r/battletech • u/SubjectRepair8749 • 7h ago

Question ❓ does anyone know where these two jptech illustrations came from! higher res versions would be INSANELY appreciated.

Gallery image

Gallery image

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7

u/WorthlessGriper 6h ago

Here on Reddit someone proffered them last year as an Orion and Charger (1A5) from a "Japanese Fanzine." No further specifics, and the post author seems to have left Reddit, so good luck with that lead.

Also found a Facebook post asking much the same as you are now, with no results. Facebook pings a lot of results in theory, so the answer might be somewhere in there, but Facebook is a terrible place with no organization whatsoever, so good luck finding where it actually comes up.

Did flip through my copy of the JP Battletech book, but they're not there, even as example images. Haven't seen images like this come from the Mechwarrior RPG book either, or the RPG Dragon magazines.

There seems to be some credence for them being an Orion and Charger (the latter at least has the loadout for a 1A5, the Orion is harder to tell, as I can't ID the MLs and SRM in the pixelated soup) but at the same time they might not be BT at all, and are jut the same people/others copying the style drawing mechs for a different project entirely.

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u/SubjectRepair8749 6h ago

yea, i did some cursory research before posting and saw those. kinda wanted to restart the topic. it could be another project, very true.

4

u/WorthlessGriper 5h ago

If anything, they'd have to be from the JP release of TRO 3025, as that would be the first chance the Japanese would have gotten a view of the Orion and Charger. (Assuming the rumors are true and that's what they actually are.) I have never managed to find image one of the JP TRO 3025, so I don't know if they even re-did all the art for the book in the first place, much less if these are from that book.

From my understanding, the JP translations included: BT:AGoAC box set, Mechwarrior 2e, Citytech, Tales of the Black Widow Company, TRO 3025, and the Grey Death Legion trilogy. Only the TRO would have either an Orion or Charger.

There were also some published replays/novels that were Japanese-only, but aside from a custom Cyclops and a couple new machines for the RPG playthrough (Yamata no Orochi and Storm Princess) there's not a lot there beyond the base box.

The art style (much more tank-shaped) is also differs from those Group SNE (in charge of translations) hired for art I've seen. (Studio Nue for Battletech, Kenichi Sonoda in the novels, Ikusabune for the magazine.)

It likely is a fan work of some kind made in the decades since, but you'd have to search Japanese artists' haunts on Japanese servers to find who drew them, most likely.

2

u/nzdastardly Crockett Connoisseur 5h ago

Thanks for specifying which Charger! I was about to ask which was which but I was able to count the missile racks.

2

u/Attaxalotl #1 ProtoMech Fan 6h ago

I swear I’ve seen higher res versions out there, I just don’t have them since it was a while ago.

1

u/SubjectRepair8749 5h ago

do you know what website?

1

u/kaceris 6h ago

Are you sure these are from JP battletech? The style doesn't really match.

5

u/Bookwyrm517 6h ago

No, I think the style does match. It's just a lot of the detail is lost due to the mix of low resolution and dark colors.

1

u/SubjectRepair8749 6h ago

sources align multiple times. first is an orion, second is a charger.

2

u/kaceris 5h ago

Interesting. Which book or box set are they from?

1

u/SubjectRepair8749 5h ago

thats what im tryna figure out! by sources, i moreso mean that a lot of people have identified it as battletech.