BattleTech Background and Origin

The BattleTech Universe

A Look at FASA's Rich Gaming and Fiction Franchise

• Part 1
• Part 2

Where did BattleTech come from?

• Our favorite board game has been around for a long time.
• Some interesting facts.

The connection between the pods and the new MechWarrior...

The guy who is making the new MechWarrior (what some refer to as MechWarrior 5, but isn't) is the same guy who MADE BattleTech at FASA and then helped start Virtual World Entertainment !

In the Virtual-Reality Arena the Techies Are the Real Warriors, a story of the Version 4 (Tesla II) Cockpits. (Circa 1997)

Then when Microsoft bought FASA Interactive, Weisman said that Microsoft "destroyed development culture" at FASA.

"FASA Interactive founder Jordan Weisman has spoken out about Microsoft's acquisition of his highly-regarded studio, saying that the corporation "destroyed" its development culture and came close to doing the same with Halo developer Bungie. " Read more...

Weisman started Smith and Tinker that created a game for boys that blends web play and toys.

Smith and Tinker, with the aide of Piranha Games, released a teaser video of MechWarrior and then was quickly pulled for including an "Unseen". This video was to promote the reboot of the BattleTech franchise. Then MechWarrior Online appeared and offered some background on how the teaser and the game came to be.

About Jordan Weisman

"I Am Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun, MechWarrior, and Crimson Skies, AMA" posted May 29, 2012

I’m CEO and Creative Director of Harebrained Schemes, a (very) small game development studio in the Seattle area. I’ve been a game designer and entrepreneur since graduating high school. I got my start in the paper game industry, founding FASA Corporation in 1980, where I created BattleTech/MechWarrior and Shadowrun. My second company, Virtual World Entertainment, pioneered virtual reality game centers around the world. I sold VWE to the Disney family in 1992. I then founded FASA Interactive to develop my games for PC and sold the company to Microsoft in 1998, becoming the Creative Director for their games division and overseeing the first two years of Xbox titles, including Halo. In 2000, I founded Wizkids and invented the collectible miniature figure games MageKnight, MechWarrior and HeroClix. Wizkids was acquired by Topps Inc. in 2003. After Wizkids, I co-founded 42 Entertainment and spawned a new genre - Alternate Reality Games. As Chief Creative Officer of 42 Entertainment, I oversaw the creation of “I Love Bees,” for the launch of Halo 2, “Why So Serious,” for The Dark Knight, and many others. My latest company, Harebrained Schemes, created Crimson Steam Pirates with Bungie last year and recently ran a successful Kickstarter.com project to bring back one of my favorite game worlds, Shadowrun.

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