Because it’s not already confusing enough that Nintendo has two barely-different SKUs out there in most territories, Nintendo of Japan will be releasing a white variation of their 32 GB Premium Wii U model on July 13th of this year.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

A scanned page from a Japanese magazine has been floating about today revealing the next figure in the Transformers Masterpiece line in Japan. That figure is MP-12 Lambor, or Sideswipe, as he is known state-side. The image looks like a cgi rendering of the figure. It is interesting to note that the image shows him being in scale with the MP-10 Optimus Prime figure. A silhouette is also shown of MP-13 whose identity is still a mystery.

There’s a Japanese live action Rurouni Kenshin film in the works. It’s set to be released on August 25th 2012. Rurouni Kenshin is a popular manga turned anime series about a samurai with a dark past who fights with a backwards sword and hangs around with women and children to be a nice non threatening guy. When Kenshin holds his sword backwards, you know he means business!

The trailer looks pretty good, and not totally crappy like other manga turned anime turned live action movies like Death Note which sucked more than most movies could ever dream of sucking. With a solid story as source material there’s no good reason for this movie to suck, but it still might, like Death Note, which sucked really bad. I didn’t see Shishio in the credits so that’s promising.

In this past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live a skit featured host Anna Faris as a character that looks quite familiar to Sailor Moon fans. The clip has Faris playing a Japanese anime fan and despite the similarities to Sailor Moon she mentions she is dressed as her own fan made character “Cherry Cherry Rock and Roll”.

Americans can watch the clip on Hulu:

The rest of the world can keep reading for the YouTube version which might not be around for long…

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Here it is. The news we’ve been waiting for. I guess. This press release confirmed Nintendo will show a new console at E3 in Los Angeles this year.

This is of course, all it confirms. No price. No controller. No specs. No colors. No games. Just that they are working on it and will show what they have been working on.

If you don’t believe me, here is that same news in English.

Powered Convoy over at the Allspark has assembled a great collection of the latest images of Masterpiece Rodimus Prime. These photos are full color and are the best look yet at what is in store for this figure. The key part of the gallery is a scan from E-Hobby showing all of the features of the figure (shown above). I’ll let the pictures do the talking after the jump. Fair warning, the images are fairly large and may cause the page to load a little slow. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Related:
Masterpiece Rodimus Prime concept art
First images of Masterpiece Rodimus Prime MP-09
Better pictures of Masterpiece Rodimus Prime surface
Color photos of Masterpiece Rodimus Prime and Hot Rod. Yes, its both.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

It seems we have some sad news on our hands from the Allspark News Staff. After inquiring about the release of the Challenge at Cybertron set, the Hasbro PR team finally came back with a response from the Transformers product team. This set will not be coming out in the United States and that it is an Asian market exclusive.

We’ve confirmed that the item in question is exclusive to the Asia market – not the U.S. Sorry for any confusion.

This set features Universe/Classics/Generations Hot Rod, Galvatron and Cyclonus with anime inspired color schemes and was believed to be coming state-side as a Target exclusive. It seems that is debunked…for now. It is not uncommon for PR teams to flat out deny a product’s release until such a time as they are prepared to make that announcement. Universe Powerglide is the most prominent example I can think of, where we were told a Japanese store exclusive repaint would not be coming here, but eventually did over a much longer period of time.

The internets are abuzz this morning with some color photos surfacing of the Masterpiece Rodimus Prime figure that we’ve heard about before and seen an unpainted prototype of at a recent convention in China. YFrog user GENograw posted images to his account showing not only Rodimus Prime (Rodimus Convoy), but also that he has the ability to become Hot Rod (Hot Rodimus) in both robot and vehicle mode. As we heard knew before, the trailer section will become the battle station as it did in Generation One. Better photos are now sure to follow.