What happened to?

Red Terror · Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:50 pm

It seemed that I jumped on the Gundam train at the right time to remember Gundam.com, Newtype Asylum, and the Gundam Project. Alas, these wonderful sites have moved on for several different reasons and with them some of their wonderful content. I was wondering if anyone knew of the whereabouts of Mark Simmons wonderful illustrations of Gundam Mechs. I would be indebted to anyone with any help they could deliver. Thanks so much for any reply I recieve.

ShadowCell · Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:57 pm

Gundam.com, as I recall, vanished when the admin decided to go soul-searching or something. I keep hearing that they're going to bring it back, but then again, I keep hearing that Elvis is still alive and the Moon landing was faked.

Newtype Asylum shut down and reincarnated itself as something that I can't remember, if I recall correctly. I think it split into two sites, one being dedicated to models/toys. Not sure if it's still running.

Gundam Project shut down I believe due to either Mark getting bored or server costs getting too high. Can't really remember, although he posts here quite a bit so you could ask him, or he'll pop in to correct me, or something.

mcred23 · Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:59 pm

As for Mark's mecha images, they can be found here.

Koshernova · Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:29 pm

Mark Simmons posts in these forums quite often, which is great since he's quite informative and is fun to have discussions with (username: toysdream).

Gundam.com went down for reasons that I do not know, and I recall some of the regulars used to hang out at animex.com, which was run by some of the staff from Gundam.com. However, Animex.com seems to have discarded their Gundam forum, and I haven't been there in yonks.

Newtype Asylum, which was great despite some crap web design, split in two. One was exclusively focused on models and toys, and another was going to be focused on the science and politics of the Universal Century. However, the site regarding toys and models shut down, I think maybe due to bandwidth issues, and the other one never got past the vanilla pages... A pity as I was quite interested in both.

If anyone has more info, I'd love to know. Specially about Gundam.com!

EDIT: This probably should go on the General Discussion forum...

mcred23 · Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:31 pm

Yeah, you're right about that.

Moved.

Anyway, as for Gundam.com, as noted at that address, it did once have a date listed which was widely assumed to be the date of it's relaunch. However, that date passed and months later it was updated to how it currently looks (And has remained that way for some time now).

Skippy438 · Sun Jul 22, 2007 6:02 pm

Newtype Asylum split into a newer NA and the Fantoysia site. I still have those bookmarked hoping that one day they'll come back

Thankfully MAHQ has always been a steadfast and reliable site that seems to have taken on their mantle. Didn't Mark have something to do with gundamofficial.com?

Koshernova · Sun Jul 22, 2007 6:22 pm

Mark Simmons is an official advisor to Bandai America in Gundam-related matters, even advising for the new translation of the Gundam 0079 novelisations.

they're in good hands, after all Mark seems to have unsurpassable knowledge of the Gundam franchise, heh

Red Terror · Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:45 pm

Ahh thank you all for the elightenment. I was just wondering what happened to Mark Simmons' mech drawings. That man is the lord of Gundam. I'm just the silly boy from Indiana that made a plea for him to keep it running way back when. I do miss NA. Learned so much from Dr. Core's writings.

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