The change of the mech sprites in the Japanese version was more likely an attempt to get Lawsuits off their backs, as the Wasp, Wolverine and other mechs used in the game where from other Japanese mecha franchises, and there was a big fuckup with licensing.
@@KeiNova happy to help inform! Check out 80’s Macross/Robotech and FoS Dougram (or if youve already got games from these franchises compare them) if you want to see where a load of the original Battletech designs in the west where taken or inspired from ;)
12:29 HTose aren't toho style robots, I recognize the Falcon and Sentinel, those are Battletech originals replacing ones half-licensed from Japanese anime (I say half licensed because much like FASA's mortal enemy Harmony Gold and their Robotech series, FASA themselves "Licensed" the designs from someone who technically didn't have the right to sell them!)
The "unseen" mechs are a rabbit hole on their own. Shady legal dealings, people selling licenses for assets they didn't actually own, legal shystering, language barriers, the works. It's a headache thats plagued Battletech for nearly 40 years. Mostly fixed, or at least on pause now days.
The "16 MEGS" on the cover is going to refer to megabits, not megabytes. And it probably refers to the cartridge memory. Behind the 90s marketing flare, I think it means the game comes on a 2-megabyte cartridge.
That would certainly explain some things. I was really wracking my brain, wondering why exactly it was bragging about something that might have been false. Thank you for the info! Much appreciated.
Not me man. I talk about these games a lot lol. I had MechWarrior and MechWarrior 3050 and Battletech. I loved these games cause they were pretty similar to the Jungle and Desert Strike games just... Battletech.
2:30 that might be a different omni-configured timberwolf but I'm 99.999% sure it's actually the De-macrossed Marauder. Or a Marauder II given it's bigger than the Timberwolf it crashes into at the end there.
I checked beforehand, and it was apparently supposed to be a Timber Wolf/MadCat (apparently, they just couldn't decide). Though, by the Japanese artwork - I can see why that might be so.
The 16 Megabits cart is a 2 Megabytes size. This is why the sizes you see don't seem to make sense, it would have made sense back in the days. Anway, it's the storage space, so more Mb = more memory for sounds and graphics, more animations and background tiles.
You know, I grew up in that era and I totally forget with all these modern concessions we have these days. Thank you so much for explaining it to me. These old buzzwords are still endlessly entertaining, its funny how things have changed.
I think the reason why the two games used virtually identical covers is because the MadCat is (one of) the most popular battlemechs in the history of the game. I don't even like those damn, dirty clanners and even I think it's awesome.
@@KeiNovaBattleTech on the Genesis came out in 1994 and was not a huge hit, but did alright. In July 1995, Activision released MechWarrior 2 for DOS, and it was a smash hit. Activision wanted to cash in, so whether it was already underway or they just started it, the SNES port of BattleTech was ready for release 3 months later, and they called it MechWarrior 3050 to tie it in by name to the massively popular MechWarrior 2, and even re-used the same cover image, purely to increase sales. If people heard all these great things about MechWarrior 2, didn't own a PC, but had a SNES, they'd buy MechWarrior 3050... and probably be really confused and disappointed.
There used to be a small scale theme park called "Virtual World" in San Diego that let you play a Mechwarrior sim inside a full fledged cockpit. I went in the 90s, and it was glorious
12:29 HTose aren't toho style robots, I recognize the Falcon and Sentinel, those are the ones not half-licensed from Japanese anime (I say half licensed because much like FASA's mortal enemy Harmony Gold and their Robotech series, FASA themselves "Licensed" the designs from someone who technically didn't have the right to sell them!)
Thanks to viewers like you, I'm going down a whole rabbit hole of Harmony Gold and FASA stuff that I never even knew existed. So, thank you for more info on this crazy situation that occured!
@@KeiNovaThe first version of the Battletech tabletop (called "Battledroids" until George Lucas sent FASA a C&D. Seriously) actually included official models from those series. All of the "unseen" (copyrighted) mechs were redesigned to be lawsuit-avoidant during FASA's Project Phoenix. Battletech had a lot of legal issues back in the day. It's amazing it survived.
To be honest, I'm not too too familiar with the Battletech universe at all. Just the newer game and the MechWarrior games, so this was more of a fresh view on what I thought. It still was a little strange and uneven from a gameplay aspect, ya know? Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, the madcat is a 75 ton mech and what is referred to as a heavy mech (60-75 tons). Looks like all the other mech sprites are light (20-35) and medium classes (40-55 tons)
This looks a lot like Desert Strike the famous helicopter game. So I would guess this is an attempt to cash in on the popularity of that, as well as trying to find a new market for the Battletech franchise outside of sims and tabletop.
Honestly, I forgot all about Desert Strike. You may be right though, isometric shooters like this were all the rage for a split second. That might have actually been the case!
I love the idea of a more fast-paced, arcadey Battletech game. Mechassault did it years later with (mostly) solid results. It's a shame this one didn't pan out, but it was during a really difficult chapter in the IP's history. Battletech probably had some of the worst growing pains I've ever seen, not to mention a serious chain of identity crises.
You know, I'm actually new to all of it. I love Mech stuff and all but I'm not versed on anything, just discovering everything. Posting this whole thing really had me learning so much about this crazy story about Battletech stealing designs and that???? So crazy.
@@KeiNova I don't think FASA meant to steal anything; I think they just got confused regarding rights (to be fair, licensing is hell). I'm confident in that because Harmony Gold are actual IP trolls that actively look for trouble, and because FASA settled out of court in a pretty agreeable way.
The first edition of BattleTech was published before the first episode of Robotech ever aired, so no, BattleTech is not based on Robotech, but both are based on Macross.
But Macross is Robotech. Robotech is Macross in the same way that Power Rangers is Super Sentai. I mean, obviously Macross is superior - but you see what I mean.
@@KeiNova saying that Robotech is Macross will tick off far more Macross fans than saying Power Rangers is Super Sentai will tick off Super Sentai fans 😁 Harmony Gold is widely despised, for good reason.
I always wondered that as well, especially since, if I am remembering correctly, when you have to pick up a captured warrior he just uses a regular little guy sprite. I just assumed the developers got a little confused when handed a stack of assets to work with.
I loved the Mech Warrior toy line when I was a kid and also enjoyed renting this game a few times. I've replayed it more recently, though, and have to agree that it is quite difficult to control and know what the heck you are supposed to be doing. Anyone know of any rom hacks for this one that fix some of its issues?
it was still the coolest thing I ever played when I was 5. Also, the graphics issues and framerate issues track -- the snes had a better graphics chip, the genesis the better processor. also the snes had a better sound card. I want to try doing the coop mode. It's unfortunate, I feel like the first level was the best, but they decided to make it harder for the subsequent missions because of the rental market, and it made the game very frustrating. if they had gone without the ice physics and such, it would have been better. Even just without the spikes...
If I had been 5, I'd have thought it was the coolest too! I mean, it was a lot easier to overlook how the games played back then because gaming was a lot rarer and more of a treat. We appreciated it a lot more, when we could do it. I was hoping the co-op would be something like two players doing a mission together, taking on objectives! But, I heard its just one playing controlling one half of the mech and the other controlling the legs. Which sounds like total nightmare and boring for one side of the experience. That ICE, I know! Its SO bad. I thought it was a little clever that the mech goes back when it fires, like there's some velocity to the shots, but those spikes were just cruel design. Thanks for the comment!
@@KeiNovaThe SNES processor isn't causing the frame rate issues. Not directly, anyways. It's more likely to be the cost of a ROM that could run that class of CPU at full speed. Many third parties couldn't afford it, but there was a budget option that booted into an unused backwards compatibility mode. (SlowROM is the on the nose name.) Then there's all the other reasons this might be slowing down. Like the 8-bit databus, or sprite tiles being limited to two sizes at once. One of them is ridiculously small... or is hiding how big it is... Neither possibility is easy on performance when you're juggling everything required to generate a single updated frame during the vblank, and lack flexibility.
My brother and I used to play the co-op. If you had 2 people who were familiar with the game, it was quite fun, the biggest problem being that no one really wanted to be the driver. However, playing it with someone who was new to the game wasn't nearly as enjoyable. But I agree, the first level had a cool variety of objectives and freedom of movement, which the rest of the game doesn't live up to.
You do know the history of Mechwarrior right? If not let me shed a lil light here, Mechwarrior is a simulation spin off from the original tactical table top game named Battletech. The first Mechwarrior was released on DOS and was using a very primitive form of realtime 3D with vectors and sprite manipulation, back then was the 386/486 cpu and no VLB ISA or 2D PCI accelerators then. Mechwarrior 2's graphics engine was already in development after the success of MW1 and the initial version didn't release till 95, and later released 3D accelerated versions with specific graphics cards like the 3dfx version for example. The SNES versions where arcade spin off's just like Mechassault 1/2 for the OG Xbox.
This is actually listed as a sequel for MechWarrior, I know what the series is and I played the original many times. This is also not originally a MechWarrior game, it was originally called Battletech on the Genesis and was rebranded - because the MechWarrior for SNES got some sales. And no, this is an exploratory channel where I'm giving the details about the game at hand and what it's about. I'm figuring things out myself and the audience helps and we interact and learn in that way. If I can find information on something, I will. But MechWarrior and Battletech are difficult franchises with very old histories that are sometimes only shared via word of mouth.
Mechassault was not a spin-off. There was a rights battle with the MechWarrior name, hence why the Heavy Gear games were made. It was literally supposed to be a return to MechWarrior without using the name.
@@KeiNova Yes, mechassault was a arcade style spin off from Mechwarrior which was a sim. Mechwarrior you have full loadout customization, full damage modeling meaning you can blow parts off to get a advantage or exploit weak spots. No power up or pick ups, what you deployed with was it, mech3 introduced the mobile repair stations and single use and a risk since depending on the damage can take a while while the enemy is looking for you. Which mechassault doesn't have, and uses a total health bar, power ups, and 3rd person. I own all the mechwarrior games, I'm a collector i should know, i even own the 2 snes games, they are nothing like the PC games.
@@KeiNova Mechwarrior DOS 1989 th-cam.com/video/iuxySqjb5X8/w-d-xo.html Mechwarrior 2 DOS 1995 th-cam.com/video/L0mSdnxM7fc/w-d-xo.html Mechwarrior 3050 is a isometric arcade shooter.
@@KeiNova Also about the legal issues that was a big lie on Harmony Gold's end, they didn't have IP rights over Battletech/ Mechwarrior's mechs. They used heavy handed stiff arming tactics with false rights holding to halt mechwarrior 5. Why no one even knows, but their argument that they tried in court when the time came was that the mech designs where straight theft because of the Pod mech in macross that was bipedal. They lost, and lost hard.
If you look at many Toho designs, they have the same look. From the comments, there was apparently some controversy surrounding these designs, I'm not the one to ask - but they are definitely reminiscent of Japanese Kaiju films. Right down to the color.
Wait until he finds out about that short-lived BattleTech TV show that lasted like half a season before being canceled by the fact that Exosquad was just better.
@@KeiNova Just don't bother with the Exosquad video game on Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. But that's what you get for having a dev team in Hungary having no idea about a US animated show called Exosquad even is.
The change of the mech sprites in the Japanese version was more likely an attempt to get Lawsuits off their backs, as the Wasp, Wolverine and other mechs used in the game where from other Japanese mecha franchises, and there was a big fuckup with licensing.
I actually had no idea, thanks for letting me know. There's definitely an interesting story there, I had no idea they were used elsewhere at all.
@@KeiNova happy to help inform!
Check out 80’s Macross/Robotech and FoS Dougram (or if youve already got games from these franchises compare them) if you want to see where a load of the original Battletech designs in the west where taken or inspired from ;)
It was crazy watching this video and seeing Robotech mechs being in the game, lol.
12:29 HTose aren't toho style robots, I recognize the Falcon and Sentinel, those are Battletech originals replacing ones half-licensed from Japanese anime (I say half licensed because much like FASA's mortal enemy Harmony Gold and their Robotech series, FASA themselves "Licensed" the designs from someone who technically didn't have the right to sell them!)
The "unseen" mechs are a rabbit hole on their own. Shady legal dealings, people selling licenses for assets they didn't actually own, legal shystering, language barriers, the works. It's a headache thats plagued Battletech for nearly 40 years. Mostly fixed, or at least on pause now days.
The "16 MEGS" on the cover is going to refer to megabits, not megabytes. And it probably refers to the cartridge memory. Behind the 90s marketing flare, I think it means the game comes on a 2-megabyte cartridge.
That would certainly explain some things. I was really wracking my brain, wondering why exactly it was bragging about something that might have been false. Thank you for the info! Much appreciated.
Back in the day just an 8 meg (eight megabit) cartridge was a selling point, most games on the early genesis were 4 megabit carts.@@KeiNova
Not me man. I talk about these games a lot lol. I had MechWarrior and MechWarrior 3050 and Battletech.
I loved these games cause they were pretty similar to the Jungle and Desert Strike games just... Battletech.
2:30 that might be a different omni-configured timberwolf but I'm 99.999% sure it's actually the De-macrossed Marauder. Or a Marauder II given it's bigger than the Timberwolf it crashes into at the end there.
I checked beforehand, and it was apparently supposed to be a Timber Wolf/MadCat (apparently, they just couldn't decide). Though, by the Japanese artwork - I can see why that might be so.
I believe its the old Marauder IIc design.
Oh, you meant in the Intro! It ends with the Timberwolf shooting the enemy down, is what I meant.
The 16 Megabits cart is a 2 Megabytes size.
This is why the sizes you see don't seem to make sense, it would have made sense back in the days.
Anway, it's the storage space, so more Mb = more memory for sounds and graphics, more animations and background tiles.
You know, I grew up in that era and I totally forget with all these modern concessions we have these days. Thank you so much for explaining it to me. These old buzzwords are still endlessly entertaining, its funny how things have changed.
I think the reason why the two games used virtually identical covers is because the MadCat is (one of) the most popular battlemechs in the history of the game. I don't even like those damn, dirty clanners and even I think it's awesome.
I have to agree, it really is the best design even now. I just don't get why it's the exact same image, you know?
@@KeiNovaBattleTech on the Genesis came out in 1994 and was not a huge hit, but did alright. In July 1995, Activision released MechWarrior 2 for DOS, and it was a smash hit. Activision wanted to cash in, so whether it was already underway or they just started it, the SNES port of BattleTech was ready for release 3 months later, and they called it MechWarrior 3050 to tie it in by name to the massively popular MechWarrior 2, and even re-used the same cover image, purely to increase sales. If people heard all these great things about MechWarrior 2, didn't own a PC, but had a SNES, they'd buy MechWarrior 3050... and probably be really confused and disappointed.
Battletech on Genesis is hands down one of my favorite games, and it's what got me into Mechwarrior in the first place.
I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of it.
I love MechAssault on the og xbox the best
Any chance you'll review the Mechassault game for Nintendo DS? That one was always an odd one out for me, but I remember enjoying it.
I can , certainly. I actually bought it for the channel already! Great suggestion!
There used to be a small scale theme park called "Virtual World" in San Diego that let you play a Mechwarrior sim inside a full fledged cockpit. I went in the 90s, and it was glorious
That sounds absolutely amazing.
I saw this in a magazine and it was like my dream trip. Never got to go, sadly.
this game is one of my all time favorites
I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of it.
It's a great game, definitely one of my favorits. It's much more of a strategy game than an action game.
That's a Marauder in the opening cut scene. Not a Timber Wolf.
The TimberWolf is firing at the Marauder
Mechcommander and BattleTech on the Sega Genesis were my introduction to BattleTech.
Not bad but MechCommander is way better than this!
12:29 HTose aren't toho style robots, I recognize the Falcon and Sentinel, those are the ones not half-licensed from Japanese anime (I say half licensed because much like FASA's mortal enemy Harmony Gold and their Robotech series, FASA themselves "Licensed" the designs from someone who technically didn't have the right to sell them!)
Thanks to viewers like you, I'm going down a whole rabbit hole of Harmony Gold and FASA stuff that I never even knew existed. So, thank you for more info on this crazy situation that occured!
@@KeiNovaThe first version of the Battletech tabletop (called "Battledroids" until George Lucas sent FASA a C&D. Seriously) actually included official models from those series. All of the "unseen" (copyrighted) mechs were redesigned to be lawsuit-avoidant during FASA's Project Phoenix.
Battletech had a lot of legal issues back in the day. It's amazing it survived.
The mechs are different sizes because they are in battletech. The madcat is a large mech, but most of the others that you fight are smaller mechs.
To be honest, I'm not too too familiar with the Battletech universe at all. Just the newer game and the MechWarrior games, so this was more of a fresh view on what I thought. It still was a little strange and uneven from a gameplay aspect, ya know? Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, the madcat is a 75 ton mech and what is referred to as a heavy mech (60-75 tons). Looks like all the other mech sprites are light (20-35) and medium classes (40-55 tons)
This looks a lot like Desert Strike the famous helicopter game. So I would guess this is an attempt to cash in on the popularity of that, as well as trying to find a new market for the Battletech franchise outside of sims and tabletop.
Honestly, I forgot all about Desert Strike. You may be right though, isometric shooters like this were all the rage for a split second. That might have actually been the case!
I never forgot 3050. =)
I love the idea of a more fast-paced, arcadey Battletech game. Mechassault did it years later with (mostly) solid results. It's a shame this one didn't pan out, but it was during a really difficult chapter in the IP's history. Battletech probably had some of the worst growing pains I've ever seen, not to mention a serious chain of identity crises.
You know, I'm actually new to all of it. I love Mech stuff and all but I'm not versed on anything, just discovering everything. Posting this whole thing really had me learning so much about this crazy story about Battletech stealing designs and that???? So crazy.
@@KeiNova I don't think FASA meant to steal anything; I think they just got confused regarding rights (to be fair, licensing is hell). I'm confident in that because Harmony Gold are actual IP trolls that actively look for trouble, and because FASA settled out of court in a pretty agreeable way.
mechworrior, based on battle tech, based on Robotech, based on Macross. (See reply below from StephenStragways for correction)
The first edition of BattleTech was published before the first episode of Robotech ever aired, so no, BattleTech is not based on Robotech, but both are based on Macross.
Ah that makes sense. @@StephenStrangways
But Macross is Robotech. Robotech is Macross in the same way that Power Rangers is Super Sentai. I mean, obviously Macross is superior - but you see what I mean.
@@KeiNova saying that Robotech is Macross will tick off far more Macross fans than saying Power Rangers is Super Sentai will tick off Super Sentai fans 😁
Harmony Gold is widely despised, for good reason.
@@StephenStrangways eh, I'm not too worried. I haven't even watched either, so my opinion barely counts.
I'm kind of curious why the enemy infantry all seem to be Elementals.
I always wondered that as well, especially since, if I am remembering correctly, when you have to pick up a captured warrior he just uses a regular little guy sprite. I just assumed the developers got a little confused when handed a stack of assets to work with.
I didn't forget and I still play it.
Nice!
I loved the Mech Warrior toy line when I was a kid and also enjoyed renting this game a few times. I've replayed it more recently, though, and have to agree that it is quite difficult to control and know what the heck you are supposed to be doing. Anyone know of any rom hacks for this one that fix some of its issues?
it was still the coolest thing I ever played when I was 5.
Also, the graphics issues and framerate issues track -- the snes had a better graphics chip, the genesis the better processor. also the snes had a better sound card.
I want to try doing the coop mode.
It's unfortunate, I feel like the first level was the best, but they decided to make it harder for the subsequent missions because of the rental market, and it made the game very frustrating. if they had gone without the ice physics and such, it would have been better. Even just without the spikes...
If I had been 5, I'd have thought it was the coolest too! I mean, it was a lot easier to overlook how the games played back then because gaming was a lot rarer and more of a treat. We appreciated it a lot more, when we could do it. I was hoping the co-op would be something like two players doing a mission together, taking on objectives! But, I heard its just one playing controlling one half of the mech and the other controlling the legs. Which sounds like total nightmare and boring for one side of the experience.
That ICE, I know! Its SO bad. I thought it was a little clever that the mech goes back when it fires, like there's some velocity to the shots, but those spikes were just cruel design.
Thanks for the comment!
@@KeiNovaThe SNES processor isn't causing the frame rate issues. Not directly, anyways.
It's more likely to be the cost of a ROM that could run that class of CPU at full speed. Many third parties couldn't afford it, but there was a budget option that booted into an unused backwards compatibility mode. (SlowROM is the on the nose name.)
Then there's all the other reasons this might be slowing down. Like the 8-bit databus, or sprite tiles being limited to two sizes at once. One of them is ridiculously small... or is hiding how big it is... Neither possibility is easy on performance when you're juggling everything required to generate a single updated frame during the vblank, and lack flexibility.
My brother and I used to play the co-op. If you had 2 people who were familiar with the game, it was quite fun, the biggest problem being that no one really wanted to be the driver. However, playing it with someone who was new to the game wasn't nearly as enjoyable. But I agree, the first level had a cool variety of objectives and freedom of movement, which the rest of the game doesn't live up to.
You do know the history of Mechwarrior right? If not let me shed a lil light here, Mechwarrior is a simulation spin off from the original tactical table top game named Battletech. The first Mechwarrior was released on DOS and was using a very primitive form of realtime 3D with vectors and sprite manipulation, back then was the 386/486 cpu and no VLB ISA or 2D PCI accelerators then. Mechwarrior 2's graphics engine was already in development after the success of MW1 and the initial version didn't release till 95, and later released 3D accelerated versions with specific graphics cards like the 3dfx version for example.
The SNES versions where arcade spin off's just like Mechassault 1/2 for the OG Xbox.
This is actually listed as a sequel for MechWarrior, I know what the series is and I played the original many times. This is also not originally a MechWarrior game, it was originally called Battletech on the Genesis and was rebranded - because the MechWarrior for SNES got some sales.
And no, this is an exploratory channel where I'm giving the details about the game at hand and what it's about. I'm figuring things out myself and the audience helps and we interact and learn in that way. If I can find information on something, I will. But MechWarrior and Battletech are difficult franchises with very old histories that are sometimes only shared via word of mouth.
Mechassault was not a spin-off. There was a rights battle with the MechWarrior name, hence why the Heavy Gear games were made. It was literally supposed to be a return to MechWarrior without using the name.
@@KeiNova Yes, mechassault was a arcade style spin off from Mechwarrior which was a sim.
Mechwarrior you have full loadout customization, full damage modeling meaning you can blow parts off to get a advantage or exploit weak spots. No power up or pick ups, what you deployed with was it, mech3 introduced the mobile repair stations and single use and a risk since depending on the damage can take a while while the enemy is looking for you. Which mechassault doesn't have, and uses a total health bar, power ups, and 3rd person. I own all the mechwarrior games, I'm a collector i should know, i even own the 2 snes games, they are nothing like the PC games.
@@KeiNova Mechwarrior DOS 1989
th-cam.com/video/iuxySqjb5X8/w-d-xo.html
Mechwarrior 2 DOS 1995
th-cam.com/video/L0mSdnxM7fc/w-d-xo.html
Mechwarrior 3050 is a isometric arcade shooter.
@@KeiNova Also about the legal issues that was a big lie on Harmony Gold's end, they didn't have IP rights over Battletech/ Mechwarrior's mechs. They used heavy handed stiff arming tactics with false rights holding to halt mechwarrior 5. Why no one even knows, but their argument that they tried in court when the time came was that the mech designs where straight theft because of the Pod mech in macross that was bipedal. They lost, and lost hard.
It's not kaiju robots. It's actual battletech designs. Two you've showed is Hermes and Sentinel. Yet, admitedly with weird plastic-toy looks.
If you look at many Toho designs, they have the same look. From the comments, there was apparently some controversy surrounding these designs, I'm not the one to ask - but they are definitely reminiscent of Japanese Kaiju films. Right down to the color.
Amazing game
Agreed 👍💯
Wait until he finds out about that short-lived BattleTech TV show that lasted like half a season before being canceled by the fact that Exosquad was just better.
Now I will have to watch both because I had no idea either of those things existed at all!
@@KeiNova Just don't bother with the Exosquad video game on Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. But that's what you get for having a dev team in Hungary having no idea about a US animated show called Exosquad even is.
The BattleTech TV series lasted an entire season, but just did not get renewed for a second season.
The other mechwarior game on SNES was far better.
I covered that partially in my MechWarrior 1 Review - and, I happen to agree.