MechWarrior Retrospective Part 1 - MechWarrior (1989)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2013
- We're kicking off a multi-part retrospective about the MechWarrior series, one of the longest running game franchises, and definitely one of my favorites. Part 1 is MechWarrior, the first game in the series developed by Dynamix for DOS PCs in 1989; the genesis of a genre.
- เกม
Buy a Locust. Run up to a Battlemaster. Machine gun his legs point blank. Rinse and repeat. Win game. Try it. It works like a charm.
Boxer in all the old pc games it was basically a given that there would always be one or more game-breaking play styles.
The first couple Ultima games had this issue. All of them really.
I confirm.. outfit your lance in Heavies to protect them.. but the fast Locust that outflanks the heavy opposing lances is super easy to do. They even ignore you most of the time when they pick up your heavy lance.
Amen. This was how I played every mission. My favorite lance was three Battlemasters (so my idiot teammates didn't get immediately killed) and a Locust so I could run behind heavier mechs and kneecap them... come to think of it, I've heard you can do the same thing in MW5 if you're careful.
To. This. Day.
But to be honest, it's kinda the big flaw with walking mechs. The biggest weakness will always be the legs.
@@marsguyphil Yup still possible. You can either try to hit the cockpit and get a quick kill or take out the legs which is always easier. This is why we will never have mechs in real life....legs can't beat treads or wheels lol.
The second Battletech game, The Crescent Hawks' Revenge, actually has a crossover mission with this game where the Hawks rescue the Blazing Aces from the Clans but Gideon doesn't survive the attack.
I know this video is old, but if it's still monitored, I learned (what was to me) a rather shocking bit of information. If you watch the semi-documentary 'Lostech: The BattleTech Center: 30 Years of Heavy Metal Mayhem' (Which came out in 2020), the original creators of Battletech said that their original goal, back in 1980(!), was to make the Battletech Center Simulation Pods FIRST.
The Board Game, the PnP RPG, all the Splatbooks, the entire HISTORY of the Battletech Universe, which many of us love, was created as a way to help fund the creation of the Pods!
So, the reality is completely backwards of what most of us thought! The Digital Simulation came FIRST and the Physical Media came after. Wild.
The only true mechwarrior retrospective in videos format. Let's not let it die.
Wait, the Power Hits CD release is rare and expensive?
_glances nervously at jewel case in cabinet_
*ComStar wants to know your location*
There was also an SNES MechWarrior game that follows the same story but the rendering was done with Mode 7, making the terrain so flat that Paper Mario would be jealous.
+Benjamin Fuller (Dallenson) I think I prefer the SNES game to this. I almost even prefer the other SNES/Genesis game (the Desert Strike ripoff) to this.
Played the hell out of the genesis battletech game when I was younger, the 2 player mode was the only way to play, myself and a friend played it right through to the end.
The SNES and Genesis top down shooters were pretty fun, but they never seemed like much more than a very slightly changed Desert Strike (the old isometric attack chopper game).
Sad to say I've never played the first person SNES game. I'm going to track it down, right now. :D
Oh man. The nostalgia just comes rolling in. MW1 was the first PC game I ever played. Great video.
Played the hell out of this as a teen. Didn't think it was that hard.... A battletech fan knows the head has the same armor no matter the size of mech. So you take that Jenner at the start and alpha head shot everything you run into. Later, you can use an AC5 Shadow Hawk or Marauder and headshot battlemasters at a range when they're 8 or so pixels talls. After a few missions you are rolling in salvage. On the negotiating screen, you can keep adjusting the payouts and trying to launch with no repercussion. So you can maximize the payout down to the hundred c-bills. For 1989 tech, this was an amazing sandbox when there were none.
it feels strange watching a video about a game from before the reviewer was even born but you make good content. liked and subbed
Beautiful start for this retrospective, can't wait to see it go further. :)
0:57 HOLY SHIT! A Valkyrie! xD
Disclaimer: Im fully aware of the affinity for the mecha franchise "Macross" that all Battletech creator shared.
MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries gets the closest, but none of them were quite this open.
Really well put together. Nice work.
Thank you! That's frankly awesome to hear, makes my day. :)
Great job on the video, nice seeing another contributor on PunkEffect!
This video needs to be seen. Liked and subbed.
I know! It is so complete.. and this is an AWESOME game!!
I always revisit these vids along with the marathon ones
Good job! Can't wait for your next video. MechWarrior 2 is the reason I fell in love with BattleTech.
After reading some of the comments, it’s really good to know that I wasn’t the only one who “swept the leg” as it were. 😂
Many thanks!
Bravo, very awesome review sir, you've earned yourself a subscriber.
Rip Westwood studios
🫡 😢
Awesome! There will be more bits of history about BattleTech and other spinoffs as the series goes on, but for the most part it's just about MechWarrior.
I loved this and the crescent Hawk games as a Kid. I wish they would either release them digitally or make more games in the style of this and Inception.
awesome review!! you sir are a great reviewer :D
I would play this game for hours, and taking contracts was half the fun. I never sold my Jenner. I killed everything with it. The trick to making money was to negotiate the highest contract possible with the faction you have the best reputation with, and walk away with the most salvage possible by shooting out legs or cockpits. I always made money, and by the last battle had a strong lance that would win with no trouble. And Gideons goal was to defeat the Mercs who destroyed his family, and recover an item to prove his birthright.
I just realized that the MW5 campaign is basically a fixed version of MW1. Even takes place in the same time period.
Thanks for the video.
Kesmai ganes modded this game into a multiplayer version that was playable on GEnie. Ran from 1991 to 1997.
Had a blast playing that.
@@bhorza so did I. Until my folks got the bill.
I played and still have in fact Mechwarrior for the SNES, which was quite a decent game, of course it was more streamlined than what you see in the original '89 game, but it still retained that mechwarrior feel. With the weapons and heat management during combat, targeting enemy body parts for focused damage, buying and costumizing mechs all that stuff. And it still retained that P&C adventure feel when you talk and "interact" with characters for info regarding a mission.
Great to see reviews of old games like this! While I was _generally_ a fan of Mech 1 back when it came out, I was only like 10 years old at the time so I don't think I ever made it through the storyline and it was even pretty hard for me to just work my way up to the heavy/assault 'mechs to play those. So even though I liked the game at the time, all your negative callouts are certainly true and I wouldn't necessarily recommend the game to someone nowadays.
(Conversely, in terms of gameplay Battletech: Crescent Hawks' Revenge aged much better, and _is_ worth someone's time if they're into older games like this. At least, if you can ignore the unreasonably unfair RNG.)
Your point about how Mech 1 is true to the universe in terms of constantly breaking your budget just to keep your 'mechs repaired was definitely a memorable part of the game, though I'm not sure it netted out more positive than negative. I distinctly remember cycle-of-doom failure scenarios (where I barely won a scenario, earning less money than I needed for repairs, which resulted in my being unable to take a profitable new mission, resulting in progressively less and less money until I just had to quit out of frustration.) As a professional game designer, I definitely view that as an _extremely_ difficult thing to get right in a game, even though it makes for great entertainment when it's the Millennium Falcon or Firefly scraping by. I suppose a few games have done that mechanic some justice in recent years (Darkest Dungeon and FTL come to mind) but it's definitely tough.
enjoying your vids, i am like 33 now, like u the first time i played a mechwarrior game was mech 2
I am really digging Crescent Hawk's Inception. I was already a fan of the classic Ultima games so it's a good fit. Crescent Hawk's Revenge? *Yegh!* Just play the first two MechCommander games, they're free, look good and have a easy-to-use UI. I do not like giving Crescent Hawk's Revenge the title of "First RTS", there's not enough to qualify imo.
I was woefully unprepared since I made all my money in the mech trading market. Never really had any actual combat practice.
Inception was pretty fun in the battle setting, but the RPG bits were kind of exhausting. Revenge is brutal, from the first mission where you have to protect your dropship you can tell it's going to be evil.
5:35 Selling your mech at the start makes sense because your team is still too weak for missions but I think missions are not a waste of time since they will build your stats and the stats of your team mates for the final battle which is hard.
Also. The game was developed by Dynamix, a Sierra Company... No wonder everyone looks like they'd be in Space Quest III with their sunburnt red skin and all that. (I know it's because of 16-bit colors but still).
The game where I fell in love with the shadow hawk.
well made vid nice one
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Of course MW would have aged. That is like criticizing a carburetor-based car from the 1950s for not having fuel-injection - a technology made and adopted much later. For its time back in the late 80s where its target platform - the PC was far less powerful, this game had all the necessary elements to make it remarkably entertaining. It was considered a ground-breaker with many of its game design elements found in today's games. Just my $0.02
I played the SNES game when I was a kid. It was like the poor man's version of MechWarrior, but I didn't care. I remember it being incredibly difficult even on the first mission.
I always thought the same thing about Earthsiege. It gives us a look at what the MechWarrior franchise might have been if Dynamix had held onto it (the early "Clans" demo also has a very Earthsiege look and feel to it). Now, I love Dynamix but I'm glad that MechWarrior got handed off.
I played Earthsiege, 2nd best mech play I ever had, a close second to Battletech.
Not only the videos, you're clearly a brilliant guy, with a large VG knowlodge and openmindedness for the past.
If you like review BUDGET (and B series) title for fun, I suggest you Alpha Prime :D
Oh my God.... This game was released before DOOM 93
After I delinked the Google Plus account, I went into account settings and had the opportunity to change my channel name. It's a lot different than it was before, where you could change it from your channel dashboard.
Hey when are you going to cover MechWarrior 5: Mercs now that it’s out?
Yeah I feel like the update it got with the steam launch is like ”now it’s actually out” lol
@@bryo4321 It's funny how many of the same mechanics, for better or for ill, MW5 shares with this original game. Most notably the procedural mission generation and how repetitive that can make the game.
The actual combat kicks ass though and the recent expansion has remedied the core issues somewhat. PGI have a solid foundation to build off now and I'm hoping they can find someone who can actually write dialogue and story worth a shit for whatever they do with the series next.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
@@wabbit234 Felt exactly the same! It's really dumb because they spent alot of effort mapping out the entire IS but the missions themselves just doesn't work.
I tried Battletech after, and really, if the two games were combined it would be a perfect one
I think you still need to take missions to improve your lance mates skills. You can improve a poor/poor skills rating to good/good by the ending which is useful for a tough fight at the end. I didn't know about mech trading to get cash, that could be useful in the beginning to get better mechs.
omg mechwarrior. my childhood wanting to figure it out and having to own 500 + keyboard thing
kicks self. may have the power hits manual laying around but no longer the disks or box... remember finding it in a blow out bin at a k-mart on its last Dying days before it went out of business. it was the floppy version. back in the 90s some where.
Maybe you’ll mention it in another video, but surprised you didn’t bring up the SNES port.
I did that once before, I'm going to try it again, which might make me go back to being "fofxstudios."
This game looks pretty interesting, despite its flaws. Do any of the other Mechwarrior games have the same sort of open-ended structure that this one does? I'm kind of a sucker for that.
MechWarrior games are always so awesome, but they still can't quite include all the amazing detail of the tabletop game. Most video games based on pen and paper RPGs are like that. There are so many mechs, so many mechanics that will never make it into the video games.
Makes me wish I didn't live in a relative backwater, so I could play tabletop games with people.
There is a PC adaption of the tabletop game called MegaMek. Online play possible. You should check it out 😉
Found it curious you kept saying both of the Battletech games came before this, but only Inception was prior to Mechwarrior 1- Revenge came out after it. Really easy to look up the release dates and see Crescent Hawks' Revenge is from 1990, the year after MW1's release. This is part of why Revenge features that easter egg mission referencing MW1- because it was made after it.
I think you're reading too much into some nonspecific syntax.
The experownce of Battletech is not complete without playing tabletop. Rules may be intimidating. There is a channel called "Battletech fan" that shows a visual guide that makes things simpler to understand.
What # cycles do you use in Dosbox for this? I've never been quite sure how fast the game was originally designed to be run. Cheers
firegoat10000 remember when playing in DOSbox, to change the midi type from intelligent to normal or whatever it's called, otherwise the game crashes after every mission.
Yeah the isometric ones aren't that much different than any "Strike" game, but they are pretty fun if you're for arcade style games, but the difficulty is absolutely insane.
It's obvious that this guy has never learned the easy exploit for the the old school Mechwarrior. To quote dude from Karate Kid....Sweep the Legs!!
Yeah you'd have to leapfrog it. Copy the files from a computer with 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. THEN put the 3.5 disk into a computer with a CD-ROM drive. THEN put it on your modern DOSBox computer.
Where is your lets play of mechw 2 mercs? seriously it was the best lets play of that game!
Question, what happens when the time limit reaches Zero?
You mentioned Star Control 2, in there it has to do with galactic genocide. What is this time limit tied to?
Never waited around for it myself, but I saw a screengrab, and IIRC it was a gray text blurb.
In Star Control 2, the Ur-Quan aliens slowly take over the universe as the time limit expires. Eventually the game just becomes impossible to complete because they kill off story-important civilizations.
Still a better plot and gameplay than MW5...
Chances are the diskettes don't even work any more. Not sure how you would make a modern system work with such a drive though since many don't even have a floppy connection on the mainboard. I guess there must be a USB one lol.
How can I run this game on DOSBOX perfectly? Because my game crashes in the middle of any mission.
Ha! I played the first RPG on my Atari ST of the time, but I was disappointed. When I bought it I was expecting basically a 3D sim and got a top down RPG.
Since I loved 3D games, my first game I ever bought was a 3D game after all (1987's Star Glider), MW "the rpg" was a let down for me. Still good game though.
As for the 3D game shown here, I barely remember playing it, even though I wasn't THAT young (about 13) but not much more. Probably I played it on a friends' DOS PC.
Right?
Wow.... There truly is a video for everything... For whatever reason I was feeling nostalgia for this game and the Battletech series and wanted to see a walkthrough or something and this one pops up... awesome retrospect!! Along the way I found that there was a 68000 port for Sharp CPUs in Japan... Haven't played it but it certainly looks a heck of a lot better... th-cam.com/video/KI8-Oq3G9CI/w-d-xo.html
That sounds... creepy! I've seen it on Amazon US, but there are only a few copies of the CD-ROM version and they're priced pretty high. The 5.25 version is cheaper but uglier(boxwise), and really, who has the capability to still play it from the old floppy diskettes?
LGR and me, perhaps....
Actually, the last fight in MW1 was the easiest if you did it right. Blow off the lead Battlemaster's head and then use his immobile mech as a full body shield. It was pretty cheap, but after that meatgrinder of a game, nothing's too cheap.
Also, the two Crescent Hawk games were fun, but pretty difficult too. I liked their pre-Clan setting.
what game on 8.00 ?
Still, I wish now we had more of these games, single player Mechwarrior games with random/dynamic campaigns, or something like Elite but with Mechs, but all we get now days are free to play multiplayer games.
Meh.
I ask anywhere and everywhere that I can: does anyone know where to get a copy of MechWarrior 1 (1989) and how to get it working on Windows? I have access to Windows XP, if Windows 8.1 or 10 are completely unworkable. (I kept my old laptop so that I could continue to play MechWarrior 2-4. I, too, was introduced to Battletech through MechWarrior 2 on my Uncle's computer, but my parents wouldn't let me have my own copy, ever, so it wasn't until I went to college in 2007 that I was able to play the series (at which point I played EVERYTHING that I could find and get working, but that only involved 2, 3, and 4, and all of their expansions and spin-offs that worked for PC. I am still in search of this one).
You can download disc images somewhere on the internet (probably), but it's very hard to find the original copy of the game. Check eBay, sometimes they show up and go for a good bit of money. As for getting it to run, use DOSbox.
Maybe I'm hunting the wrong areas of the internet. Downloadable disc images is how I got to play the other three titles and their expansions, but I never could find a copy of the very first one... For that matter, I've only ever been able to play the Titanium Edition of the MW2 titles, as well. MechVM could play those without any trouble, but it always gave me grief if I tried to play the DOS or 3D versions of the game.
what the hell is this soundcard on the intro? some kinda adlib or something
Combat was easy if you were smart. You could wreck heavies like the Warhammer and Battlemaster with a bloody Locust. Or once you got a Marauder just stand-off with the 2 PPCs and AC5 and leg everything.
Back when this came out it didn't look this cheesy... Yeah, I know it did, but it didn't seem like it at the time.
I've noticed that all the mechs in this game that made it to mechwarrior 2 have an "LLC" at the end of their name. Does anyone know what it means?
Thomas Olson It's Roman numeral 2, then C for Clan. So Marauder "Two C" is the clan tech redux of the original Marauder. The Clan versions are usually heavier and have more weapons.
Thomas Olson sarna.net is your friend. Everything you want or need to know about Battletech is there.
1
Doesn't hold up as a Mech game?
It is the Mech game.
I changed my display name. Well, I was forced to. Stupid Google +. Stupid TH-cam design update.
You are old. Feel bad about that. How dare you submit to the steady march of time.
THE YANDEX VOICE TRANSLATOR THINKS YOU'RE A CHICK.
The combat is not that hard. Even I was able to pull it off as a child and build a lance up to win the last battle.
Well, except for MW4. What a load of shit that was...
Ah, except for Mech 4 Mercenaries, which was a load of BRILLIANCE.... mixed with trace amounts of shit.
The Examined Life (of Gaming)
True, MW4: Mercs was fun, but still suffered from the gawd-awful mech designs (Mad Dog, what did they do to you?) and the loadout system. It also lacked dynamic salvage. I was playing through the game again recently (with the Mektek 3.1 pack), but several missions simply won't end and thus I am stuck. :/
So, you planning on doing the next MechWarrior games as well? What about the related games, like MechCommander (IMO one of the best RTS games ever) or even MechAssault?
I'm kidding on that last one. May it burn in the nuclear fires of Galedon V.
The Examined Life (of Gaming) Also the weapon system was lazy. "sticky" lasers made everything insta-hit and ballistic weapons were retextured lasers.
speakerbox2468 Yeah that was weak. Pulse lasers and machine guns were a boring load of boring crap. The interesting weapons (like Long Tom) were useless, and the regular lasers and missiles were decent but bland.
speakerbox2468
In MechWarrior 4?
your reviews are good, but unfortunately I just do not find you funny at all. I find myself cringing to be honest every time you try to crack a joke, because you seem to think you are funny, when you're not.. and then I start feeling bad for you.. and then you have your out takes at the end and I try to stop the videos before it gets to those parts. sorry dude. Nice reviews of the old games though...
Hmm, that sounds like more of a you-problem.
was it ever anything else?.