When I first played Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, I discovered that two of my favorite 'Mechs, the Marauder and the Battlemaster, suddenly disappeared. I was worried, when I first got the revised version of the 3050 Technical Readout and see no Marauders and no Battlemasters! where did it go? I was in a loss
Battletech was inspired by Japanese Anime and Manga of giant robots beating the crap out of eachother. When the game was first published under the name of "Battledroids", the pledging FASA was merely sued by Lucasfilms, Ltd. for their usage of the word "Droid". FASA's legal division was swamped by the regiments at Lucas's fingertips. After a quick re-write, Battletech was born, with a Warhammer, guns blazing, striding across the box in front in 1985. To jump-start its game, as well to keep the anime feel, FASA used the robot designs from three anime programs: Macross, Crusher Joe, and Dougram.
FASA, to this day, argues that they had permission from the various Japanese production companies to use their designs. Harmony Gold, producers of Robotech (the Americanized version of Macross), argued otherwise. As the legal forces of both relatively new and relatively strong companies poised for battle, FASA again pulled the better part of valor and settled out of court, removing the Macross-based designs from future publications but keeping the designs in the history of the Battletech universe.
So disappeared the Wasp, Stinger, Valkyrie, Ostscout, Phoenix Hawk, Ostroc, Ostsol, Rifleman, Crusader, Archer, Warhammer, and Marauder.
the Marauder 'mech was discovered to be the Officers' Battlepod piloted by Khyron from Robotech/Macross. anyways onwards to the Battlemaster...
Yet the Thunderbolt, Griffin, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Locust and the venerable BattleMaster remained>. The Thunderbolt, Griffin, Shadowhawk, Wolverine, Goliath, Scorpion, and Battlemaster remained The next target of operations was Crusher Joe.
After some searching, the Locust was discovered to be some sort of combat robot in the Crusher Joe anime series. and the Locust went bye-bye
. The only hope left was dougram.
The appearant victory was seemingly a let-down. The BattleMaster was identified (with a picture) but no origin could be put to it. However, at the bottom of the page, a link to a model of the Dougram mech revealed a model of the Shadow Hawk. As the Shadow Hawk and the BattleMaster share a great deal in design philosophies, they knew they had their man.
and here's the table:
BattleTech = Sun's Fang Dougram
----------------------- ------------------
BLR-1G BattleMaster = Soltic HT-128 Bigfoot
GOL-1H Goliath = Abitate F44A CrabGunner
GRF-1N Griffin = Soltic H8-RF Roundfacer
SCP-1N Scorpion = Abitate F35C BlizzardGunner
SHD-2H ShadowHawk = D-7 Dougram (JAKT Type)
TDR-5S Thunderbolt = Hasty F4X Ironfoot
WVR-6R Wolverine = Abitate T-10C Blockhead
And so they must of dropped the Crusher Joe and Dougram designs to avoid more lawsuits.
Before I can find the Marauder and the Battlemaster's origin, my big brother told me that the Marauder was removed due to copyright issues of anime.
Thats all...
Oh yeah in 2003 the Marauder and the Battlemaster was remade with an all new appearance.