MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat - The Best? 

What's your favorite memory with MechWarrior 2? Or are you new to the game? *My error of saying 1997 instead of 1995 has been removed.

The reason Activision lost the license was that FASA/VWE/FASA Interactive wanted to develop Mech3 internally and reap a larger financial reward. Activisions aggressive push into making the game an OEM pack-in game for many graphics cards limited a significant financial return to FASA based on the original licensing. I worked for VWE/FIT from ‘94-‘97 and on MW3.

The fact that many people use MechWarrior 2 sound packs in MechWarrior Online is a testament to the love for this classic game.

I remember playing this one hot Aussie summer's day when my monitor blew up. Sparks and smoke flowing out the back. I can only assume someone hit my cockpit.

I cannot explain to you the hype and awesomeness when this game came out. The opening sequence with the video of the mech being hunted was fucking incredible.

Timothy Seals covered the soundtrack, releasing it under the title "A New Dawn (Bred For War Edition)". Highly recommend it. Honestly, either version of Silent Thunder really gets me; makes me feel like a predator on the hunt for prey. A lot of people got introduced to Battletech through this game. One of the things I ask people new to the tabletop is "have you played MW2?" If they have, they get the gist of what BT is all about. One guy who plays with us played MW2, and had no idea BT was the same IP. But, as soon as he saw the Mad Cat, he felt right at home.

You know, I remember you could put the game CD into a stereo to listen to all the music tracks. No real need for a separate commercial release of the soundtrack by itself.

Unlocking some dormant memories here

Correction, the original versions of MechWarrior 2 along with the Ghost Bear's Legacy came out in 1995 with the Mercenaries expansion coming out in 1996. In 1995 this game was a massive leap forward from a technical standpoint and had a big in pushing 3D accelerated graphics cards at the time.

The wireframe is still beautiful. It's that sweet spot of how movies once imagined the future and how some modern games remember the past. It's hard to believe it was a real game on store shelves in 1995.

Favorite memory: on the approach to a nav point, pyre light playing in the background, listening to the voice of the cockpit computer say “auto pilot disabled” “Chain fire engaged”

I built a whole booty retro PC with a Voodoo 1 PRIMARILY to play MechWarrior 2. I still remember the first time I saw the opening sequence. So many memories. Old and new

As I was saying during our AC6 battles, tis was the first PC game I ever played, way back in '96 when I was 6 years old. Definitely gonna give this a watch when I take a break from editing later this evening! It was a real pleasure to make your acquaintance; thanks again for being willing to participate in my birthday special episode!

I used to play Mech 2 on Mplayer back in the day with friends. I had one friend who exclusively played Mech 2 and played constantly and was super active with clan battles. Once Tribes came out though, we all migrated to that, then Tribes 2. This time period was the pinnacle of gaming for me, the late 90s through mid 2000s (N64, PS1, Pentium 2 - Pentium 3 era). Everything was so pure and fun and we had so many friends all playing together. We had so many LAN parties where we camped out at some friend’s house for a week or so with tons of people filtering in and out over the week. It’s a shame that younger people won’t ever know what that’s like with the advent and convenience of online gaming. I could talk about this for hours, but if you were there, you knew what it was like.

That was the first CD-ROM Game I bought. My mind blew with the open scene.

Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries is where the UI was changed. The Mechwarrior 2 Battlepack is the original game running on the updated engine used in Mercenaries. The wireframe Enhanced Imagining appears to have been removed for performance issues in Mercenaries. Which would make lore sense since Inner Sphere Mechs would not have Clan Technology like EI except the Clans Mechs in Mercenaries ALSO lack Enhanced Imagining....

Quite possibly the best VG soundtrack ever made.

Such a great soundtrack. I use it as background when playing campaigns in MegaMek. Which btw, is a decent way to play Battletech if you don't have the money/people for tabletop.

Because this is not superfast and some Mechs allow you to spin their torso and shoot to the side while moving forward, and because some have boosters jets, this made for an amazing feel and I remember mastering the controls and shooting down other Mechs was immensely satisfying and the ambient music and female computer voice was amazing. Also, how the missiles and munitions flew away, feels a bit like shooting torpedoes from a submarine. The simulation depth was great. What an amazing title this was. Great memories.

I had Mercs (original boxed copy) and the Titanium collection back in the day. LOVE this series. My strongest memory is the Mercs storyline where you go to Solaris for the games and your character gets invited to some schmoozy dinner and he's like, "These people are too damn stupid to live," but then he remembers he wasn't allowed to bring his field pistol to dinner.

Been waiting for this one since your last vid on MW !!!

Mechwarrior 1 was my real intro into computers. I was originally in college to become a veterinarian. One day I was walking passed the computer lab in 1990ish and saw someone playing Mechwarrior 1 and went whoa what's that? I sat down and started playing and immediately changed my major to computer science. I got the Battletech games and several of the books. I was totally hooked on the whole BT experience. Even played the table top version. When Mechwarrior 2 came out it was an incredible experience. I just loved it. Everyone now is used to hi-def graphics, but back then VGA was becoming wide spread. Dot pitch in monitors was a thing we looked for. Either .28 or the Sony .25 dp 14inch monitor. Graphics cards that could support that were expensive. All of that made the Mechwarrior 2 experience that much more intense.

Oh man I remember when the downloadable trailer demo came out for this…. It was just the opening to the game but my friends and I got together to watch it and it blew our collective minds. I had played the PC version of the original mech warrior and didn’t have high hopes. And the game was just as good as it promised to be. Loved it

Booting up MS-DOS Mech 2, GBL and Mercs and watching the FMV intro cutscenes were some of my earliest and most impactful memories in PC gaming. I feel the holy grail today, is getting the 3D hardware accelerated versions emulated in today's tech, they look even better than the Titanium Trilogy.

I still have my original copies of MW2 and Ghost Bear, and even though I haven't played them in decades I can still remember all the startup sounds and the thrill of some of the missions.

Fun fact: In the Mechwarrior 2 training mission on sensors, you can scan a cargo crate with "HERC PARTS (USELESS)" in it. HERCs or HERCULANs are the giant mechs from Metaltech.

The music in this game was amazing, and that computer voice was also great. For me, they were a crucial part of what made the game an interesting and worthwhile experience.

This is the best game ever, my absolute favorite. I played so much as Teenager. And it comes with the best gaming music of all time.

I bought my first GPU because of this game. It was a "3DFX Graphics Card" and the upgrade in graphics and gameplay blew me away! Great memories.

MW2 came with my first PC, an IBM Aptiva. I thought that was 1997. What you said about it being rewarding once you figured out the controls is so right. Every few years I try get it to run.. one of these days I’ll figure it out haha

This was my introduction to Battletech and MechWarrior as a whole, and every day I play a game or read a story in this universe, I'm grateful for my friend Brandon, who introduced me to it in like 2001. My favorite thing about MW2 is that, in-universe, your Galaxy Commander is possibly the single most honorable warrior in all the Clans. Just underbidding like a madman and then paying you on the shoulder and saying, "Go get them, warrior."

(8:44) So, we're just going to waltz by that laser turret pecking at us like we don't have a care in the world, eh? LOL 😉😁

I was at Virtual World in Pasadena when the dev team came in to check out the mechanics of the Virtual World Battletech pods. It was cool playing the game a couple years later, and seeing all of the mechanics they used. :)

Honestly, fighting just to get the game working is the authentic MW2 experience, imho. We had system enough to run it and it still took my software engineer dad hours to figure the damn thing out.

The 3d card era and titles like MW2, Tomb Raider and Quake, that was peak gaming

I loved this game as a kid. My uncle would turn up his stereo, and every time Mech's feet hit the ground, the room shook.

This was the second PC game I ever got to play on my dads 486 machine. I used to sit there and watch him play Descent, then he came home with this one day in a new shiny box. I was already "familiar" with Battletech from the Commodore 64 (I put quotes because I was 5) but I was too young to put two and two together at the time. Eventually he finally let me play and I would play it nonstop along with Descent. These days, I fire up PCem and load this up any time or if I'm feeling frisky I load it up on my 98 box. This is still my favorite Mechwarrior game of the series.

I remember my reaction when I saw this game for the first time. I was shocked! I've never seen a game like that before for PC!

Mech Commander is a different experience than the simulation of Dynamix's Mechwarrior. However, understand this (which goes to all who view this video): this was the 32-bit era we're looking at. By 1995, MechWarrior 2 ALONE was the most expensive game ever produce with a budget estimate at $12-25 million (the source regarding marketing and finances for this game is somewhat lost in the forums via wayback machine. It was someone from Activision who worked there until Mercenaries.) Before Call of Duty, Activision and Electronic Arts were one of the gaming companies pushing the boundaries of PC gaming and beyond like their console counterparts with EXTREMELY HIGH production and marketing costs. The voyage of true 3D gaming was the mass appeal to all tech fields and is the focal point where computer hardware began to evolve from its infancy stage of basic computation. I can go on but the Digital Foundry retrospective of this masterpiece provides an in-depth detail of over 36 (yes...3..6!) different versions from different native hardware put into the test. Also, this has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. Kudos to Jeehun Hwang.

The game was offered when you did buy a Power VR GPU, still have my CD. one of my best childhood memory playing on my PC

Such a classic! I got mine bundled with the Microsoft Sidewinder 3d Pro joystick :D Awesome video, subbed!

The music for this game is so unique and brings back lots of nostalgia for me. Funny thing about the wireframe mode is that I used it most of the time while playing because my PC was too slow to render the full graphics at more than like 4 FPS in a firefight. Tip on the controls: the numeric keypad / * and - fire your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd weapon groups, and you can hold down to keep firing the same weapons. This makes autocannons and machine guns quite powerful.

Lol I'm not the only one that couldn't get the titanium trilogy to work. Great game. I had 31st century combat and Ghost bears lagacy. Never played mercs.

MW2 mercs titanium was my first and damn dem was good times. From the first intro video it's just feelz...

I played this game to death including expansion packs back in the 90s.

Out here doing God's work. Now do Mech Commander!

In it hing for your MechWarrior 3 video. That was my favorite childhood game.

Whenever I think of the Mech Warrior games it’s always the Super Nintendo one where you talk to Cearale in that Bar and the music lol

I played this as a kid using a Microsoft Force Feedback joystick, which was so awesome.

Awesome review!

Loved your video delving into a subject that is close to my heart. Thank you so much! Subbed! 😎🤘☮

The Mechwarrior games after MW2 / Ghost Bear's Legacy just never had the same level of atmosphere to me. Never really pulled me in, but also i think a big part of that was the soundtrack which had a HUGE influence on my tastes as i got older

I played MechWarrior 2 with a joystick. It was one of my earliest games Ive play and I always wished they would create something like it again

I still remember getting this for Christmas in a bundle pack with a Microsoft Sidewinder to play on my Pentium 90. I spent the whole Christmas break playing it.

The immersion combined with the masterpiece soundtrack in middle school was pretty special

Love your coverage of (now) niche games. Subbed.

The Mech Commander games were great. I'd love to see a video with your take on them!

I'm a simple man, you keep reviewing the mechwarrior games, I keep commenting and giving thumbs up.

The MW2:21CC game used specific displays for the target mech. MW2:Mercs tried to make a more generic game modelling that served perfectly for Inner Sphere. Used a generic target mech. Strangely, for clan mechs it did not work. It was impossible to overheat and weapons had different values. It is unlike the tabletop game of Battletech, where things are extremely consistent. Mechwarrior is the name used for videogames, but it comes from the Battletech tabletop game.

Yeah MW2 is truly the GOAT military sci fi. It needs a remaster so bad. The mood of this game is something ive never seen matched. For some reason it still feels truly futuristic. I think its the sound design, its brilliant!

Man we have come a long way. This game was my favorite game back in the mid 90's Ive played over 500 hours of mw5 since it got released for ps5 this is just the best mech sim game franchise ever made

Jade Falcon forever. The Timberwolf will forever be my favourite mech. That box cover art hooked me. I remember the first time I loaded the game up to run through again, but I had The Prodigy's "The Fat of the Land" audio CD in the tray when it spun up. That CD completely changed that game for me. All my memories of the game now are of that CD's music to gameplay. Thank you for the memories and throwback to a classic title.

This was my childhood.

I loved that game and spent so many hours playing. MW2 was awesome! The closest thing now that I still play is Mechwarrior Online, which is very close to MW2 in my opinion, except I still miss the wiremesh view a lot. Battletech is a fine game too, and MW5 mercenaries is also ok. Oh, and as far as the sound track for MW2, it was just normal songs on the CD, I still have them in my music catalogue and still listen to them. I think the soundtrack was, and still is to me, the best out of all the games I've played, as I can listen to them and still find them great.

So many late nights, something haunting about it. No other MechWarrior game has that kind of atmosphere. I use the bitching betty from the mech for my text message alerts... 'Incoming message'

Ghost Bear's Legacy was the best. Hellfire(?) Streak SRM missile cluster against an enemy mech would overheat them and shut them down, then you could pick off their legs with lasers. Very effective, especially if you used the "no heat sinks needed" cheat code!

Just today an early gameplay trailer was released for Mechwarrior 5: Clans. i can only hope it manages to create 1/5 of the atmosphere of this game.

Bought this the day it came out and it was a revolutionary game. Played it initially with the a CH Flight Stick then picked up a Sidewinder 3D Pro later that year. The twist on the 3D Pro was a game changer.

I remember running 2 Voodoo 2s running this game at 1024/768 marveling at how amazing it looked, aah, those were the days.

Great video. This was my introduction to the franchise when it was new in the mid-late 90's. It was a blind purchase based on the box-art alone, and it definitely made an impact. Battletech quickly became one of my favourite sci-fi universes across any platform/medium and has stayed that way ever since. I absolutely loved all the fluff text and story telling, and would spend hours reading through all the content in the Archives. I still think including all that content was incredible, as it really immersed me into the universe like no other game ever has. The other cool thing about the storytelling is the way that it unfolded. The placement of the main MW2 game is a little out of order, but all the Battletech games from this era (including the Mechcommander games, and even the Mechassault titles if you squinted and tilted your head) all told new chapters or different perspectives of the same story. It really was incredible to follow through, as one game would set up story elements that would be significant features of the next. It really captured my imagination as a child that obviously still carries on more than 25 years later.

I used to have Mechwarrior 2 Matrox Mystique edition (came free with the graphics card) which is how I experienced it. I do fondly remember the soundtrack, I also do remember that 'W' for wireframe did work in this version. It had textures and a skybox.

Lots of nostalgia here. I was blown away by the PC version.

i loved that game, but never tried to play it since. however i played the heck out of it, i think i finished it

Can you say Dire Wolf? Man, the HOURS I spent playing this game! It stopped working, so I got rid of the CD - but first I ripped the soundtrack to MP3 and still have it. I wish they'd redo this with modern graphics!

Hey there! First video I've seen of yours, absolutely love Battletech. I'm mostly a tabletop/MWO player, honestly have been looking for more games like Mech2 3 and 4. 5 was okay, but way different

You're tenacity with old soft/hardware is well worth it! Great review!

Heck yes, this was amazing 😍

This game was a major part of my college experience. I saved up to get a Pentium PC to play this series. The DOS version is my favorite, and I didn't like that they re-cast the female in-cockpit voice between the first and second versions. I will still play the soundtrack occasionally, and I hear those songs in my head any time I see any lumbering robot in a movie or other game.

Well, since building mech variants that suit both the mission profile and your playstyle can be such a huge part of the whole experience, I wonder if you'll revisit this again. The games of the MW2 series and MW3 with their absolute freedom in build variety are a good place to learn about weapon characteristics before knowing them becomes essential for effective builds in the more restricted customization systems of the later titles.

I had the 3DFX special edition free with my HP Pavilion P200 mmx, 32MB ram, 4MB voodoo orchard. It looked like the original Pentium version, same hud layout but better textures - not as detailed as the titanium version though. Sunk so many hours into this. At the time it was so advanced, and I still play the soundtrack regularly due to the incredible atmosphere. Still got the CD if you want an iso to try and run it, but I haven't had any joy!

Oh. My. Goodness. This was my favorite PC game pretty much forever. It pains me when i see the new MechWarrior and what it's become. 😢

This verse has ended. Let the next verse begin!

I spent DAYS of my youth playing MW and also BT2 - the trick w/ the "old classics" is that lacking the modern graphics we have now, they had to have outstanding gameplay to become popular, and eventually, classics

Liked and subscribed. Playing Mechwarrior 2 right now.

I cant believe you didn't talk about the vr battle pods that tour with this game still to this day

The music is still awesome... I am driving in my car... Think about the planet, the mission... And LRM20!

(6:44) I originally played this game for the first time with the VERY JOYSTICK. In fact, I might have even bought both the game and the stick together in one package? I don't know. I can't remember. However, I DO remember being incredibly excited to play this game after getting the Sidewinder set up and running. Man, the 90s was an AMAZING time to be alive for gaming. It seemed like every new game that came out pushed the envelope to a whole other level. Crazy fun times. 😎🤘☮ EDIT: The edition of the game I had was the Pentium Edition. This was right before 3D accelerator cards became ubiquitous, so I was jealous of the people who had the Orchid Righteous 3D edition of the game. I even helped a rich kid set up his PC to play that version of the game with his fancy (Thrustmaster?) force feedback joystick. Good times. 😎

Please play the other Mechwarrior 2 games... in my opinion all of them are tied for me as the best mech sims of all time, i just wish someone would make a source port already 😢. Also, great video.

Big kudos to you for making the effort to get ALL those versions working and getting footage from them. I've never been able to see a comparison of all of them in one convenient way like this, and finally I get to. It was really cool to see. Some of the textures of Titanium actually looked quite nice, but the tiling mars it. Somehow the clean look of the DOS/Pentium/ATI Rage editions really served it well at the time and also helped it age well. Otherwise, a lot of those added details was just too much, and makes Mercs look worse, imo. It even took me a long time to register that the weird striping I kept seeing was supposed to be camo, lol. I've been raving about MW2 and MW3 recently to my gf, so I'll watch the game review parts of this video again with her tomorrow! BTW, as a minor helpful correction since you did say it was hard for you to describe music, atmospheric isn't really a technical term but it's probably usually taken to mean more like ambient, which is definitely not what the MW2: 31CC soundtrack is, apart from two really "weird" tracks, one which I remember is for a moon mission - these are definitely ambient/atmospheric. Oh, and many of them ARE decently upbeat, driving, tense, but measured, and definitely not in driving rock style like much in MW2 Mercs or MW4 series, as you did point out. But I totally get what you mean: the music is unique enough to help set a unique atmosphere and mood, almost like its own genre, imo, really adding the alien feel of this low-ish tech future. Otherwise, I think you described the music well enough for people to get impact of it. In more detail I usually just say it combined orchestra with various ethnic/world instruments (particularly drums/percussion), industrial/metal sounds, and a few synths. BTW, MW2 is largely responsible for my getting into both music composition and scifi writing, so of course I've paid homage to my main influence by writing music inspired by it or even 100% in its style. I'll be more public about it all once I finish my website, but I do have a couple of tracks on SoundCloud if you'd like to check them out! Make sure to check out each piece's descriptions! soundcloud.com/rhoi-fajardo/sets/mechwarrior-inspired

The soundtrack is legendary 🙌🏾

I agree with everything you said. like 100% complete with the console experience. I feel validated. ;-)

Thank thank thank you for presenting this in the correct aspect ratio. You did a great job on this video. I am however going to say it cause it will bug me otherwise. CLANS..They are clans.. not tribes. I am sure the comments have already said that lol.

I remember my parents getting me the Microsoft Sidewinder joystick that came with MechWarrior 2. I spent many hours playing that game, pretty much always as Wolf clan. Ah, good times! I recall it came with a really cool info booklet too.

Had a 3Dfx version bundled with Diamond Monster 3D. Spent hours. No, days playing. Thus, that version with textures and moving skyes is only and original for me :)

Playing MechWarrior games is truly religios experience! 😊Concentrate on counting your blessings and you'll have little time to count anything else. Game developers will either give you what you ask or something far better. They frequently give us the desires of our heart, though not at the peculiar time we desired, but a better time. Blessed is he who has found his MechWarrior games; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! MechWarrior is life. You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe? Charles Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises😅

Been waiting for this review . I tried playing mechwarrior 2 was i was unable to un inververt my mouse. My favorite in the series is 4 mercenaries , its a shame the newer games are obsessed with random generation rather than a tight designed campaign

Best MW game to date imho. That epic intro by Digital Domain is still best intro of all time for me.

Modding MechWarrior 2 was pretty challenging but with a little gumption you can add your own custom mechs for the most part and even missions.

Enemy mech, destroyed. Oh so good, and I see you did not use the AutoCannon much, me either.

Not 100% sure but I think this game came with the first computer my parents bought. I remember being so frustrated with the game not understanding the controls or how to play it and almost gave up at times. But then over time I grew to love it and would make custom maps jet packing around on my summoner and destroying the enemy 😊