So, this is a repost of sort from my own blog, but check this out. Please note this is nothing official, strictly fan work, and has nothing to do with my status as a freelancer, as a heads up.
About two years ago I started doing some research on the original Battletech Clan IIC designs. And I think I discovered some really cool stuff that had never been discussed or seen before, at least not since the 90s and not in the US.
As many of you all know, MechWarrior 1 was released in 1989 for DOS and was not too terribly popular, but it was enough to kick off the franchise. What is less well known is that Mechwarrior 1 was ported to the Sharp X68000 PC in Japan in 1993. But, do to the obvious unseen issue, with many of the designs (well, all except the Jenner) being based off of Macross or Dougram designs.
For reference, there were 8 'Mechs in Mechwarrior 1: the Locust, the Jenner, the Phoenix Hawk, the Shadow Hawk, the Rifleman, the Warhammer, the Marauder, and the BattleMaster.
So, what the developers of BattleTech X68000 did is redesign those 8 Mechs, which, as you may notice, lines up with 7 of the 8 original Clan IIC mechs. The only difference is the Griffin IIC and BattleMaster, but as you will clearly see in the art I am about to show below, the BattleMaster from the game became the Griffin IIC.
So, I was able to start the game and what I was able to find was really, really cool. I was able to get into the mech purchase screen of the game and I took these 8 screenshots:
They kind of show the interior of each mech and their repair status, just like in MechWarrior 1, but with a little more detail. Furthermore, if you zoom in on the images, they have an orange outline showing the exterior lines of the 'Mech. But it's kinda hard to see with the X-Ray like view you have going on here, so I imported the images into GIMP, scaled them up by double, and then traced the orange lines with a black line in a separate layer. The results are really, really cool:
Voila! Clear front views of each IIC 'Mech, never before seen.
Originally Posted Here:
http://blog.crosselectric.net/
