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Turn A Gundam tells a story about Earth having gone through several wars that eventually technology was destroyed and the planet regressed to essentially the 1920s-1930s. As a settlement of technologically-advanced humanity from a lunar colony returns to Earth and declares war on Earthlings, a young man from the Moon who has grown to love the Earth and its people gets caught in the middle with a centuries-old mecha sporting a familiar color scheme. The series features a soundtrack by Yoko Kanno and nontraditional Gundam mecha designs by Syd Mead (of Blade Runner fame).

Good job, Bandai. Now where’s ZZ Gundam?

In addition to Aramaki, AWA will also host voice actors Vic Mignogna, Laura Bailey, and Travis Willingham (Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood); voice actor/director Michael Sinterniklaas (The Venture Bros., recording studio NYAV Post); and others. gaijINside will also be there.

Press Release

It will only set you back $149... yea, that didn't sound so good

After E3, everyone who was anyone in the gaming community was talking about the newly dubbed Kinect motion camera. Websites, magazines and the general public were on it like Master Chief on a Grunt. Although Microsoft had easily won the crowd with information on Kinect, they casually left out one of the most important details: the price. Gaming journalists have been scrambling for a price tag for a month now, only to be denounced by Microsoft. Well, the wait is now over. Microsoft has just released the price on the highly anticipated Kinect motion camera, and it’s just as everyone expected.

The Kinect camera bundle, which includes the motion camera itself along with the Kinect Adventures game, will be $149.99. EB Games has been selling pre-orders for Kinect at this price since E3, but it has been unconfirmed until today. Microsoft has also stated that Kinect games developed by Microsoft will be regularly priced at $49.99, which is $10 less than your run-of-the-mill new Xbox 360 game. Microsoft also said that they are allowing third party developers to price their Kinect games at whatever they would like, but games such as Dance Central and Your Fitness have already been priced at $49.99. I guess there is no valid reason in breaking the Microsoft pricing groove for now.

So do you remember the cheaper, 4 gigabyte slim Xbox 360 that Microsoft announced after the conference? Yea, neither did I, but Microsoft has apparently made this version of the Xbox 360 a bundle with Kinect. The bundle in total (which is the new Xbox 360 slim with low memory, Kinect and Kinect Adventures) is going to be $299. This cheap Xbox 360 slim won’t come with a hard drive, but has the 4 gig’s of memory on a small internal drive. Microsoft didn’t mention a standard controller with the bundle, so it would seem that this, along with a hard drive, would have to be purchased separately. The problem with this is that Microsoft has yet to sell Xbox 360 slim hard drives separately. How convenient.

The Kinect motion camera is scheduled to be released in North America on November 4th, along with the Kinect console bundle.

Fullmetal Alchemist, Season 1 – $24.75*
Speed Racer Classic Collection – $9.90*
Samurai Champloo, Complete Series – $24.99
Bleach, The Substitute (Season 1) – $13.99*
Vampire Knight, Season 1 – $10.99*
Soul Eater, Part 1 – $11.88*
Robotech: The Macross Saga – $24.99*
Clannad, Season 1 – $22.77*
Astro Boy (2004), Season 1 – $14.99*
Voltron, Volume 1 – $13.86*
Inuyasha, Season 1, Vol. 1 – $10.99*
Kiba, Collection 1 – $23.99*
Afro Samurai, Season 1 – $4.95 (SD version only)
Ouran High School Host Club, Season 1 (still all of it) – $24.75
Fullmetal Alchemist, Season 2 – $24.75
Soul Eater, Part 2 – $11.99
Astro Boy (1980), Complete Series – $24.99*
Robotech: The Masters – $22.77*
Robotech: The New Generation – $23.76*
Go Lion, Collection 1 – $16.83*
Voltron Motion Comics – $3.96*
Ramen Fighter Miki, Complete Collection – $10.89*
Street Fighter II V, Season 1 (still all of it) – $24.99*
Now and Then, Here and There, Complete Series – $11.88*
Saiyuki, Season 1 – $23.76*
Saiyuki, Season 2 – $24.75
Angelic Layer, Complete Collection – $23.99*
Kiba, Collection 2 – $24.75
SuperGALS!, Season 1 – $23.99*
Dokkoida?!, Complete Collection – $10.89*
E’s Otherwise, Complete Collection – $23.99*
Inuyasha, Season 1, Vol. 2 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 2, Vol. 1 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 2, Vol. 2 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 3, Vol. 1 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 3, Vol. 2 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 4 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 5, Vol. 1 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 5, Vol. 2 – $10.99
Inuyasha, Season 6, Vol. 1 – $9.99
Inuyasha, Season 6, Vol. 2 – $9.99
Inuyasha, Season 7 – $5.99
Naruto Shippuden Uncut, Season 1, Vol. 1 – $10.99*

The same page also has selected anime movies listed for under ten dollars.

Afro Samurai Resurrection – $9.99
Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles – $5.99
Naruto: The Movie – Ninja Clash In the Land of Snow – $4.99
Naruto: The Movie – Legend of the Stone of Gelel – $4.99
Naruto: The Movie – Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom – $4.99
Speed Racer: The Movie (NOT the recent live-action movie) – $9.99
Paprika – $9.99
Bleach: The Movie – Memories of Nobody – $9.99
Bleach: The Movie 2 – The DiamondDust Rebellion – $9.99
Naruto Shippuden: The Movie – $9.99
Inuyasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time – $4.99
Inuyasha the Movie 2: The Castle Beyond the Looking Glass – $4.99
Inuyasha the Movie 3: Swords of an Honorable Ruler – $4.99

Announced in Monthly Gundam Ace magazine, the manga brings some of the old creative crew together. Series director Yasuhiro Imagawa (Giant Robo: The Animation, Shin Mazinger Shōgeki! Z-Hen) returns to script the book. Art comes from character design corroborator Kazuhiko Shimamoto (The Skull Man 1998-2001 manga).

It’s not the first G Gundam manga to be produced. A manga version of the series was released along side its original run (released stateside by Tokyopop). Still, this iteration is bringing together a good sampling of the creative talent that made the wacky fan-favorite show over 15 years ago. No word yet if it will get a US release.

While I would have preferred a new G Gundam story instead of a retelling (there’s something wrong with a world where SEED gets a sequel but not G Gundam), new G Gundam is still new G Gundam.

Kinect, eh?

E3 is a special time of year for gamers. New games are announced, new technology is revealed, and game developers make complete fools out of themselves on stage. Needless to say, it’s pretty much one of the best weeks in the year. Although E3 starts today, Microsoft wasted no time on trying to win the crowd this year. Yesterday, a separate conference was held in order to show off the highly anticipated “Project Natal” motion camera for the Xbox 360. Today, Microsoft had it’s global Xbox 360 presentation that had a lot of details on “Project Natal”. While this is pretty much Microsoft’s answer to the motion control phenomenon that has swept the gaming industry, Natal didn’t pull any punches in it’s personal conference and the big Microsoft press conference.

According to IGN.com and the Microsoft press conference at E3, the true name for “Project Natal” has been revealed as Kinect. While no one has any real idea what this means, this is what it will be called for it’s release. While many videos were shown at the special showing of Kinect, Microsoft also showed public demos of certain games and interfaces. The Kinect interface on the Xbox 360 is entered by simply waving you hand in front of the screen. This not only makes the motion sensitive menu pop up, but it also scans the player’s face and logs them into their “gamertag” profile. From this menu, games, movies, music and other features can be accessed, such as Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and ESPN. The menu can not only be sorted through by the use of movement, but by voice command as well. According to the stage demo, simply saying the word “Xbox” made the next words that the player says a command. Commands such as “Xbox, play music”, “Xbox, pause movie” and  ”Xbox, root for Ohio State” were shown on stage with little to no glitches or latency.

The first game shown for the newly dubbed Kinect was Kinect Sports is basically Wii Sports, but for Xbox 360. It also shows many more sports than what is available on the Wii, such as soccer, track and field, obstacle courses, and more. Kinect Adventures is a title featuring many mini-games that seem to be more centered around full body movements rather than the simple gestures used in other Kinect titled games. White water rafting and Wipeout-style gameplay are among these featured mini-games.

Harmonix has released info and gameplay footage of a new dancing game called Dance Central, which is only usable with Kinect. Instead of single point tracking or the need of dance pads, Dance Central actively uses the camera of Kinect and is centered around full body, pop culture dancing. This is something that no other peripheral can do today. Artists such as Lady Gaga and Usher will have music in Dance Central.

The new Fitness game for Kinect, called Your Shape, is in development under Ubisoft. While the game and menu is loading up, Kinect scans the player’s entire body, and is able to read off certain information. This includes height, weight, hip size, arm span and and estimated BMI while pin-pointing the player’s muscle groups. Your Shape has features such as yoga, martial art training, flexibility exercises, and Tai Chi sessions.

If last year’s “Milo” AI presentation hooked up with Nintendogs and had a love child *pushing image out of my head*, it would be Kinectimals. Kinectimals is a game all about owning a pet and interacting with it via Kinect’s camera and microphone. Certain activities were demonstrated with Kinectimals‘ AI tiger, such as hide and seek, jump rope, fetch, scrubbing and voice commands such as play dead, roll over and sit. The AI, while childish, was very responsive to the 8 year old girl that lead the demonstration. Talk about user friendly.

All the games listed above are going to be available when Kinect launches on November 4th, but there is one more game that is in development right now for 2011. LucasArts is creating a Kinect Star Wars game, where the player can actively use a lightsaber and the Force with their respective body movements. Although the video was rather short for this perticular game, it showed a player doing all sorts of cool Star Wars manuevers, including deflecting laser blasts with a lightsaber and Force Pushing stormtroopers out of the way.

With Kinect only a few months away, Microsoft certainly didn’t hold back on it’s presentation. E3 2010 is one day old, and Kinect is already the talk of the crowd. Needless to say, it’s going to take a lot from Sony and/or Nintendo to top this news, let alone motion control technology.

This mysterious, live-action short film for Mortal Kombat has hit the web. With no clues other than “PLAY IN HD” given by the uploader, we can only assume this is either for a reborn movie franchise or game franchise. Undoubtedly, the series is destined to take a darker turn, with the trailer (with nudity and gore) offering Saw-levels of violence. While the cast is unknown for the most part, it’s obvious that Matt Mullins (formerly Kamen Rider Wing Knight on Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, which had a game come out for both the Nintendo DS and Wii) plays Johnny Cage, and Jeri Ryan (or a lookalike) plays Sonya Blade. Some footage from KRDK, alongside Matt Mullins’ actual news show appearances, makes it into the video. Additionally, the video features a reimagined Reptile, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Jax, Shan Tsung, and Baraka.

Most likely, we’ll learn more about what this video means next week at E3. Until then, we can only speculate. Given Mortal Kombat’s tumultuous run in the video game and theatrical field (both iterations having shocking and profitable openings, but generally weak sequels in the path), alongside parent company issues, it’s nice to see such a hopeful future for the franchise. As I’ve preferred Capcom fighters, though, I most likely will only give this passing glances down the road. Still, if Johnny Cage pulls out a Advent Deck and turns into Wing Knight, I’m all in for it.

This is also not the first time that EA has released an animated movie to tie-in with their games. 2008 saw an animated prequel of Dead Space while this past February saw the release of a Dante’s Inferno animated film. Both were from Starz Media’s Manga Entertainment.