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Space Colonization
The Earth Federation
Zeon and Neo Zeon
Minovsky Physics
Beam Weapons
Mobile Suit Basics
The One Year War
Mobile Suit Classics
Ace Pilot Gallery


Mobile Suit Gundam, Z Gundam, Gundam ZZ, Char's Counterattack, Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, Gundam F91, Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Gundam 0083: Last Blitz of Zeon, Gundam: The 08th MS Team, and Gundam W: Endless Waltz are copyright Sotsu Agency and Sunrise. V Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam W, and Gundam X are copyright Sotsu Agency, Sunrise and TV Asahi. Turn A Gundam is copyright Sotsu Agency, Sunrise and Fuji TV.

Mobile Suit Classics

The Gundam saga has spawned literally hundreds of mobile suits, a never-ending parade of metal giants ready to square off on the high-tech battlefield. But for our money, none of them have quite the same kind of charm as the classic designs of the original Gundam series. How better to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the original series than with a series of in-depth profiles of our favorite primordial mobile suits?

Illustrations by Mark Simmons

The Early Years

To kick off our retrospective of classic mobile suits, we'll begin with the very first incarnations of the ubiquitous Zaku, created before the outbreak of the apocalyptic One Year War. The initial development of the Zaku was done by the Zeonic Company, under the supervision of Kishiria Zabi.

01: MS-01 Mobile Suit
02: MS-04 Early Zaku
03: MS-05 Zaku I
04: MS-05 Zaku I
05: MS-05 Zaku I
06: MS-06A Zaku II
07: MS-06C Zaku II

Outbreak of War

During the savage opening weeks of the war, Zeon's Zakus made their first appearance in battle, culminating in an all-out clash between the Zeon and Earth Federation space fleets. Many of Zeon's most famous aces earned their reputations in this epic conflict, known as the Ruum Campaign.

08: MS-06S Zaku II
09: MS-06C Zaku II
10: MS-06S Zaku II
11: MS-06F Zaku II
12: MS-06E Zaku Recon Type
13: MS-06Fs Zaku II

The Earth Invasion

The destruction of the Earth Federation's space fleet, and the abolition of tactics of mass destruction by the Antarctic Treaty, forced the Duchy of Zeon to adopt a new strategy. In March of UC 0079 Zeon launched a massive Earth invasion, and new mobile suits were created for terrestrial combat.

14: MS-06J Zaku II
15: YMS-07A Prototype Gouf
16: YMS-08A Prototype
17: MS-07H Gouf
18: MS-07H-4 Gouf
19: MS-06M Zaku Marine Type
20: MSM-01 Zaku Marine Type

The Ace's Zaku

The Zaku II High Mobility Type was Zeon's first attempt to replace the venerable Zaku with a higher-performance space combat model. Though the R type was ultimately deemed unsuitable for mass production, this limited-production model proved enormously popular with Zeon's top ace pilots. As these veterans were wont to put it, "It's harder to get your hands on an R type than to sink a Federation battleship."

21: MS-06RP Zaku II
22: MS-06R-1 Zaku II
23: MS-06R-1 Zaku II
24: MS-06R-1A Zaku II
25: MS-06R-1A Zaku II
26: MS-06R-1A Zaku II
27: MS-06R-1A Zaku II

The Terrestrial Front

After Zeon's invasion of Earth, fighting continued on every front, particularly in Europe and North Africa. While Zeon's mobile suit developers prepared the MS-07 Gouf for mass production, the Earth Attack Force created new Zaku variants to meet pressing military needs and environmental requirements. Based on the J type Zaku, these later versions also incorporated some technology from the as-yet-incomplete Gouf.

28: MS-06G Zaku II
29: MS-06D Zaku Desert Type
30: MS-06D Zaku Desert Type
31: MS-06D Zaku Desert Type
32: MS-06K Zaku Cannon
33: MS-06K Zaku Cannon

Operation V

As word of Zeon's mobile suit development efforts began to leak out in the years leading up to the One Year War, the Earth Federation began a number of research projects to counter Zeon's rumored new weapon. When the war began, the Federation dramatically accelerated its own development program. In April of UC 0079, all ongoing mobile suit projects were consolidated into a single crash program called "Operation V."

34: RX-75-4 Guntank
35: RX-77-2 Guncannon
36: RX-78-1 Prototype Gundam
37: RX-78-2 Gundam
38: RX-78-2 Gundam
39: RX-78-3 G-3 Gundam

The Jet Set

By the time the engineers of the Zeonic Company had completed the Gouf, new technologies had emerged that made it effectively obsolete - ironically, technologies derived from the Gouf's own development process. It was the upstart Zimmad Company that devised the next generation of land combat mobile suit, a jet-propelled design that could hover swiftly across any terrain.

40: MS-07B Gouf
41: MS-07B Gouf
42: MS-07C-3 Gouf
43: MS-07C-5 Gouf Test Type
44: YMS-09 Prototype Dom
45: MS-09 Dom
46: YMS-09D Tropical Dom

The Space Race

The appearance of the Earth Federation's mobile suits, and the beam weapons they carried, threw Zeon's own development plans into disarray. Work on the MS-11, intended to replace the aging Zaku II as Zeon's space combat mobile suit, was restarted from scratch to incorporate beam weapons technology. In the meantime, Zeon's engineers scrambled to find a temporary replacement...

47: MS-06R-2 Zaku II
48: MS-06R-2 Zaku II
49: MS-06R-2 Zaku II
50: MS-06R-2P Zaku II
51: MS-06RD4 Zaku II
52: MS-R09 Rick Dom
53: MS-06E-3 Zaku Flipper

Marine Machines

With 70% of Earth's surface covered by water, the Zeon invaders made it a high priority to develop capable amphibious mobile suits. Heavily armored and armed with powerful beam weapons, these new mobile suits were lethal both on land and at sea.

54: MSM-03 Gog
55: MSM-04 Acguy
56: MSM-07 Zugok
57: MSM-07S Zugok
58: MSM-10 Zock