Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo

Journey to Jaburo takes place during the One Year War, and depicts the crew of the White Base making their way from the Side 7 sector of space colonies to the Federation headquarters at Jaburo. The game starts at Amuro Ray's home of Side 7, where three Zaku mobile suits attack the Federation's prototype mobile suit weapons. Amuro, in the confusion, fights the Zaku units in the Gundam, and is assigned to the White Base as the Gundam's pilot. After the White Base leaves the colony, it is pursued by Char Aznable, "The Red Comet".

Char attacks the White Base during re-entry (where the power of the Gundam's beam rifle was revealed), which diverts them into the Zeon-controlled territory of North America. After going through many Zeon defenses (including Garma Zabi in Seattle), the White Base heads into Asia, where they battle Ramba Ral, an ace pilot who raised Sayla Mass when she was a child. After Ramba Ral commits suicide by jumping into Gundam's hand with a grenade, the White Base crew makes their way to Belfast for repairs.

After they leave Belfast, they eventually make it to Jaburo, where Char's "Mad Angler" squadron finds the location of the base, and launches a massive attack to conquer it. The Zeon forces are beaten back, and the White Base, now dubbed the "13th Autonomous Mobile Squadron", heads out into space.

Tactics Battle mode is an optional mode available once story mode has been completed. In this mode you play either a Federation or Zeon pilot who remains nameless and faceless. You begin at a low rank and with only one mission available to each side. As you successfully complete the missions available with the MS available your rank increases and more missions and MS are unlocked. Five Missions can be unlocked in total. The first three are standard attack or defense missions, they are available to both factions, though what your role is varies by faction. The last two are available only to the Federation. These are duels with the RX-79BD-1 GM Blue Destiny Unit 1, and RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex" being piloted by Christina Mackinze and Yuu Kajima respectively. Christina compliments you during battle, whereas Yuu remains silent while in his duel Maureen Kitamura spurs him onward with encouraging remarks.

After each mission is completed a verbal assessment is given either by Matilda Ajan, Kergerenko, or Char Aznable. After this there are brief cutscenes featuring either Matilda or Kergerenko complimenting the player on their performance. If the player fails a mission, but does not retry it they will reprimand the player. As certain circumstances are met cutscenes with Char, M'Quve and Bright Noa are unlocked. There are also cutscenes featuring Christina, Shiro Amada and a White Dingo pilot when each allows use of their Mobile Suit. If the player continues fighting and raises their rank to Colonel in either faction they receive a special reward video. On the Zeon route this is a video of the major members of the Principality of Zeon thanking the player for their service, on the Federation side it is video of the major female members of the Federation from MS Gundam, War in the Pocket, and Blue Destiny competing for attention as they enthusiastically thank the player.

The game received generally average reviews, scoring 58 out of 100 on Metacritic.[1] IGN gave it 6.5 of 10, saying that "...it's not a recommended purchase for those who aren't fans of the series (...), but it was never intended to be anything else."[2] T Metacritic states that, "For a mech combat game, Journey to Jaburo isn't terrible, but it is lacking good control and the graphics are pretty sad overall."

Jim Preston reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for Next Generation, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "The mixture between television show and videogame is superb, but the actual gameplay is not."[3]

• Mobile Suit Gundam
• List of Gundam video games