Once again, I found myself in the middle of things thanks not to my knowledge but to the fact that I've put up some half-baked pages. I've gotten a lot of emails about Gundam games that I found myself repeating a lot of things in replies to each emails. So despite my complete lack of qualifications, I've decided to compile a bunch of things together so I don't have repeat things to everyone.
First I should explain how UNQUALIFIED I am:
(1) The only table top games I play nowadays is chess and Chinese chess, and once in a blue moon: Chinese checker.
(2) The last time I played a wargame was over 12 years ago. I vaguely
know the rules of more recent games like Magic and Warhammer, I don't
know how to play Dungeon & Dragon or Mekton Z.
(3) To be honest, I am not crazy about games that involve more
collecting than playing/thinking (Magic), I also have a lot of
trepidation about games that are obessed with unit or character stats
(D&D).
(4) About 99% of the information below comes from various people around
the web. I am just a scavenger of information.
(5) My idea of a really good game is a more abstractized game, in the
extreme form examplified by chess, not particular realistic in details
but very similar to real strategic planning in general. More
importantly it should have simple rules and a gentle learning curves.
That's why I find Gundam Simulation so interesting, it seems to be a
fair simulation of a minor battle in the Gundam universe, but it's not
over-concerned with simulating every details so that the game become
complicated. Anyway I digress (seriously!).
The first Gundam games were probably made by Tsukuda from 1981 to late
80s. These, as seen in this picture, are the same type of conventional
wargames popular in the 70s and 80s. Gameboards are made up of
hexagons, game pieces are made up of cardboard pieces.
At least 5 different games were
made from the 0079 TV series, at least 6 more were made for Zeta, ZZ and
CCA. One of these from Z Gundam is called Green Noa 1, you can find
(Japanese only) most of the rules, all the unit stats, game board,
even an online gaming BBS at
Green Noa 1. Also in 1981, a simpler (with a
smaller game board and fewer game pieces) version of these games were
released by Tsukuda and Bandai as Gundam Simulation.The next ones were perhaps not official, and I can only interpolate and guess at the actual history, so please take this paragraph as no more than educated guessworks. Gundam the TV series opened up the real mecha genre, allowing room for the next hit show Macross (1982). Macross got exported to the USA as Robotech, which also gained popularity there. A company (I forgot the name) than Robotechized the very popular American game Dungeon & Dragon into Robotech RPG. Then Robotech got into a messy ugly copyright war which we don't need to get into here. But out of the mess a new game was created by a new company: Mekton Zeta. Mekton Z is another Japanese real mecha adaptation of D&D and was actually heavily influenced by Gundam (hence the "Z"). Naturally, numerous fans adapted Gundam MS into these games. Gundam campaign guide is one based on Mekton Zeta. RX-78 Gundam stats is based on Robotech RPG. I have no more information about these adaptations.
The next official game that I know about is probably Gundam RPG published by Hobby Japan. Gundam RPG is based on Mekton Zeta. As far as I know, there hasn't been an English translation of Gundam RPG. There is a Chinese site which has Chinese translation of some of the characters and mechas. I believe there's an One Year War Expansion book for Gundam RPG.
A newer version of Gundam RPG is
Gundam Senki, which was published in Y2K.Tek Factory is building up a Gundam Mekton page, it's "a Gundam 0079 game by Mekton Zeta rules with some bits thrown in from Mecha Press, Cyberpunk, Mekton II, and some common sense" according to the gamemaster.
Godwerks has some excellent Gundam mecha stats for Mekton and Silhouette.
Benjamin Wright has a "Guide" to running a Mobile Suit Gundam Campaign in MZ.
A very recent game is the Gasphon Duel, which pits two armies of Super Deformed (SD) mechas against each other. The pieces are sold in automatic (and random) vending machine, so my guess is that this game is targeted at kids. Tet had translated most of the information in Gundam Perfect Web, and later added more information.
Another independently developed RPG is one created by Luk Sir at Luk Sir Fantasy & Dreams, his Chinese language system is developed from Epic Space Marine.
What else? The rest depends on you! It seems that wargames are not going to get much more attention from Bandai or other official companies. The fans will have to get together and develop things themselves. It seems that from the emails I got the majority of interested fans are from the RPG/Mekton community. I confess I am not familiar with the RPG world, so I hope one of you will get up and start organize and coordinate some of the development efforts and avoid reinventing the wheels or the spread of bad/incomplete information. Please write to me if you are interested to become this organizer or if you want to hear about any development by other gamers.
As I said, I am not into RPG, in my mind Gundam Simulation looks like a great game, simple intuitive rules, reasonably fast games (under 1 hour) and best of all, require very little (money and time) committment to enjoy. But I am happy enough to create this page to help in some small ways RPG gamers to organize something. Just if you come across a set of the Gundam Simulation somewhere, give poor old Core a shout.
Core (Apr 6, 2000)