Over at 4Gamer they have a new set of screenshots for the soon to be released Super Robot Wars Z 2. Showing more mecha from not only Gundam 00 but also Macross Frontier. The interesting addition is the appearance of the GNW-003 Gundam Throne Drei, as piloted by the obviously disturbed Nena Trinity. It also follows that the other Gundam Thrones, namely Ein and Zwei, will also be present in the game. The game is still scheduled for its April 14th release and you can pre-order it here.

A new and rather lengthy promo for the forthcoming Super Robot Wars Z 2 was recently released. It shows a veritable panoply of mecha strutting their 2D stuff. The Gurren Lagann and Final Dancouga footage still moistens our loins. The game is still scheduled for its April 14th release, despite the recent quake and tsunami, and you can pre-order it here.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan we’ve been sent the book Valkyries Second Sortie to review, featuring the work of the very talented Hidetaka Tenjin. Unsurprisingly, this new book is very much focused on the more recent work Tenjni has undertaken for Macross Frontier. We’ve naturally taken a few select snapshots to show off the truly stunning content within it.

One of the more discouraging aspects about the Gundam Battle games was their propensity to build on the prior content of previous games. In that, you’d buy a new game in the series only to be faced with a sizable amount of missions and mobile suits you’d already paid for in the prior release. Whilst this was obviously a publisher lead remit, after the fifth game your patience did wear pretty damn thin.

The first two Macross games in this series, Ace and Ultimate Frontier, were blessed with a sizable increase in content between them. To the extent that with the latter, they pretty much covered off almost all of the saga. Moving on from that, in the same way the Gundam Battle games unfortunately did, is something that would normally concern us.

However, we now have reached the third game in Artdink’s mini Macross gaming saga and they’ve tried to do a lot to mask the re-use of assets from the two prior games. From the all new Academy mode to new campaigns and units. They’ve even re-worked the missile lock system again. The final result is something again new and interesting, as well as being a lot of fun to play.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent the Robot Damashii L-Gaim Mk. 2 toy from Heavy Metal L-Gaim. To help give the toy some context we’ve also included some videos of it from the original anime and a few games it has been featured in over the years at the end of the review.

Over at Famitsu, they’ve got some nice new shots of the OG mecha for the upcoming Super Robot Wars Z 2. Called the Blasta, it’s meant as a primary means of defense against “dimensional monsters”. Curiously it’s designed by the lesser known Seiji Ono, though he has at least worked on an SRW anime in the past. Some comments have also likened the design to the SVMS-01 Union Flag from Gundam 00, though to our eyes it’s more Dragonar really. In any case, this will be the first of two OG units spread over as many games (bets are on for a super robot inspired OG mecha with a female pilot for the next game). You can pre-order the game here.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan, we’ve been sent the 1/3000 scale SDF-1 Macross toy from Macross Do You Remember Love? as made by Yamato. It goes without saying that this is quite an important and iconic design to get given such an epic toy treatment, so we were understandably excited to get our hands on one. To help give the toy some context we’ve also included some videos of it from the original anime and a few games it has been featured in over the years at the end of the review.

What with the release of Gundam Unicorn’s third episode, the Ghost of Laplace, being palpably imminent we’ve been graced with another video. This one, unlike the previous trailer, is actually of the first eight minutes. Despite some nice shots of the MSN-001A1 Delta Plus, most of the action is in the latter half. Unlike previous space battles in and around asteroids in Gundam, this battle has far more weight to it. As the previous episode already set up the fact that the asteroid has a substantial civilian populace, so this battle feels awfully tragic as a consequence. How it will be handled and the effect it will have on the characters, especially Banagher, will be very interesting. The third episode will be released at the beginning of March.

As the release date for Super Robot Wars Z 2 creeps ever closer, Banpresto have decided to grace high street games shops with what we like to think as the “good shit”. Unlike the previous promo video, which showed pre-rendered CG footage for the game’s intro, this new video is predominantly comprised of actual gameplay footage. Unlike prior SRW promos this does somewhat kick off towards the end, as it does suddenly dawn on you that the likes of Chirico and Kamina can high five for a somewhat epic win. This alone, for us anyway, is worth the price of entry. The full glorious promo video is shown below.

Whilst we’re still waiting for an all singing and dancing promo video showing actual gameplay footage for Super Robot Wars Z 2, Banpresto have partially jumped the gun with a short commercial with a few snippets of animation. As you’d expect, it looks rather wondrous and Ichirou Mizuki’s voiceover coupled with Gurren Lagann pwnage is a potent combination indeed.