Heavy Gear animated series
In 2001, a computer-animated TV series titled Heavy Gear: The Animated Series was produced by Audu Paden at Mainframe Entertainment and Adelaide Productions for Columbia TriStar Television. The series lasted 40 episodes (though two of these were "recap" episodes and more still were clip shows). It played in syndication in various markets worldwide.
The Dream Pod 9 creative staff had very little input in the series' content, and the animated universe differs significantly from the game's. The show was aimed at an audience much younger than the one the property had previously targeted. The producers' original intent was to start the series with a mecha-combat tournament held between the villainous Vanguard of Justice who are like and the honorable Shadow Dragons (representatives of Terra Nova's Northern and Southern armies respectively), but after the resolution of the tournament storyline rising tensions would lead to war between the North and South, which would in turn be followed by an invasion from Earth trying to reconquer its old colony planet, forcing the North and South to join forces for their own survival. Worries that having the villains from the early episodes (the Vanguard characters) suddenly working with the heroes, and shifting from a tournament-styled competition to all-out mecha warfare, would have been too confusing for their targeted age group led to a decision to not use the war storyline. What ended up happening on the show was that they ran the tournament storyline as planned but even though the tournament had been 'won' within the first dozen or so episodes, the two teams just kept having exhibition matches and the like for the remainder of the 40-episode run With a cast like Lukas Haas, Vanessa Estelle Williams, David DeLuise, Ed Hopkins, Clancy Brown, and Clyde Kusatsu with Charles Shaughnessy, Greg Ellis, Karen Maruyama,Keith Szarabajka, Nicholas Guest, Jim Wise, Sarah Douglas, and Tom Kane.
The "in-universe" explanation for the difference between the universes is that the animated series is a Terra Novan entertainment program not unlike real-world professional wrestling.
In 2002, Heavy Gear: The Animated Series was nominated for a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing in Television Animation.
DVD releases include two volumes released in North America in 2002 by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment each with five episodes edited together into "feature length" stories. 2004 saw a release in the UK of a two disc Season One set including both "feature length" stories and three standalone episodes which collectively present the first thirteen episodes of the series in one form or other, but lacks the bonus content present on the North American releases. Also in 2004 Anchor Bay issued a single disc release in Canada with another five episodes from later in the series.
The entire series was formerly available for streaming for free in the US and Canada on Sony owned Crackle. It was also formerly available for streaming in Canada on Netflix.[when?]
The episodes were originally produced in widescreen and presented as such on the DVD releases, while most syndication broadcasts were of a cropped pan and scan version of each episode. The streaming versions formerly available from Crackle and Netflix were also of these pan and scan versions.