems that we’ll be getting a PSN game archive release of Virtual On Marz next year. This was a pseudo-port of Force on the PS2 that had a rather broken singleplayer campaign. What’s interesting is that this will have support for HORI’s upcoming PS3 TwinStick peripheral. Now, we’ve played the game on a pair of modded Saturn sticks and it does indeed play a lot better, so to have something that offers the same thing in an official capacity is a good thing. Still no word of an Oratan or Force release on the PS3 but this is at least a step in the right direction.

Over at AmiAmi they have a lovely photo report of the Tamashii Nations Akiba Showroom. From the cool diorama above with the Hanged Man Super Robot Chogokin from Armored Core V, to awesome shots of the alternate coloured Billbine there’s lots of interesting stuff to see here. Talking of the former, there’s also a nice little piece about the designers feeding back on the new Hanged Man toy. Following on in the same vein, HobbyLink Japan are running a Bandai sale at present and there are some very good bargains to be had.

The forthcoming Revoltech Naked Jehuty has been given an Amazon.co.jp listing and it reveals not only its release date, that of January 15th next year, but also the very reasonable price point of 3,480 yen. Again part of the whole never ending PR for Zone of the Enders HD Collection, the design appeared at the end of Anubis and was intended to be Jehuty’s “final” form. Apparently, this toy will also be able to use the other peripherals released for the other Revoltech Jehuty toys.

There’s a pretty cool montage video for the creation of the rather larger Jehuty bust used to promote Zone of the Enders HD Collection. Showing its humble beginnings to its installation in Akiba and eventual removal. What is amazing though is the remixed track of Beyond The Bounds that accompanies the video (the full version being here). Anyway the full video is shown below.

As for our review, the consensus via Twitter and Facebook was a resounding “yes” for us to cover the new HD collection. So expect something in the next few weeks, apologies for the delay but we’re somewhat busy this end.

At this Winter’s Miyazawa Model Exhibition, all manner of kits (and a few toys too) have been revealed to the public. Above is the Riobot toy of Jehuty that Sentinel have been pimping for a while now. As with all the Riobot releases, this does look genuinely impressive and on a par (in terms of detailing) with Kotobukiya’s kits of the design. No word on a price or release date as yet for this though.

Talking of ZOE, we did receive and play a fair bit of the recent HD remake and for those that aren’t following us on Twitter; the framerate and performance is utterly terrible (worse than the PS2 originals). As such we’re in half a mind to review the new release. So if you’re interested in seeing us eviscerate High Voltage Software and Konami for a job badly done, then let us know and a review will be forthcoming. Funcationality-wise though the games are still as flawed as they always have been.

Anyway, if you want to see more of these lovely kits and toys then AmiAmi has coverage here, here and here (be warned, there’s a high level of moe and bewbs).

Our good friends at HobbyLink Japan have sent us the 1/60 VF-19 Custom Fire Valkyrie from the wonderful Macross 7. This is also the first of a two part review, as the next installment will also feature the Sound Booster add-on. In addition, we’ve also included some game and animation footage at the end of the review.

As part of the marketing drive for the Zone of the Enders HD Collection released tomorrow in Japan, they’re will be a large bust of Jehuty placed in Akihabara on the Shimura Musen building. If followers of the KojiPro twitter account send the hashtag “#ZOE再起動” (the kanji basically says “restart” in case you’re at all curious) attached to photos of the bust they’ll be in with a chance of having a ZOE poster signed by Yoji Shinkawa.

Whilst we get why all this promotion is kicking off, the ZOE games were never all that popular when they were released on the (far more widespread) PS2. So all this feels very odd. We’ll be posting our review of the HD edition when we’ve given it a good playthrough over the next week or so.

There have been some interesting reveals at this year’s All-Japan Model Hobby Show as well as via Kotobuikya. In regards to the latter, Kotobukiya’s output has birthed the rather incredible kit above from Armored Core V (as was mentioned a while back). The sculpt being something of truly amazing finesse and it seems that there will be all manner of other kits available for it too (including tanks and helicopters from the game), so you can build your very own diorama.

Moving on from that, Wave have shown a variety of new garage kits. From Galient to Vifam, though what has really peaked our interest is this lovely Layzner Mk. II kit. Hasegawa even previewed a new Kagekiyo kit from Virtual On Force. If you want to see more of the hobby show, then AmiAmi has lots of lovely photos here, here and here.

Now that the Robot Damashii Dunbine is in the wild, Bandai have created a rather wonderful page for their new Aura Battler toys. Showing the previously released Billbine as well as the forthcoming camo-coloured Billbine too. Not to mention the wing calibur attachment has been revealed in detail finally. What’s especially lovely about this toy though, despite the fact we love Aura Battler Dunbine, is that people like Hidetaka Tenjin have been posting pictures of the toy squaring off against cats. In any case, the toy does look lovely and we can’t wait to get ours in the post.