Maximum Rock & Role Playing: The Battletech I grew up with!

Growing up in the eighties in Northern Illinois, I discovered a little game called Battltech. Around the time that I entered high school I became friends with some Juniors that also played Battletech. We met at the DeKalb Public Library as often as we could, and would spend hours fighting through various campaigns. We balanced out Battletech with other RPGs like Traveller, Champions, D&D but most of our play time was with Battletech. I look back on these days with very fond memories and I consider this to be my salad days as far as gaming goes.

When I started out playing Battletech around 1985 or so, the mecha were so much better. Now I recognized the mecha as being mostly from Robotech, and I also recognized the models from Robotech Defenders by Revell (but would later discover that they were from a series called Dougram), and a couple from a series called Crusher Joe.

I don't know the whole story but Harmony Gold, who owned the rights to Macross/Robotech sued FASA for using the Mecha. I believe that FASA had bought the rights to use the mecha around the same time that Harmony Gold also bought the rights, but in the end FASA dropped the original line of mechs.

I really liked the original designs, but what can you do. I've still got an older version of the game, but I lost my minis due to leaving them at a friends housed and then he later moved. But anyways, here's my tribute to the original (okay, maybe not original) mechs from Battletech.