Heavy Gear was originally a tabletop wargame created in 1994 by a company called Dream Pod 9. It centered around the conflict of the Northern States versus the Southern Territories on the planet called Terra Nova, with an expanding storyline. The centerpiece of these conflicts is the armored battle suit called the Heavy Gear, with both sides developing their own variants of the mecha. The universe has a tabletop game, a character-based RPG, a card game, two video games, and an animated TV series to its name.