Gundam 0079: The War for Earth

It's a sad thing to be both a fan of video games and Gundam. There just aren't many good Gundam video games. There are lot of mediocre ones, a few good ones, and some that are so awful that they make the very notion of a good game seem laughable. Can you guess which I'll group the one I'll be writing about today comes from? Gundam 0079: The War for Earth is easily one of the worst Gundam games out there, and probably one of the worst games period. If I had to choose one word to describe this game, it would be abomination. If I had two, I'd say hilarious abomination.

Gundam 0079: The War for Earth was made by Presto Studios, known best for their Journeyman Project series of games, as well as Myst III: Exile. With this pedigree, you might be inclined to think that this game could be a pretty solid adventure game. That is not the case because it's not so much an adventure game as it is a series of CG/live-action cutscenes taped together with some quick-time-events. Throughout the game, there will be points when you must press one of four buttons at a moments notice, or you will be shot to pieces.

This article came about because I was reading 4chan's mecha image board when someone posted a screenshot from the game. This led to people posting youtube links to videos of the Japanese Playstation version being played, and everyone was laughing about the bad acting being dubbed over with 1^st Gundam's Japanese voice cast. Then, a lovely person that goes by Nihilistic Toast dug up his copy of the English PC release and put up videos of the game's cutscenes on youtube. Those are the videos that are spliced throughout this article, and I must thank Nihilistic Toast profusely, because I don't need to take a bunch of screenshots, and the videos show the general poverty level of the game.

The English version is particularly funny because it was made a few years before the original series was localized, so there weren't any set names for various Universal Century terms. Zeon was most likely called Jion, but it sounds like they are saying John, leading many to make jokes about the inconsequential character Job John. Zakus are Zacks, and there are other odd pronunciations. Also, for some reason Ryu Jose became Duke Jose. If you are a Gundam fan, I suggest you use caution when watching, because you could die laughing.

I tried playing the Japanese Playstation version because it was readily available on the internet, unlike the English PC version. I played for a bit just to say that I have, but frankly if you watch these videos you've missed nothing. The acting is super terrible, the CG is awkwardly animated, the 3D models are obviously based off of the older Master Grade models that were available at the time, and there are tons of funny death scenes to see. After writing this post I am going to go watch G-Saviour for the very first time. By the end of the day I may have to shoot myself, FOR THE GLORY JOHN!