Now Viewing: battletechTag type: Copyright バトルテック An umbrella tag applicable to any image referencing anything within the BattleTech universe, such as BattleMechs and MechWarriors. A long-running American tabletop wargaming franchise, BattleTech was created in 1984 by Jordan Weisman & L. Ross Babcock III with the goal of marrying Japanese Mecha with Western storytelling. Launched by FASA Corporation, BattleTech has grown to encompass over a hundred novels, dozens of sourcebooks, & even an animated cartoon TV series for a brief time in the early 1990s. Perhaps best known are BattleTech's video game adaptations such as MechWarrior, MechCommander, MechAssault, & BattleTech by Harebrained Schemes, known commonly as HBS-Tech. Rights to BattleTech have changed multiple times since it's 1984 inception under FASA Corporation, being acquired by WizKids in 2001 and acquired again in 2003 by the Topps Company, itself having recently been acquired in 2022, although Catalyst Game Labs has been publishing BattleTech since 2007 all the while. Meanwhile, videogame rights are said to lie with Microsoft as well since the effective disintegration of FASA. Suffice to say that BattleTech suffers from no small amount of complicated rights, especially when considering other elements such as Iron Wind Metals, & particularly the early licensing of designs from Taiyou no Kiba Dougram & Macross for much of their earlier roster. This led to a number of legal difficulties with Harmony Gold, who distributed Macross in the US as RoboTech. The affected mech designs are known popularly as the 'unseen', but have since been updated so as to be legally distinct. ------ Set in the Inner Sphere, a region of space centered on Sol roughly 500 lightyears across, BattleTech's world is vast & has a history spanning over a thousand years rife with interstellar conflict & feudal political intrigue, & broadly adheres to the restrictions & logic of harder science fiction, or 'real robots'. FTL transport & communications exist, but are prohibitively rare, expensive, & essentially irreplaceable by the 31st century. Though a military sci-fi setting featuring combined-arms warfare & mecha, much of BattleTech's universe is essentially post-apocalyptic. Historically hostile to one another, the Great Houses were unified for a tenuous two century peace under the Star League - the peak of human civilization. However, a coup would slay the reigning First Lord and gut the Star League in a brutal civil war, leaving a power vacuum between the remaining Great Houses that eventually collapsed into the atrocities of the Succession Wars. The waning years of the third succession war in the 31st century are where BattleTech itself is introduced to players, where humanity's greatest achievements and knowledge have largely been lost in an apocalyptic backslide across the entirety of the Inner Sphere. BattleMechs are passed down through families as heirlooms, and in an era where navies are shattered and factories obliterated, it is the MechWarrior in their misrepaired hundred-year-old hand-me-down 'Mech that reigns as lord of the battlefield, and frequently sees service in both regular and Mercenary armies throughout the Inner Sphere. ------ Notably, Studio Nue of Macross fame was responsible for essentially localizing BattleTech in Japan, having more or less reimagined the entire art style and resulting in design variations unique to Japanese BattleTech. Relatively well-known titles in Japan are: * Tabletop role-playing game (Japanese: メックウォリアーRPG; sometimes called メックウォリアーTRPG) * MechWarrior (1989 video game) (Super Famicom: バトルテック / PC-98 & X68000: バトルテック ~奪われた聖杯~ released in 1992 in Japan simply as BattleTech) Other Wiki Information Last updated: 08/10/24 12:11 AM by Cravitus This entry is not locked and you can edit it as you see fit. |
     
|