Walker history

[Willypold]

Who designed the first armoured walkers?

This is a question stemming from the fact that I now own a number of Dust, AT-43, Star Wars and W40K walkers of various sizes and number of legs, all the way from a bunch of tiny AT-43 Kossaks to a towering AT-AT.

Model-wise I know that Paolo Parente started playing around with Weird War walkers about 15 years ago and started publishing stuff about 12 years ago for the Weird War scene. GW has produced various dreadnoughts for W40K since pretty soon after they published the game in 1987. The Japanese have played around with piloted robots since, well, when? Here I'm at a loss. I know that Gundam is late 70's, but that's about it.

When it comes to fictional walkers I can only think of the Martian three-legged machines from Well's War of the Worlds before The Empire Strikes Back from 1980, but there may of course have been any number.

Where did the various concepts appear first, and how did they develop? I'd like to define the various variants as either actual robots, like the one in Robocop (not Robocop himself, but the actual robot in the movie), piloted robot suits like for example Gundam, and the true walking tanks - AT-AT, Space Marine dreadnoughts, Weird War walkers, the walkers in Avatar, etc.

So, repeating the question, who built or designed or conceptualized the first armoured walkers and for which medium - books, comics, movies or games? Personally I'm more interested in the idea of the walking tank, and not so much in fighting robots or robot tanks (The Hitchhiker's Guide had a robot tank, for example).

As a follow-up, what different walking tanks have been produced for various game systems?

[Penchour]

As far I can remember ... Great Mazinger was the fist walker !   Most concepts used today are coming from the long history of japanese manga (through anime, then video games).
Now, considering our actual hobby ... I guess Rogue Trader's Sentinels were the first to join the battle. Further walkers had been variations from those two sources, mainly evolving in regard to japanese designs, that can be found through various names : mecha (for mechanical armours), wanzer (for walking panzer), depending on the source material.

[Willypold]

Googled Great Mazinger and ran into a couple of long articles on Wikipedia for "super robot", "real robot" and "mecha", which should fill in most of the blanks.

Which still leaves the question of the walking tanks for different game systems - what's available? The games I've already mentioned I know pretty well, but other than those?

[Inso]

HG Wells...War of the Worlds?

[Cory]

I used to have a 25mm walker I picked up in '80 or '81 that had two lead legs, a turret, and front and back panels that all glued onto a 35mm plastic film cannister. It was meant for Traveller, but for the life of me I don't remember who made it. That's the oldest gaming figure of a walker that I remember.

[Plynkes]

When it comes to fictional walkers I can only think of the Martian three-legged machines from Well's War of the Worlds before The Empire Strikes Back from 1980, but there may of course have been any number.

The Tripods came after Wells but before Star Wars, though the TV adaptation didn't come until after Star Wars.

[Willypold]

Yes, HG Wells The War of the Worlds contains the earliest, as far as I know, walking battle machines. The three-legged tripods are what the Martian invaders start to build as soon as they've landed on Earth.

[DS615]

General Electric built one in 1968, so that would be the first real one.

Otherwise in 1880 Jules Verne wrote about a steam-powered, piloted, mechanical elephant in "The Steam House".
So that would be first in fiction as far as I know.

[Simlasa]

As a follow-up, what different walking tanks have been produced for various game systems?

Kryomek had several... larger ones, with crews ala Star Wars' AT-ST and smaller ones that seemed to be modeled on the ED-209 from Robocop (no crew). The line also had a force of humanoid robots that were about the size of the human forces.

Dark Horse put out some Robotech figures for the Palladium system... Destroids as well as some Zentraedi pods (which seem to have been cloned right off the 1/200 Nichimo/Testors kits).

[Jakar Nilson]

General Electric built one in 1968, so that would be the first real one.

Otherwise in 1880 Jules Verne wrote about a steam-powered, piloted, mechanical elephant in "The Steam House".
So that would be first in fiction as far as I know.

Technically speaking, the Steam House is actually a locomotive built to look like an elephant. The legs are actually just decorations attached to the wheels. I read the book back in high school in the original French, so I don't know the proper term in English, but the wheels were kind of like a steam-roller, and were meant to go cross-country - which is exactly what the heroes use it for.

But before Mazinger, there was Tetsujin 28, better known in the West as Gigantor, created in 1956. While remote-controlled instead of piloted, it pretty much is the first of the Japanese Super Robots.

Between the time Gundam came out in 1978 and Macross in 1982, there were a number of "Real Robot" anime series that were highly influential. Notably Dougram and Xambungle. The designs from these series should look familiar to anyone who has played Battletech. And the next year came VOTOMS...

And in American comics, you might be surprised to find out that the first piloted robot/power armour in the comic medium was from the 40s. Bozo the Robot, who could also fly thanks to a dinky little propeller on its head. Of course, everyone is probably aware of the origins of PA from the works of E.E. "Doc" Smith and also the Tom Swift series...

[chromedog]

Kryomek had several... larger ones, with crews ala Star Wars' AT-ST and smaller ones that seemed to be modeled on the ED-209 from Robocop (no crew).

It also had some mid-sized piloted walkers (sentinel sized) called "Raven Striders" (essentially a coffin on two bird legs).

[zizi666]

the small ones are Hellcats :


and the middle sized are indeed ravens :