#Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Ghost

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[figurecollection]

XM-XX Ghost Gundam Model Kit by Bandai Spirits, from Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam Ghost

[murumokirby360]

[5/30 ARC] Gundam Extreme Vs 2 [Triad Battle] Phantom Gundam [w/Aila Jyrkiäinen] (Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam Ghost)

Tagged: @ftgxsee, @lordromulus90

[belades]

A big thing I never really thought about for Crossbone Gundam Ghost is the fact that for many, many, many Gundam series (although certainly not all of them), the titular Gundam is the mid-series upgrade, NOT the one you start out with (Zeta, ZZ, and 00 are the big three that come to mind)  But for Ghost, that actually was not clear when it first came out!  The main mobile suit in Crossbone Gundam was...... always the Crossbone Gundam!  So when this series was first revealed it’s like “Oh, a pure white/silver (with some accents) Crossbone, that explains it being called Ghost!  Especially given the ending of Steel Seven.  The Crossbone Gundam should be gone, so it coming back is like a ghost.”  

You might have seen the AMAZING looking upcoming P-Bandai Robot Damashii figure of an upcoming MS in the series (that I doubt the scans have caught up to yet, they’ve been moving again, but they’re really slow) but when this came out..... I mean, we knew there would probably be a mid series upgrade, but it would most likely be that this silver Crossbone gets additional gear partway through, for the most part, that’s how Crossbone works!  It’d still be the Crossbone, while “Ghost” would just be the title and mainly evocative of tone.  There was no real indication that any upgrade would be called the “ghost” either.  Skull Heart is technically the X-1 Kai Kai, and “Skull Heart” is just a nickname that’s not REALLY used in the manga itself, and Steel Seven had the X-1 Fullcloth.  The title was referring to the group.  So this series being called Ghost was because.... well, this thing’s basically a fucking ghost from slightly before the victory era!  SPEAKING of the victory era, Crossbone has, for a long time, been used to bridge the gap between late UC (F91) and Victory, frequently showing prototypes of technology new to Victory Gundam, so there actually BEING Victory Gundams and Zanscare mobile suits in the title spread here was kinda cool too!  It shows it’s finally actually taking place during the events of Victory!  

Anyways wow, I didn’t realize how much I missed blogging and making long, drawn out posts, I’ll be continuing now!

[hypetokyo]

Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam Ghost Robot Spirits : X-0 Crossbone Gundam X-0 [PRE-ORDER]

https://www.hype.tokyo/products/mobile-suit-crossbone-gundam-ghost-robot-spirits-x-0-crossbone-gundam-x-0

Release Date : Late January 2018

www.hype.tokyo

HYPETOKYO REWARD PROGRAM

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[bonerhitler]

Super Robot Wars V is spectacular.

A while ago I briefly spilled some word soup about Super Robot Wars, and mech anime in general, and one day I'd like to dig in deep and write more about giant robots because oh snap do I love giant robots. But for now I'm going to talk about Super Robot Wars V because I am still playing this game and loving every minute of it. Hours, really. Stages are taking an hour or more to complete now and it's eating my life away.

So, what makes V in particular so great is that it has an English translation. Bandai has been doing a thing lately where a lot of their series that would otherwise never get localized have been getting English subtitles for their SEA releases, which is fantastic if you're not adverse to paying crazy import prices. Quality of these translations has been a bit rocky, another SRW game “Moon Dwellers” wasn't the best in terms of translation quality, but V's translation is generally decent. There are a few names that are mistranslated such as the Doven Wolf from “ZZ Gundam” being hilariously called the Dooben Wolf. Generally, however, the translation is fine. It's refreshing to be able to play through an entire SRW game where the whole story is translated, as prior to these releases there were only a handful of complete fan patches.

Gameplay-wise V is much like any other of the recent SRW games with a few streamlined quality of life changes. Now you can use Spirit skills directly from the pre-combat screen whether you're attacking or defending. On one hand it's nice to be able to save a unit if you're the victim of an unlucky one-percent hit that nearly wipes them out, but on the other hand it does make the game a bit too easy when you can ensure that every character that gets attacked can always protect, evade or heal to survive an attack.

The only other major change from the typical SRW Format is a fairly large one; pilots don't earn skill points anymore. Before you would have to level up each individual pilot and teach them skills and enhance their stats one by one and it was all very tedious and rather uninteresting in all honesty. That has all been replaced with the “TAC” system, you gain TAC Points by killing enemies, meeting certain requirements (usually events based on the canon-storyline of the stage) and then spend them how you see fit. They're used to buy extra parts for your mechs, such as boosters to add more mobility, or to customize your pilots. And boy howdy has pilot customization been expanded.

Previously you would just upgrade your pilot's stats and that was that. They would learn skills as they leveled up, but nothing too involved went on. Now with the TAC system you can do that by spending your TAC points to level their raw stats. Or you can spend those points on pilot skills. These skills range from the more simple ones such as “Proud Ace” which lets you earn the Ace and Great Ace titles ten kills earlier, and “Save Energy” which lowers energy consumption by a small percentage based on how many ranks you put in. To the hilariously broken like “Attacker” which adds twenty percent to your attack once your pilot gains high enough focus, and “Full Counter” which always lets your unit attack first. You're given more than enough slots per-pilot that customizing them in almost any way you see fit is possible, the only limit is how many TAC points you can save up and spend. Whether you want to dump all those points on your specific favorites, or spread the love to the whole team is up to you.

Otherwise gameplay is largely the same. Each mission you're given an objective, a failure quota and a bonus objective. You gain bonus money for meeting the side objective but it's not required, and you're tasked with hitting your objective whatever it is. Usually it's just to kill all the dudes that show up. Sometimes it's just to kill one dude, and any others that show up are bonus cash and TAC Points. You're given a list of available mechs and choose who to launch and have at it. This game heavily favors the UC Gundam cast, and I love it for that. You quickly get the “Crossbones Gundam” stars Tobia and Kincade  and eventually build up a star cast of Judeu (Zeta Gundam), Hathaway (from the novel series Hathaway's Flash), Amuro (Mobile Suit Gundam, ZZ Gundam, and Char's Counterattack) and even Kamille (Zeta gundam) as well as Banagher from “Gundam Unicorn”. Meanwhile the cast of Getter Robo: Armageddon make an appearance as well with Ryoma in his Black Getter serving as an excellent unit for a third of the game before being replaced by the amazing Shin Getter and later the Shin Getter Dragon rears its head as well.

Stealing the show, however, are the Mazinger Z units. Starting with designs straight out of “Mazinger Z: The Impact!” you have the famous Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger which later upgrade into the Mazinger ZERO, from it's own titular manga series, and the Mazin Emperor G, a new mech created just for this game which they went so far as to produce new figures of timed with the game's release for some boost in marketing. Visually speaking a lot of the game's effort and budget went into designing and animating these two monsters alone, and it shows with how fantastic they look when doing their special attacks.

Other series that make appearances are Martian Successor Nadesico (based on the movie rather than the excellent series), Cross-Ange, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Full Metal Panic, Neon Genesis Evangelion (The rebuilds, rather than the original series) and surprisingly Brave Express Might Gaine.

There's not a whole lot to say about the plot, for the most part it's an adaptation of a few core series' plotpoints with a decent focus on Cross-Ange, Gundam Unicorn and Space Battleship Yamato while the other series slot in when and where they can. But one really interesting thing this game in particular does is that it improves the endings of several of them vastly. Without spoiling it, I'm just going to say that it doesn't end on the dreary would-be teaser that the Nadesico movie does, and Unicorn doesn't just end on a lame note with the villain vanishing into dust because he was literally nothing but a ghost. Even Evangelion gets a better ending because it doesn't leave players hanging on for a sequel that might never happen for a few years. So in some ways, it's incredibly satisfying to see better endings for series, and especially a few key characters, than the original series ever bothered to.

As a final note I'd like to say everyone should go watch Getter Armageddon because it's amazing, it's second opening theme is spectacular and it plays every time one of the getter machines gets into a battle and I love it. If you at all like Super Robot Wars or have ever been interested but found the lack of localization difficult then this is an excellent chance to hop in feet-first. It's got all of the series mainstays, a ton of good music, the gameplay is pretty peak and there's just no going wrong with any of the cool  mechs and characters on display here.

[juve2040-blog]

Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Ghost

[worldoftheanime-blog-blog]

G-News: Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Ghost, New manga series

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