Palladium’s games have always been pretty unified. They started with weapon guides for D&D, then Palladium Fantasy built a whole system around that and TMNT and Other Strangeness and Robotech and Beyond the Supernatural all contributed more pieces to what would become known as the Megaversal system, the rule that power Rifts. But that’s, like, subtle, man. Rifts Sourcebook Two: The Mechanoids (1992) is blatant. It’s the book that signals that Rifts is the melting pot for all things Palladium. It’s always been one universe.
The Mechanoid Invasion (1981) spun out of a never-realized idea for a comic series and was Palladium’s first RPG. It tells the story of an Earth invaded by hostile aliens and humanity’s desperate hunt for ancient weapons with which they can turn the tide of war. The Mechanoids themselves are little squishy alien weirdos with a talent for creating mechanical war suits of various shapes and sizes. They remind me a lot of the Krang, in fact, and I wonder if that similarity was what inspired Siembieda to secure the TMNT license for a game (honestly not sure when the TCRI aliens first show up in the comics, or if they had robot suits when they do; it might be too late to have influenced the RPG deal, but maybe the Mechanoids influenced Eastman and Laird?).
Anyway, this book reintroduces the Mechanoids in the context of Rifts. They’re basically the same murderous conquerors as they were a decade previous, and you might think another faction of robo-skeleton guys would be hard to distinguish (especially since, curiously, ARCHIE and Hagan get further detailing in this book and come with more skelly-robots that are even more clearly patterned on the Terminator). But the opposite is true, I think, the Mechanoids seem cooler to me in the context of all the other bonkers crap that’s going on in Rifts. In their first iteration, they’re basically just rehashed War of the Worlds Martians stomping on pretty ill-prepared humans. And, I mean, the Mechanoids clearly have an advantage over the Coalition, judging from Kevin Long’s cover painting. But how do they measure up against (or how do they make friends with) Atlantis, or the Splugorth, or Triax, or the Federation of Magic? Or even ARCHIE and Hagan? Who can tell, honestly?
Newton Ewell and Kevin Siembieda join Kevin Long in the interior illustrations, but really, it’s Long’s show all the way.
