The shooting game in Al's room uses various sound effects from the Nintendo video game Super Mario Bros 3.
There is a 1 volume manga drawn and written by Shigeto Ikehara. It is published by Kodansha and serialized Comic BomBom in 1989.
The Region 1 USA/Canada DVD Complete Collection from Bandai Entertainment is available in both a regular DVD cover and a holographic DVD cover.
The mini-series was praised by Yoshiyuki Tomino except he pointed out two glitches; one being the portrayal of a blue sky in the colony rather than the other side of the cylinder, which is only about 6.4 km away; and the children being out during a wartime alert. Tomino thought that school resuming with combat in such close proximity was unrealistic, when a more sensible response should have been to close the school immediately and guide the children to shelters.
This miniseries marks a few firsts for Gundam. It introduces the concept of the "side-story" in the Gundam universe. A "side-story" differs from a spin-off in that while a spin-off generally involves established supporting or secondary characters, a side-story intentionally introduces a completely different cast of characters with no connection to recognizable characters and events (such as Amuro, Bright, Char, the Zabis etc). It effectively takes place "to the side of" the main events while being their own complete story. It is also the first Gundam story where none of the characters is a Newtype , which had been a constant recurring theme in the Gundam U.C. time-line. This is also a rare instance where the main character, a young boy, is not a mobile suit pilot.