This is a pretty cool video of Japanese players doing a bunch of high speed formation flybys and awesome fireworks displays with the weapons in Armored Core For Answer. If anything it shows how versatile and functionally thorough the game is, not to mention being quite shiny to boot. Though I’m sure the majority of the main stream games press, with their sausage fingers, won’t “get” any of this. Shame that.

The music accompanying the video is Starry Sky – MK feat. R.Cena in case you’re wondering. Thanks to Raven Republic and Armored Core Online for the heads up.

From Software have recently released their new mascot online; Aaliyah Kawate is an interesting masked character that has the head of the AALIYAH frame made by Ray Leonard in Armored Core 4 and For Answer. He generally gets rolled out for the various meets and seems to make a big deal of his skill at the games (despite being a bit crap actually). In any case, he was recently unleashed on Twitter and has been uploading versus videos of him playing Last Raven Portable too. So if you like your mecha gaming mascots a bit wacky then this might be right up your street!

The classic run and gun shooter, Wolf Fang, was recently released on the Japanese PSN. This was an arcade game from the early 90’s in the same vein as Assault Suits Leynos and Valken, it also received both a PlayStation and Sega Saturn port (though the version on PSN is obviously the former). Wolf Fang has also been getting a bit of a resurgence as of late, as we reported the release of the Video Game Robotics gashapon not that long ago and it featured one of the mecha from the game. In any case, we’re big fans of Wolf Fang and the ability to play it on our PSP is most welcome.

Over at the Another Century’s Episode R site they’ve uploaded the game’s first promo video. This is entirely footage from the CG opening the game will have, something the three previous PS2 games also had. In any case, it’s so very shiny and it features Acid Black Cherry’s new song “Re:birth” which fits the setting surprisingly well. Game Watch have also done some coverage on the game, showing off the all new in-game environments quite a bit. In any case, we are very happy this is coming out this summer and we wish Bandai would release an all new Orguss toy – preferably in the Soul of Chogokin SPEC range. That would be, as they say, totally sweet.

Over at Moeyo (link slightly NSFW), they’ve covered the recently released 1/72 scale Stasis kit by Kotobukiya from Armored Core For Answer. As per their usual standard, Kotobukiya have excelled themselves yet again in terms of the sculpt, as the design itself is really quite intricate (despite looking deceptively streamlined). The only downside about this design, in the game at least, is that the parts aren’t exactly what you’d call aesthetically sympathetic. In that you can functionally attach the head, arms, legs and core to other parts they rarely “look” right. Admittedly, some would argue that this is an issue with most of the parts and designs in Armored Core but due to For Answer sharing three named designers (Shoji Kawamori, Kazutaka Miyatake and Makoto Kobayashi), not to mention the in-house art staff, there wasn’t really a unified art style in the same sense as the older games (which had designs mostly penned by Kawamori). In any case, this kit looks marvelous and the design, despite the above, is actually one of our favourites too.

The official Another Century’s Episode R site received its first update today. Whilst featuring most of the content seen already in Famitsu, there are some other interesting points shown. Notably the breakdown on the new environments in the game as well as the reveal that the image song, called Re:birth (which helps shed light on the “R” in the game’s title), is being penned by Acid Black Cherry. The latest blog entry from Terada-san also talks about units like the VF-25F having Super and Armor parts load-outs, which matches the same approach from ACE3 in terms of how the other variable fighters were handled.

Over at Gpara there’s some new coverage for Front Mission Evolved and what’s interesting about this little nugget of PR, is that it focuses a lot more on the characters of the game. What’s most striking to me is that the characters themselves look a lot more anime inspired than I was expecting (especially from a Western studio). Considering that the original Front Mission’s characters were penned by Yoshitaka Amano, you’d expect a nod to this kind of artistic heritage but seeing it nonetheless warms the cockles of our merciless robot heart. Naturally, the update over at Gpara also goes into lots of nice nerdy detail on the garage as well as displaying more pictures of the wanzers in action. Still no word on an actual release date though.

Update: Here’s also a fascinating insight into the mecha design behind Front Mission Evolved, as its primary designer Skan Srisuwan at Imaginary Friends is penning the new wanzers. What’s reassuring, despite the man’s obvious talent, is that he’s quite open about his influences. Such as Hajime Katoki for one and not to mention the Yutaka Izubuchi designed Hygogg kit on his disk, all of which clearly shows in terms of the game’s overall aesthetic for the mecha. Thanks to LegaiaRules for the heads up.

Over at Famitsu they have uploaded lots of very nice screenshots for the upcoming From Software developed and Banpresto published Another Century’s Episode R. There have also already been a fair few blog posts by Banpresto producer Terada-san about the game, with some of these being misinterpreted rather negatively.

It’s clear that ACER is in a similar position to the original ACE, where the line-up of mecha is quite focused so as to allow the development of the engine and other code tasks to have a chance to work out (as this is the first time the series has graced the PS3, so an all new code base would obviously be required). Bear in mind though that ACE featured a total of 9 series initially and ACER goes all the way up to 11 (ACE2 had 14 series and ACE3 had 17 in total in case you’re wondering).

That said, the screenshots thus far look absolutely bloody fantastic. The game is apparently around 70% complete too and a Summer release is planned for it.

In the latest issue of Famitsu, From Software and Banpresto have announced another instalment into the successful Another Century’s Episode series; Another Century’s Episode R exclusively for the PlayStation 3. Now for those that played the last PS2 game, this new game might be a bit of a shock. As the name of that game had, well, the word “Final” in the title. Well, it seems that it was only final for the PS2 series at least as we now have a very new and very shiny ACE game on the way.

For those not versed in the ACE games, these are basically third person action interpretations of Super Robot Wars. As they utilise mecha from disparate series all in one game, however the main focus has mostly been that of real robots as supers would cause all sorts of problems. Admittedly, mecha like Shin Getter Robo have made the cut but their ability sets have been drastically limited. In any case, the full list of mecha series in ACER is as follows: Super Dimension Century Orguss, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Char’s Counterattack, Crossbone Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Overman King Gainer, Full Metal Panic!, Code Geass, Genesis of Aquarion, Macross Zero, Macross Frontier and various Banpresto originals

Personally, we miss not having Dunbine and Layzner in the ACE line-up. Those were, what we like to think, as the good old days.

The upcoming Double Helix developed Front Mission Evolved, has received some new screenshots over at the official Japanese site. These show some interesting functional developments for the series, notably that of the wanzers sporting hover legs. It may appear that with each passing burst of PR from Square Enix that Front Mission is changing more into something like Armored Core. However, for those unaware of Front Mission’s roots; customisation (both visual and functional) played an integral part of the original games. The addition of hover legs is admittedly a nod to the realtime – not turnbased – functionality that debuted in Armored Core 2 but that’s not to say it has been wholly copied either (after all Armored Core owes much of its functional inspiration to the Assault Suits games). The point we are somewhat clumsily making is this though; hover legs were notoriously awkward to use in the older PlayStation 2 era Armored Core games and it will be interesting to see whether the team at Double Helix have learnt from this. As the more recent Armored Core games solved the issue by merging the functionality of ground based legs and hovers, to allow all AC’s to traverse water (something that was normally the exclusive remit of the hover leg types in the PlayStation 2 games). This merging of leg functionality is clearly not present in Front Mission Evolved though – as the screenshots show – so how they’ve solved their handling issues will be interesting to see. In any case, more screenshots from this recent update are linked below.