Enhanced Imaging: Chicken or Egg?

[Nightsong]

I got into BattleTech in the early 90s on Succession War stuff, so I didn’t have access to any info on the Clans until I had moved to Okinawa (Air Force brat) and both caught a few eps of the animated series on Armed Forces Network and got access to Clan-era books at an American-owned game shop off base. After listening to a YouTube video about the history of the animated series, I had a question pop into my head.

Was Enhanced Imaging first a product of the ‘toon writers to sell cgi/toys that the game adapted, or a gimmick in the game that the ‘toon writers took advantage of? I have to admit, if it was the former, I’d be kinda impressed that a schtick to sell action figures would go on to have such an impact on later things (particularly protomechs and later clan tech.) even if it wasn’t, it’d still be interesting to know.

[Paul]

As far as I know, Enhanced imaging did not exist until the cartoon made it so. Then the Somerset Striker book added rules for it afterwards. The timing of it showing up in novels is a little amusing.

[Nightsong]

Neat. So the WoB and the Clans owe some of their tech to a FedCom propaganda piece  :D seriously though, I had wondered it for a while but the question didn’t crystallize until I saw that video. Of course, the seeds of it could have called back to Unbound’s toys, but still fascinating.