Alainmendez

me in your house when you say you don’t like gatchaman crowds

JHA (Japan Handcraft Watch Association) started accepting orders for a new wristwatch inspired by a popular robot anime series produced by Sunrise in the 1980s, Armored Trooper Votoms, on July 20. The watch has three dial-plates for an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand, and they are designed after the head of ATM-09-ST Scopedog, the main humanoid combat vehicle piloted by the protagonist of the series Chirico Cuvie.

 

The first TV series with 52 episodes was aired in Japan from April 1983 to March 1984. After that, many sequels and spin-offs have been produced. The most recent anime instalment was a 50-minute OVA Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Alone Again released in April 2011.

 

The price for the Votoms wristwatch is 23,625 yen (about US$235). JHA has released many collaboration 

watches with popular anime series including Cowboy Bebop, LAST EXILE, and The Big O.

 

 

Votoms Watch Scopedog Model

ATM-09-St Scopedog (plamodel box)

 

 

Cowboy Bebop Spike's Watch

 

 

LAST EXILE Claus Model

BIG-O Roger's Watch

 

 

via: Weekly Ascii Plus

Medicom has found a new audience now that it's expanded its lineup of RAH 1/6 figures beyond tokusatsu/movie properties. Saber was a step in that direction and many were impressed by the initial images. Those impressions have convinced Medicom to move forward with a new RAH of Saber Alter.

The dark colors of Alter are what sell her usually. The RAH will be different thanks to that sword. I almost want this figure solely due to that impressive piece of weaponry. The look of Saber Alter doesn't hurt things either and the outfit is one of the nicer ones they've done.

There's quite a bit to like here and you'll have some time get ready. While pre-orders will go live on July 24th, RAH 1/6 Saber Alter won't be released until April of 2014. There's no price on her yet, but it should be along the same range of Saber's ¥20,000 tag.

[Images via Amiblog]

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It's no secret that this past season of Game of Thrones has been rather... rough. But what better way to get over your agony than by snuggling your very own plush Direwolf puppy? These three Stark pets are the pinnacle of Factory Entertainment's brand-new, shockingly adorable Game of Thrones plush line.

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hellobluemonday:

We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese!

animuze:

Lina Inverse by PUGEUM

Thank you so much! I lumpin love doing videos and chose Marceline just so I can geek out over Adventure Time. I’m guessing you are talking about that one since you said “glob”

I’m totally thinking of cosplaying LSP for Otakon. :D

philnoto:

Neon Genesis Evangelion - quick sketch from Wizard World Philly

Club Nintendo in the U.S. has revealed its Gold and Platinum member rewards for 2013, and there are digital rewards available in addition to physical ones.

Read Club Nintendo 2013 Gold/Platinum Rewards Include Posters And Games on Siliconera!

goddamnimglam:

Play It Loud

hahahahahaha I forgot when Nintendo thought they had to masculinize Kirby to sell units

goddamn you Nintendo

This week Cartoon Network’s Brad Merritt and I delve into one of the hardest parts of game design, predicting and designing for the irrational decisions people make.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are reading Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples amazing adult scifi/fantasy Image comic Saga, and those who haven’t yet. The former people are leading happier, fuller lives, because Saga is amaaaaaazzzing. Here are 10 reasons you’d do well to join them.

1) It’s just like Star Wars.

Saga is a science fiction fantasy, set in a galaxy that’s as full of magic and monsters as it is spaceships and lasers. There’s a war between the planet Landfall, whose inhabitants have wings on their backs, and its moon Wreath, whose people all have horns on their heads — and this war has encompassed the entire universe. Our heroes go on an adventure that spans countless worlds, and includes epic battles, nefarious bounty hunters, and a ruthless robot that’s tracking them all down. You know how Star Wars featured all this stuff that we’d never seen before, but it all felt so right that it was like it was practically real? Saga has that exact same magic.

2) It’s nothing like Star Wars.

There’s no evil Empire here, and there’s no good side, just war and violence that Wreath and Landfall have outsourced to other planets after it became too destructive for themselves. Our heroes, the Landfallian Alana and Wreath’s Marko, are two soldiers on opposite sides who fall in love and escape. They aren’t on some heroic quest to stop the war, they want nothing more than to be left alone with their new daughter Hazel — but this union upsets both sides, who send Prince Robot IV (an ally of Landfall with a television for a head) and bounty hunter The Will after them. But these guys are no Darth Vader and Boba Fett — Prince is desperate to find the traitors solely so he can be back home in time for the birth of his own child, while The Will almost immediately gives up the job to rescue a 6-year-old girl from a planet of sex slaves. And then he’s drawn back in after Prince Robot IV kills his bounty hunter ex-girlfriend The Stalk, who happens to be a topless, armless woman who has the lower torso of a spider.

3) It’s completely insane.

Are you picking up on just how creative Saga is? The spaceship Marko and Alana escape in is a tree with no control panels (it goes where it wants, although you can ask nicely). Their babysitter is the ghost of a 14-year-old girl, missing her lower half after she died stepping on a landmine, and whose intestines peek out below her shirt. There are seahorse people, magic spells that take secrets to work, giant triclops with massive exposed testicles, a flaming gorilla that says “Boo!”, swords that cut through space-time, a tiny anthropomorphic baby seal in overalls, and so much more.

4) It’s also real.

It might sound weird to call a comic which prominently features half-naked spider-women as “real,” but when it comes to the characters, Saga feels tremendously authentic. Marko and Alana aren’t cogs on The Hero's Journey, they’re two fully realized people that love each other tremendously without it ever once feeling sappy, that fight and fuck and tease each other like real couples do, that don’t give two shits about their peoples’ war, but only about their new child. As mentioned above, the “villains” of Saga have their own completely understandable motivations, and aren’t even close to 2-D bad guys. But Saga is primarily a story about new parents bringing a child into a world that often seems awful; Alana and Marko want the joy of a child, while The Will calls them assholes for bringing a baby into such a horrible universe. Vaughan was partially inspired to write Saga as a new parent himself, and it's not hard to understand the dilemma that any parents — new, old, or to be — are too often wrestling with these days.

5) It’s goddamned beautiful.

There is literally nothing I can say that will convince you of how utterly tremendous Saga looks, courtesy of artist Fiona Staples, more than actually looking at it will. Every gonzo, insane concept writer Brian K. Vaughan comes up with, Staples manages to realize on page in a way that’s never been seen before, but seems somehow authentic. But it's her character work that’s most amazing; you could take out every single word balloon and caption and still know almost exactly what’s going on thanks to the pitch-perfect expressions on the characters' faces. It’s amazing. Have you ever seen two comic book characters and said, “Holy shit, by the way these two people are looking at each other, I can actually see how much they truly love each other”? I have. It was in Saga, if that was somehow unclear.

6) It’s also “Star Wars for perverts.”

Last Star Wars comparison, I promise, and I’m only including it because Vaughan himself has described Saga (jokingly) in this way. Saga is sexy. Now, part of this is because Saga is not without its sex scenes (the first one being between the otherwise anatomically correct Prince Robot IV and his equally TV-headed bride), and a lot of it is Staples’ phenomenal art. And then a lot of it is Marko and Alana’s almost tangible attraction to each other, made even more potent by the love they share for each other, and then, again, how real their relationship feels. In all honesty, it makes everything sexier.

7) It’s funny as hell.

So Saga is creative, it’s romantic, it’s sexy, it’s action-packed, and it’s exciting — but anyone who knows Vaughan’s other comic work on Marvel’s Runaways and Y: The Last Man likely knows how funny his work can be, while still being gripping and terrifying and entertaining. In case you don’t, let me assure you that Saga will often have you laughing out loud just as much as it move you or shock you. This is a comic whose first line of dialogue is “Am I shitting? It feels like I’m shitting!”, yelled as Alana is giving birth to Hazel in a run-down shop on the planet Cleave. To give you more examples would simply be to ruin them for you.

8) It has Lying Cat.

The Will has a large blue hairless cat named Lying Cat, who loudly announces “LYING” whenever it hears someone saying something that isn’t true. This is both as amazing and obnoxious as it sounds. Lying Cat is awesome. That is all.

9) It’s the best family story in comics right now.

In case you couldn’t tell from reason #6, Saga is not an all-ages comic — do not give it to your child to read unless you want to pay for some significant therapy. But Saga is unique among comics in that it doesn’t feature single people looking for love, because the romance has already happened. They aren’t searching for some lost treasure, because they have their happiness in their baby Hazel. They aren’t looking for adventure, they just want to be safe. Hell, what other comic features the heroine’s mother-in-law as a main character? Saga is about having a baby, and how wonderful and terrifying and insane that can be, and it’s about how families form, across generations, sometimes beyond borders or even blood, and how they work together. And then there are spaceships, too. How awesome is that?

10) Because this is your only chance.

Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples have no intention of letting Saga get turned into a movie or a TV show. Vaughan created Saga specifically for the comics medium, a tale he could only tell in this format, thanks to its epic scope and its outrageous content. In fact, that first line of dialogue, mentioned above? It’s partially there to dissuade Hollywood from trying to turn Saga into something else. “I guess I wanted make something that if people were looking at this and going ‘Is this something we can option?” they would close it right away and say ‘This is not for us’,” Vaughan told The Hollywood Reporter. So if you want to experience Saga — and I assure you that you do — you should go pick up the first two trades from Image (here’s Volume 1 and here’s Volume 2) now. You won’t be disappointed, and Lying Cat knows that’s no lie.

Copy&paste because I’m feeling too lazy today. Animation studio ufotable‘s founder Hikaru Kondo announced on Friday that ufotable will produce a new Fate/stay night project. Kondo did not specify the format that the new project will take, nor did he specify if the project will be a remake. The tweet in question: 近藤光（ufotable） @hikaruufo 本日、ufotable […]

rubycosmos:

Me in line for Pacific Rim this weekend.

fire-plug:

Here’s a little comic I did about some of the stupid teenager stuff I used to do growing up in the suburbs.

In the '80s, there was no greater danger to young people than Dungeons & Dragons. Thankfully, religious PSAs like the above tried to save the youth's of America, mostly by completely misconstruing what the game was about.

Pro-tip: If your Dungeonmaster has thugs who drag players whose characters die off to the pits of hell, perhaps you should consider looking for another Dungeonmaster. Also, if your Dungeonmaster gives you bonuses to your Saving Throws for real-world blood sacrifice, that may also be a clue that something's off, because that is totally not in the Dungeonmaster's Guide.

Also: Lord of the Little People? Is that one of those 2nd Edition titles you get when your characters hit level 9? Doesn't it come with 2d10 followers and a castle?

[Via Christian Nightmares]

Plenty of gamemasters still use graph paper and three-ring binders to organize their role-playing campaigns, but there’s an arsenal of tools available to the tech-savvy GM. I talked to a bunch of experienced GMs to find out how they use digital tools to create and track their RPG adventures.

Aside from a twisted, devious imagination, good organizational skills are a good gamemaster’s most important quality. Between world-building, adventure writing, linking multiple plot lines, and tracking the players and a horde of NPCs, a GM has a lot to keep straight.

Scrivener, Evernote, and Realm Works

While working on the campaign world for the Pathfinder RPG, I realized Scrivener ($40, intended for organizing novels, research papers, and the like) was ideal for laying out parts of a world. I work mainly in the research folder, creating headings and sub-headings, filling in bits of text, place names, NPCs, and more. Scrivener makes it really easy to drag images into a folder, too. I started out grabbing photos of real-world mountains from Wikipedia, so as the players travel I can show them images of what the terrain looks like. Later, I’ll probably borrow images from fantasy art to stand in for various NPCs and monsters. I keep the Scrivener project files in my Dropbox folder so they’re accessible and up to date on all my devices.

Also worth mentioning: Scrivener has an amazing random name generator built in. You can set the ethnic origin of both first and last names, and set what letter the names begin or end with. It's easily the most robust name generator I've ever seen, and it's a perfect tool for GMs creating NPCs (I used it and this table of D100 random personality traits I devised to populate a small village in about ten minutes).

While Scrivener was the impetus for this article, none of the other GMs I talked to mentioned using it. However, there are several similar organizational tools that did come up. Manda Collis, freelance writer and editor and creator of Charisma Bonus and Roleplay Hub, told me, “I'm a huge fan of Evernote, since it syncs everything across all platforms and I can access it wherever and whenever. I have separate notebooks set up for different aspects of games, the various creatures I'll use, and so on, so it's always available no matter what device I choose to use.”

Wolfgang Baur, publisher at Kobold Press and designer for the Deep Magic Kickstarter, told me he keeps Evernote open during game sessions, “to track new NPCs in case they show up again later.”

Evernote (free with a $5/month premium upgrade) is a bit more open and flexible than Scrivener, which might be just what you’re looking for, or you might find yourself overwhelmed with options. I experimented with Evernote to organize my notes for this article, and it was simple to use, and has tons of features I haven’t even explored yet..

If you want an organizational tool that’s intended specifically for use with RPGs, you might want to look at Realm Works (price to be determined). It’s made by the same company that produces Hero Lab (which I’ll discuss in a moment), and it basically looks like a Scrivener-type organization program that’s been supercharged with features suited for gamers, like creating interactive maps and controlling which information is revealed to players. I haven’t tried it yet because it’s still in beta, but Karen McDonald, a digital converter for several game companies, said, “Realm Works is a very powerful tool for both campaign tracking and revealing information in-game.”

Google Stuff and Obsidian Portal

The stereotypical image of the dungeon master sitting alone, surrounded by a dozen moldering tomes from editions past, creating adventures by candlelight and the soft glow of Mountain Dew isn’t totally accurate. For most gaming groups, creating the campaign world and even writing the adventures is a collaborative process.

A lot of what Google does these days revolves around collaborative work. Google Drive is a great example that I’ve used myself. The Pathfinder campaign I’m working on includes some rules hacks from other games, and I put the rules document on Google Drive, then shared it with all the players. The ability to comment and edit created a long, winding discussion of potential changes and subsystems that could have been a confusing mess. Instead, it’s very clear who suggested what and how everyone responded, and it’s all there for reference when I write the final rules document.

The social networking of Google+ combines with Google Drive to create a pretty robust set of features useful to GMs and their gaming groups. Manda Collis: “Right at this moment, I think Google+ is actually my favorite tool for organizing for games! I am a player in one game currently that uses a Google+ community to coordinate our game days, and I really love the way that it's been working for us. We are able to share important documents like PDFs, character sheets, and so on through Google Drive (connected to our community) and can separate out planning sessions from in-character stuff using the different categories of posts. It's really changed how I think about game planning, and gives us constant connectivity throughout the week even while we aren't playing.”

You can then extend Google’s social capabilities into actually running your game sessions. Wolfgang Baur told me how he used it to playtest an adventure with far-flung players: “The big one for me was when I wanted to playtest an adventure I was writing — but playtest with people all over the US. I ran it using Google Hangouts. I kept the group down to 4 players, and it worked remarkably well. The resulting adventure is called To the Edge of the World, and it has been quite a hit.”

The ubiquity and flexibility (not to mention zero cost) of Google’s products is a major draw, but Obsidian Portal (free, $40 annual cost for upgrade) offers gamers a way to collaborate and organize their gaming worlds that’s devoted strictly to gaming. It’s essentially a personal wiki platform customized for gaming. Your wiki can include maps, images and other information about your world, and you can set certain “GM-only” info to be off-limits to players.

Ryk Perry, a longtime GM and member of my own gaming group, discussed his use of Obsidian Portal for our Shadowrun campaign at length at Robot Viking: “The adventure log allows you to track your sessions chronologically, and I’ve found the ability to link between the pages very handy. For instance, does your party ever forget the name of the NPC that gave them their quest? In the adventure log, you can link the NPC (or the PC) page straight in the text. This is clearly quite useful for players to just take a look back and refresh their recollection about what the hell they are actually doing – probably with a greater level of detail than a rehash from the GM might provide.”

Hero Lab

Hero Lab ($30 per game system) is the one tool that almost everyone mentioned. It does one thing — create characters — but it does that one thing very well, and for a variety of the most popular game systems. Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds and other games are currently supported. “Right now I'm very fond of Hero Lab for designing end-stage villains,” said Wolfgang Baur. “It takes the gruntwork out of compiling complicated stat blocks. I prepare most of my regular monsters and minions by putting a bookmark in a bestiary, but for the special blackguard eldritch knight lich with complete wardrobe of magical gear...I like to surprise players. Even at lower levels, it's useful to throw a few levels of aristocrat or barbarian onto a kobold and see what happens when the party can't quite defeat the little squeaker. It encourages me to experiment, without burning hours doing it.”

“Hero Lab cuts down much of the time necessary for NPC prep,” added Karen McDonald.

Even though it won’t let you create a map or organize the guilds in your capital city, Hero Lab is invaluable for games with somewhat complex mechanical systems. Character creation can be a slog of thumbing through books, while Hero Lab puts all the options in front of you and performs all the calculations to ensure you’ve done everything correctly.

Tablets and PDFs

Sometimes the most useful tools are the most simple. An iPad, Android tablet, or a laptop loaded with PDFs of all your gaming books is a huge time saver. Plenty of gaming companies offer free PDFs of their releases when you buy the print book, so it’s not difficult to build a great digital gaming bookshelf. I asked Ben McFarland, freelance contributor to several gaming companies, what his favorite digital tool is. “Nexus 7 tablet with PDF search function. I know that's probably not very sexy, but not needing to comb through a pile of books, and being able to carry the references for more than one system in my hand has been absolutely fantastic. With the PDFs loaded, I can show up and be ready for any system we want to play that night. I don't have to haul all my books with me, and I can focus on the game.”

Brandon Sweet, a GM with more than two decades’ experience, is also an advocate of PDF game books. “I was a late adopter on this, but a laptop has proven to be a great asset. PDF copies of all the rulebooks open to the important sections, digital photos of places and people the PCs will visit, etc.”

Manda Collis told me about a particularly innovative way to use a tablet while playing. "I love keeping track of initiative on my tablet — by writing on the screen protector with dry erase markers! This works really great for maps and things as well, I can keep all my files ready to access on my tablet, mark on them as I need to, and then erase it when I move on to the next thing. Since I run a lot of convention games, this is super helpful when jumping from game to game too."

iTunes and Other Media Players

Another simple, yet effective GM’s tool? Music. Playing appropriate sound effects or atmospheric music is a shortcut to creating the “theater of the mind” all GMs strive for. Ben McFarland: “I created several quick iTunes playlists of sound effects for a series of encounters that I described to the players as they sat blindfolded. Being able to augment my descriptions with actual appropriate sound effects was fantastic. Then I transitioned to low-key music, and it really worked.”

GM Rollin Bishop told me about a particular moment that was accentuated by having the right song at the right time: “Probably my favorite digital moment from one of my campaign's is also the simplest incorporation of digital tools: I played the Jurassic Park theme during a moment when the party took control of an airship and flew to the primary antagonist's base. The slightest nuance, especially when it comes to sound, goes a long way.”

System Specific Tools

Some tools are only useful if you’re running a particular system. Still, especially for popular games like D&D and Pathfinder, those tools can be invaluable. The first is the amazing Pathfinder Reference Document (PRD). Every rule created for the Pathfinder RPG is freely available in a fully hyperlinked online repository.

Amanda Hamon, freelance designer for Pathfinder, is a huge advocate for the usefulness of online reference documents. “My favorite digital tool for game organization and prep is a combination of d20PFSRD.com, the Pathfinder SRD Wiki, and the Pathfinder Reference Document on the Paizo website. Between those three resources, finding exactly the spell, archetype, or whatever other mechanic I need for a game is incredibly easy. If I want to pick through all the spells that deal acid damage, the SRD Wiki has those listed. If I need to know what bard archetypes exist, including from the third-party publishers, d20PFSRD has me covered. Both of those resources also do a great job listing their sources, so it's easy to find the original mechanic in its source once I've picked something I think I want to use. The PRD on the Paizo site is also really helpful in that it lists, word-for-word and in the same organizational format, exactly what's in most of the core rulebooks, so if I don't have a particular book handy I can skim through the PRD and know that what I'm reading is exactly from Paizo itself.”

Mike Mearls, senior manager of research and design for Dungeons & Dragons (in other words, the guy in charge of the next edition of D&D) still gets a lot of mileage out of the D&D Insider Tools ($10/month). “As a DM, I collect stat blocks for monsters ahead of time and print them out in packets. For maps, I use our tile mapping tool to create set piece encounters. By sticking to one tile set at a time, it’s much easier to organize and set up tactical maps at the table. I can work from one set, rather than juggle multiple sets at once. Here’s a little trick I figured out: You can pop tiles back into their sheets. They actually remain in place pretty well, making it much easier to store and transport them.”

GM tools can also let you whip up needed game info on the fly. “I also sometimes use the random choice option in the DDI character builder to create NPCs,” Mearls said. “I’ll create a 1st level character using random choices for name, race, background, theme, class, and so on to give me a rough outline of an NPC. It’s a handy way to jog the imagination.”

Of course, no one tool fits every GM’s needs. Some of these options should help you keep the Caliphate of Arkha’Lor separate from the Sovereignty of Winter Elves while organizing your monster herds and treasure troves. If you have a favorite digital tool for RPG organization and adventure creation, let us know in the comments.

Nintendo are promoting two Nintendo 3DS RPGs via Club Nintendo—the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei IV and Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was released earlier in the year.

Read Nintendo Pushes Shin Megami Tensei IV And Fire Emblem: Awakening With $30 Credit on Siliconera!

This might he our favorite supercut to ever grace our computer screen. Slackstory has compiled every single coffee and/or pie scene from the great Mark Frost and David Lynch series Twin Peaks. It's all just so wonderful.

And if you're hungering for even more Twin Peaks, the site has also composed a pie chart of all the coffee sips throughout the series by character. GET IT? You get it.

Well done, people.

Earlier this year, radio station WNYC mined the the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's dog license registration database to produce this map of dog breed popularity. Unsurprisingly, small breeds are popular in the city. Well, except Labs. Nothing stops the American obsession with Labs.

You can see WNYC's data here, but the important things to know are 1) it's only of registered dogs, which excludes a lot of pets and 2) they've excluded the most popular breed of "mixed/other."

They did the same kind of map for dog names. As above, the size of the names roughly corresponds to their popularity:

Definitely check out the website; these are just portions of a large and interactive set of maps. Plus, they've got a dog name game and some great top 10 lists. Here are just two of them:

First of all, Yoda is more popular dog name than Chewbacca? Second of all, how many of the Lokis and Thors were inspired by the Marvel characters?

Any other great geeky pet names out there? For example, I managed to convince my parents to name our dogs Jack, Daniel, and Samantha. (Teal'c was a no-go.)

Index Corporation, the parent company of Atlus, is in financial trouble. Despite Index Corporation's issues, the Atlus brand will continue. Atlus will continue to sell and develop Atlus brand products.

Read Atlus Assures Devil Survivor 2: Break Record Is Still On Track For Fall on Siliconera!

Sony have announced the next batch of games that will be joining the PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection.

Read Jet Set Radio Goes Free On PlayStation Plus This Month on Siliconera!

71-year-old anime director Yoshiyuki Tomino is known as one of the original creators of the long-running Gundam series. He directed the first TV series Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980) and many other Gundam TV series and films. It was officially confirmed by Bandai yesterday that his newest anime work will be released as a part of the 35th anniversary of the Gundam franchise. Bandai didn't call it a new "Gundam" series directly at the press conference. But since it is a part of Gundam's 35th anniversary project, it is natural to assume that Tomino's new work will be related to the Gundam world or franchise.  

 

The title of the new series will be announced later and it is planned to be released sometime between 2014 to 2015. Tomino's last Gundam-related anime work was a movie trilogy Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation released in 2005-2006. It was previously reported in August 2012 that Tomino had

worked on a project called G-Reko with Gundam's anime production studio Sunrise. However, the connection

between G-reko and Tomino's new series is still unclear.

 

It was also announced that the anime adaptation of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin

manga which was based on the first TV series will be released around the same time, 2014 to 2015.

 

Yoshiyuki Tomino

 

Tomino's Gundam anime works:

 

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie I (1981)

Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow (1981)

Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space (1982)

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985-1986)

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986-1987)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (1988)

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991)

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993-1994)

Turn A Gundam (1999-2000)

Turn A Gundam I: Earth Light (2002)

Turn A Gundam II: Moonlight Butterfly (2002)

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation I - Heirs To The Stars (2005)

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation II - Lovers (2005)

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation III - Love is the Pulse of the Stars (2006)

 

Source: Mantan Web

 

© Sotsu/Sunrise

As Kristina noted in her What's in UFO Catchers? feature, Taito had been stocking their machines with Persona 4 Arena merchandise, but two of them eluded my sight until now because they were just released last week. One of them was their Tatsumi Kanji figure, which looks alright but I can tell you I didn't see it because I'm not a Kanji fan. The other would be Shirogane Naoto in her blue outfit, which looks especially nice for a prize figure

You can see more of these two and the other figures in the set in our gallery. If you want to pick one up, though, you'll need to look for them outside of the usual shops and proxy dealers; most either had pre-orders open a while ago, or they never took them in the first place. 

[via Figsona]

Read more...

As many have predicted, the next Gundam series will be Gunpla-related. It is officially announced today that the newest Gundam TV series titled Gundam Build Fighters will start airing on TV Tokyo and its affiliates in October this year. The series is directed by 34-year-old director Kenji Nagasaki who directed the No.6 TV anime series in 2011, and has drawn storyboards for many anime series including Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, Aikatsu!, Blast of Tempest, and Guilty Crown.

 

The story of Gundam Build Fighters is set in the near future world when Gunpla Battle, a fighting competitions using Gundam plastic models have become popular worldwide. Sei Iori, the only son of a model shop owner meets a mysterious boy named Leiji. They will aim for victory at the world tournament of Gunpla Battle.

 

PV

 

You can check more information at the Gundam Build Fighters official site.

 

Key visual

 

Staff:

Director: Kenji Nagasaki

Script supervisor: Yousuke Kuroda

Character designer: Kenichi Ohnuki

Character design cooperation: Suzuhito Yasuda

Mechanical designers: Kunio Ogawara, Junichi Akutsu, Junya Ishigaki, Kanetake Ebikawa, Kenji Teraoka

 

Source: Gundam Build Fighters official site

 

© Sotsu/Sunrise/TV Tokyo

Want to know how many dollars Star Trek's Federation Credits, Star Wars' Galactic Credits, or Fallout's Bottle Caps are worth? What about how Harry Potter's Galleons compare to Game of Thrones' Silver Stags? Then check out this amazing Scifi Currency Converter for all your fictional money conversion needs.

Besides discovering their actual monetary worth and/or how they compare to other fictional currencies, you can also find out how they estimated each value. From the press release:

Working out the values of the currencies was no easy task, and required a combination of careful examination of the source material, helpful advice from fans and occasionally a cheeky bit of creative interpretation. For instance, the gold dragon from a Song of Ice and Fire was based on a throwaway comment about fine wine by Lord Petyr Baelish, while a receipt for a talking toaster helped calculate the value of Red Dwarf's dollarpound. We also had valuable input from STARFLEET, the international Star Trek Fan Association, in determining the value of a Federation Credit.

Besides U.S. dollars and GBP, the Scifi Currency Converter includes:

• Federation Credits (Star Trek)

• Galactic Credit Standard (Star Wars)

• Bottle caps (Fallout: New Vegas)

• Simoleons (The Sims 3)

• Septims (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

• Galleons, sickles and knuts (Harry Potter)

• Gold dragons, silver stages and copper stars (A Song of Ice and Fire)

• Ankh-Morpork dollar (Discworld)

• Dollarpound (Red Dwarf)

• Creds (Judge Dredd)

The grand cross-over of Namco Bandai, Sega, and Capcom characters is finally in stores, so it's time to celebrate the official launch of Project X Zone. The tactical RPG features over 50 characters spanning numerous disparate series, from Resident Evil to .hack, and you can see some of its action in the last promotional push below.

 

 

"The ultimate cross-over game" is now available on Nintendo 3DS in North America. Anyone pick it up?

 

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. His blog can be found at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter at @Moldilox.