Thanks, I got into Battletech years (decades) ago with the board game version. Unfortunately I started getting into another good game FASA did but eventually ended called Renegade Legion. It resembled Star Wars (evil empire, good rebels) to an extent. It has 1 of the best tank layouts I've seen. Where the incoming fire hits a tank matters and how prior damage does not simple lower the number of armor blocks on the side of a tank but the right rounds or missiles can cut under it and chunks of armor can fall off at the end of the turn-and I'm not getting into the impact of internal structure hits and how they laid out what would happen with each system having its own spaces within the tank diagram. Renegade Legion had Renegade Legion: Centurion for the tanks, Renegade Legion: Interceptor for space fightercraft (similar to X-wings and Tie-fighters going after each other, I think it even had a video game called Battle for Jacobs Star or something like that), and Renegade Legion: Leviathan was for the big space cruisers blasting away at each other. Renegade Legion even had box/book you could buy with the rules to combine them all so it was possible to run a campaign with a planetary invasion or defense. It was a good game. I suspect FASA pretty much owned the rights to it. Haven't seen much happen with it since FASA paused the line and FASA itself has not been active. Kinda glad I got into it while I could. Since you researched a fair amount into FASA to do this video (glad to see the images of the old games) you may have stumbled across Renegade Legion while you did. If you can add to the story I summarized please feel free to.

I participated in an online MegaMek tournament recently, it was a lot of fun.

I have bin contributing to and playing MegaMek for a very long time. I run on line campaigns using it with players across the globe every week.

I had a quick google after your comment to try and find a full summary, and I can see what you mean about a long story! I think if I had tried to include all litigation history from the Battletech universe the video would have been about three hours long :)

@@kaluventhebritishThe good news is the latest lawsuits ended in HG claimed being dismissed with prejudice and basically that means they are done with Battletech lawsuits

The good news is, Harmony Gold tried to take HairBrainedSchemes to court over their Battletech video game. The case was thrown out with prejudice, meaning Harmony Gold can no longer use their litigious strategies against CGL, piranha, Microsoft, or anyone else in charge of the IP. Battletech/mechwarrior is finally free

@@StefanAmarisDidNothingWrong From what I heard, copyright trolling was Harmony Gold's entire business at that point and they are now dead as a company.

Harmony Gold only ever had the distribution rights, not the likeness rights. They're separate negotiable properties. The only reason that Battletech changed the images in the first place was not because they were required to, but to mitigate the possibility of further frivolous litigation.

I'm very jealous! I've not had a chance to play for years. I think it might be time for me to break out the old hex-grid map and brush the dust off the AC20.

Paradox didn't want to pay licencing costs for the BattleTech IP and quietly canned using it, then had HBS make lamplighters league which just cost Paradox 22mil pre tax loss this year, we'll likely get HBS being wound up by Paradox as a result

A shame, the steam reviews are quite positive, but there just aren't anywhere near enough of them to suggest they sold many copies. I'm not sure they marketed it that well, I certainty didn't hear about it until the last minute, and it feels a little too expensive for a lot of people to take a random risk on. I would have loved a $40 price tag and a playable demo.

@@kaluventhebritish I think the lack of marketing is the primary culprit. I literally only heard of it because I was researching what HBS was "currently" working on last year. I have hundreds of hours into Battletech, X-Com, and other turn-based games and yet I had to seek it out intentionally to even hear about it.

It is on Gamepass which might have influenced those sales numbers.

I wish i knew more myself but I could hardly remember a thing! Someone has uploaded all of the episodes onto KZfaq but it's not an easy watch. It looks like one of many classic 80s cartoons but released a decade late in the mid 90s, has some real MASK vibes.

@@kaluventhebritish I will my seen two or three or four episodes of BattleTech. Probably two or three episodes complete, and pieces of enough various episodes to make up a fourth or 5th and total runtime. It wasn't really in my interest....but I didn't see only place I knew it existed until your video. I really like M.A.S.K. I just finished watching it a couple weeks ago. Tubi has season one available, the first 65 episodes. The second season which is 10 episodes it's not on there, the IP or the right is owned by someone else for the second season I think.... They also have g.i. Joe, and the original transformers....I watched g.i. Joe a while back, have not watched transformers on Tubi yet though....

@@kaluventhebritish also this cartoon is considered non-canon in Battletech universe itself. They say, that is propaganda cartoon against Jade Falcons, loosely based on adventured of First Sommerset Strikers. Children around Inner Sphere (including capellans) like it. Jade Falcons hate it.

@@retrosquadchannel2.050 I love this! What a great way to keep something in-universe while disowning the entire content. This is now how I will regard Phantom Menace, it's a Gungan propaganda piece.

Harmony Gold never actually held the particular rights that allowed FASA to use those likenesses in Battletech, in the first place.

And better yet - all classical "unseen" designs of mechs are now un-unseen.

@@HeadHunterSix, from my understanding, that particular lawsuit was thanks to a dissertation by someone HG paid off to lie. That same person would later find himself persona non grata in Japan's business sphere due to that.

@@TheTrueAdept interesting, I was unaware of that detail. I can, however, attest to the fact that in the world of anime, the Japanese will wash their hands of anyone that might complicate their image or threaten loss of face. They expect American business partners to conduct themselves in the same orderly, impeccable fashion as the Japanese ideal.

Yes! Wing Commander was another series that really lent into the FMV with actors in a great way. I think the peak of those games was Wing Command Prophecy and Privateer 2: The Darkening. The hammy over-the-top acting and the CG backgrounds really made those memorable. I find that those sorts of cutscenes get cemented in my memory way more than any animated character.

I hope you find time to play it sometime, it's really fun.

HB releasing Trannytech was bad enough. Knowing PGI(after ruining MWO) was going to be behind MW5 was heartbreaking(and surprise! MW5 was utterly forgettable). I want a good studio to handle this IP.

Check out the new Catalyst minis, they're pretty sweet.

Oops, it's for mech commander 2.

Not entirely true. Harmony gold is scum is the short of it.

I've not tried any of those, if I had time for one, which one would you pick?

Well, I haven't played BTX personally. But what i have figured out over time is it's name is accurate. Battletech Extended. They just wanted more of Battletech. So they fleshed the game out. Very similar to Vanilla just more weapons more mechs. Can't say for sure. I have extensive experience with BTA 3062 and good experience with Roguetech though. BTA is Battletech Advanced 3062, and it adds a bunch of new things to keep track of as well as larger battles. ECM, entirely new weapon classes. Clan Tech, advanced tech, You can control tanks, even power armor. Artillery is awesome. Roguetech is kinda like that but it extends it a bit further. It's definitely hardcore. You need to keep in mind more things and it's definitely harder. For instance, the game does dynamically adjust mission difficulty some if you drop a huge/expensive lance for a easy mission. Combine that with having to pay for armor repair and ammo costs and drop weight and you may have to balance high performance mechs with your paycheck. Definitelly need to fight smarter and not just harder. TL:DR If you just want Vanilla but more. BTX. If you want a "simpler" version of the hard core go with BTA, and if you the steepest learning curve (but so satisfying to reach the top) Roguetech. There is a reason it's called that.@@kaluventhebritish

I think I actually used to play Living Legends. There is so much I didn't mention, I was trying to focus on just the strategy games. I've actually downloaded MegaMek thanks to the previous comment but i've not had the time to give it a look yet.

If you like the Hunchback Life, have you seen the "Tex Talks Battletech" about the history of the Hunchback video yet?

Well spotted! it was the best representation I could get hold when I was making the video.

I think that's highly unlikely with PDX owning the rights. My own theory is that PDX bought HBS in order to kill a competitor in the strategy market. Now that the world economy is in a downturn, PDX has decided to focus on its core products and BT ain't one of those.

@@matthewedwards6025 HBS will still exist after 1 January; they just won't be associated with PDX any more. And to be honest, PDX already have all of the "pieces" they need to make a Battletech GSG in other games - all they need to do is put them together.

@@Smeghead76 PDX won't do that because the whole point of buying HBS was to get rid of competition to PDX's other IPs. That's why part of the purchase contract included penalties to HBS if they produced another game within 5 years. And as we see, they were probably also barred from working on BT which is why they had to make a new IP instead (which flopped).

I thought that was after the NES one, but now I see the date I had was for a 1993 port to a different operating system, rather the original '89 DOS version. Well spotted!

@@kaluventhebritish It came out when I was in college, and the class after mine got PC-compatibles (AT&T I think). One of the guys in my fraternity had it, and I played it a *ton*. Excellent game.

I wish I had been clever enough to think of that! It's just an AI generated dude I'm sorry to say.

I read today that Paradox and HBS have parted ways. It's no secret that Paradox were unhappy with the games performance, but I would guess that HBS was just as unhappy about how poor a job Paradox had done at marketing and retailing their product.

Catalyst Game Labs, ran by the authors of the novels

@@nurgle333 Some of the authors (Randal Bills and Loren Coleman) but I dunno if the line developer (Ray Arrastia) has written novels. I do know he was Assistant Line Developer before moving up. But everyone there has experience with the property in some fashion. (Also, they're REALLY quite a small company, like... "small" is almost overstating it.)

Also Microsoft own Mechwarrior IP. Which is used by piranha games PGI for MWO and MW5.

BattleTech's rights are split between three companies - Microsoft own the rights to computer games and any other software, Tornante owns the TV and movie rights, and Topps owns everything else. Piranha games have a license from Microsoft to produce MechWarrior Online and MechWarrior 5. Similarly Harebrained Schemes had secured a license for the turn-based BattleTech computer game from Microsoft, and those rights transferred to Paradox when they bought HBS. HBS will not retain the rights to that game when they separate from Paradox next year, and the license only covered one game. InMediaRes has a license from Topps to publish tabletop games, fiction and other merchandise. They sublicensed this to two of their subsidiaries - Catalyst Game Labs and Pulse publishing (who seem to only handle the quarterly magazine Shrapnel). Catalyst have continued the story from the FASA and Wizkids eras of ownership, and while the computer game publishers could choose to do their own thing and ignore the ongoing fiction, they instead work with CGL to ensure a decent level of co-operation and cross-franchise interaction. Randall Bills wrote a series of short stories for the MechWarrior 5 website detailing the origin of the protagonist's mercenary unit, which Catalyst have published as an anthology. Harebrained Schemes created a new faction for their game and CGL published a sourcebook adding them into the tabletop game, as well as a couple of short stories set in that region after the end of the computer game.

Topps (the baseball trading card company) owns the Novel/tabletop/physical media IP. Catalyst Game Labs are basically just the publishers Topps hires to manage the IP *for* them.