Powered Armour?
Adeptus Astartes (Warhammer: 40k)
Bianco Angelo (Devil May Cry 4)
Bonta-kun (Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu
Exo-Frame (Exosquad)
Hard Suit (Mass Effect)
Iron Man (Iron Man)
Landmate (Appleseed)
Mjollnir (Halo)
Mobile Infantry (Starship Troopers, the book)
Mobile Suit (Gundam)
VF-1 Valkyrie (Macross)
Warmech (Mace: The Dark Age)
Voting ended onJun 10, 2025
Adeptus Astartes: The second ancestor of all powered armour, and the proliferator of Space Marines. They are genetically-engineered epic space knights. They can survive atmospheric entry with nothing but a jetpack, have motorcycles that are basically tankettes that let them rove the battlefield, but their most important power is space magic and plot armour. Despite, or in fact, BECAUSE of the space magic, they have the hardest science fiction setting, to the point that their epic, holy boltgun works entirely on existing technology.
Bianco Angelo: Ascended human wearing a suit of armour animated using demon magic, creating one of the most unique enemies in video games history.
Bonta-kun: Teenage combat vet that can only think of combat is giving a mascot outfit, and what does he do? Turn it into Powered Armour. This is downright silly, but the bulky outfit gives more than enough room for the mechanical aspects. It's a notable outlier in a world filled with either epic space knights or realistically mundane powered armour.
Exo-Frame: One of the first attempts to create something other than powered armour and mecha. It was created as a North American competitor with anime, but just wasn't good enough to actually be much more than a Saturday morning cartoon. Most of the things getting reboots nowadays are either: a) already fantastic, and therefore the reboot has to be as good as one of the best stories ever created, b) terrible, with no attempt to make it better, c) good, and obviously being remade for woke bullshit points. Seriously, Exo-Squad is the property that could be done fantastically with a reboot. Stop being a cartoon, and be an animated medium.
Hard Suit: Mass Effect is a hard science fiction setting that gets caught up in Lovecraftian cosmic horrors. Like everything else, it tries to make the science as hard as possible, and as such makes it the most plausible suit for future combat. They can survive in space, and most planetary environments, have impact-resistance as good as they can manage without severely limited their ability to move as infantry. It also includes a whole host of tools that are integral to pretty much everything, to the point that every hard suit can be used to weld a ship back together, can help interface with a ship's controls, coordinate communication and fire control, etc.
Iron Man: One of the few powered armours that actually take flight into consideration, and shows how powerful an individual that can fly would be. His suit actually uses every part of itself as a flight surface, and can kill dozens of mundane soldiers all around him in a split second.
Landmate: An attempt at creating plausible powered armour. Too focused on what was plausble to think of the possible, it turns out feeling incredibly mundane. This is probably the first time that powered-armour felt visceral and real.
Mjollnir: The predecessor of the mundane video game powered armour. This managed to skirt the line between making the use feel like a super human, and making the user feel like an ordinary soldier going to war.
Mobile Infantry: The ancestor of all powered armour, and as powerful as you can get without space magic or plot armour. They have jump jets, (introducing the concept), that let them move at 60mph while jumping over tall buildings, have orbital drop pods that peel away, leaving clouds of debris, and allowing them to survive atmospheric entry, they carry peewee nukes, might be the ancestors of laser swords, (Heinlein loved being vague with details like this), and most importantly of all, can do everything infantry can. This last part is something that is almost always ignored. You can apparently still dance a jig and crack and egg without breaking it, (assuming you could do these things before hand). They also use space flamer throwers before they were cool.
Mobile Suit: The creator of the mecha genre, explicitly a byproduct of Mobile Infantry, (including the fact that Sunrise actually did a Starship Troopers show beforehand). Heinlein was notably lacking in details about how big powered armour was, and the mobile suits are almost a viable variation. Other than the fact they are basically walking tanks, that can do little in the way actual infantry. Note: I'm not including Gundams, because they are powered by plot.
VF-1: They take a mecha and let it transform into a space fighter. This gives it the capability to fly across a continent before engaging in pseudo-infantry combat. This is something no one else even TRIES to do without space magic, super hero technology, or plot armoury.
Was Warmech the first steam powered armour? No. Maybe? But it's by far the most interesting.
Note: If you are wondering why something is missing, it's likely because someone else had a similar concept sooner. Like Fallout heavily uses powered armour, but doesn't actually do anything interesting with it.