MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries (introduction to BattleTech)

[Warlockracy]

A little off-brand for this channel; based on an old script I wrote two years ago. Wasteland 3 is next.



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[Detroittruckdoctor]

This was one of the first games me and grandpa played on his computer in the 90s, i was 11.. He passed away in june. Thanks for helping me unlock memories

[Milez]

Aerospace actually does function in this game. Here's how it works. Unlike lance mechs, Aerospace will spawn far off in the distance at the beginning of any mission. Upon loading in, call the Aerospace to form on you or attack a target, and then wait roughly a minute or two. You'll see them roll up from the horizon on your radar. If you don't give it any orders, he won't show up or do anything.

[evilmiera]

I always loved the fake contract. Ostensibly Comstar and Outreach are supposed to be making sure you don't get those kinds of contracts, but you'd always imagine at least a few of them would drop in an unwary mercenary group's lap over a career. Its also always fun to beat the missions that are against the odds, like you can do in Mercs 4, and its especially fun when your character lies about it afterwards to not seem like a massive chump.

[mbarker_lng]

I worked on the 3DFX and Multiplayer patch of this game- nice to see someone still doing videos on it. This patch also added "dynamic salvage" which was a massive improvement over the scripted salvage, although you could break the game somewhat by being sure to only shoot off legs. The game was highly advanced in the rendering area, being able to render resolutions beyond what most machines at the time could handle. When I first saw the clouds reflect off the canopy glass in 3DFX mode, I just went "...WOW". One flaw in the design is it follows the table-top rules too closely allowing clever players to break the meta. Like Machine guns suck at 1pt damage per shot, but they shoot at a high rate. Thus, you could do more damage per second than the most powerful weapons in the game by strapping on 20 machine guns with no heat generation (again- TT rules). The same was true of inferno bomb 'overloads'. This is why later iterations of Mechwarrior have a hard-point system. The multiplayer was very buggy and unstable at first as they were basically retro-fitting a single-player game. It did end up being playable, but weird things could still happen.

[TheDarkkilla]

THIS WAS UNEXPECTED.

And yet I’m so hyped for him to cover this game. Even though I’m of the newer gen of BattleTech players, it’s always fun to see people who played through the older titles show off their love for the series.

[PirateGuy]

honored to represent Chungolia on the anti-clan action committee, thank u mr. warlockracy

[Chinothebad]

Mechwarrior 2. I remember hearing of this game on a forum 10 years back when one of its developers, Eric Peterson was around. He brought up the game when he talked about his experience as a developer. Sadly he passed away a few years later in 2015.

[rj-sx]

You’ve hinted your familiarity with Mechwarrior in your previous videos, it’s awesome that this series is getting some love. Superb work as always man

[solwindp-]

The ending cutscene for this game (Battle of Dinju Pass 42:46, look up Mechwarrior 2 ending cinematic if you wanna see it) is possibly the hardest FMV of all time. My favorite comment about it is "i watch this once a day instead of doing excercises. it keeps me in shape". The soundtrack (Gotterdammerung) is the best song in the entire Battletech series.
In general the older Battletech games had highly memorable cinematics, especially the MechCommander intro. I first saw that as a kid and have loved the Battletech universe ever since.

[nadav]

This video spurred me down a battletech rabbit hole, and coming back after a few weeks of lore videos its very funny in hindsight how Rasalhague cut the reward money in half after not believing in the clan story and then they proceeded to get mauled into almost non-existence when the clan invasion actually started

[noirscape_]

One thing thats kinda intriguing about Battletech is that a lot of its early mech design just straight up is Macross with a new coat of paint. They actually got into legal trouble with Harmony Gold, who was producing Robotech at the time (basically, Macross rewritten and mashed up with two other mech shows so they could get it syndicated on television) due to copyright issues (basically, Battletechs owners got the rights to the Macross mechs from the Japanese producers of the show, but the US didn't recognize Japanese copyright at the time, so the legal holder to those designs was Harmony Golds Robotech).

They eventually managed to settle and quietly redesigned the Macross mechs to look slightly different, but with Harmony Gold on its last legs (the animation department of HG is basically kept alive by a single person and seems solely to exist to pretend that Robotech is still relevant. Once that person dies, HG is expected to just turn into the real estate company it actually is these days), Battletech has been reintroducing those old mech designs.

[Kevbo]

Seriously, not only are Warlockracy's videos just crazy entertaining *and* informative, he puts out so many at once! It's absolutely incredible! This guy rules.

[tonicus]

In the final mission with Hanson's RoughRiders, if you shoot the cockpit out of Deadeye(quick before he kills you) you can actually get lucky and salvage the Catapult, which you wouldn't normally have access to for the first hour or two of the game.

[macbrown]

I still remember going over to my buddies house after school every day for weeks in a row so we could play this on his dad's computer. I was absolutely blown away, it made my Genesis games feel like toys in comparison. This wasn't a toy, it wasn't just a game, it was a new universe for me. One of my greatest gaming regrets is not having the hardware at home to enjoy the computer games of the 90's as they arrived. Thankfully I had some rich friends, at least. Thanks, Justin.

[acemaclace]

You probably know this but your approach to lore is seriously thorough, you present a lot of information in the way a user would naturally discover it. Very well done, Mechwarrior is one of my all-time favorite series.

[theodorehoag]

My father was/is super into battle tech when he was my age, some of my first small toys were minis from the ttrpg games. We still have all of his books and expansions sitting somewhere in his basement. Good times

[larrychilders]

Thanks Harmony Gold for taking this from us

[Slywyn]

Battletech by HBS is my favorite Mechwarrior/Battletech game too! Man it still has what I think is the best opening cutscene of any game I've ever played. Short, to the point, beautiful, tells you everything you need to know with a minimum of text.

[FF-pxqm]

I remember my dad had it. And it came with a booklet that was listing all the mercenary factions and people that where part of them. A little like a big recruitment pamphlet. It was great, even though I had no understanding of Battletech at that time. My brother and I emersed ourselves completely in that game.