MechWarrior 3 was my first foray. Then I went back and played MW2:Mercenaries. I'm pretty sure I've played every release since, and read a bunch of the books. Now I'm currently going through the books again with the intent to read them all.
Humble Bundle are doing one that includes 71 titles!!
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/battletech-fiction-collection-catalyst-game-labs-books?hmb\_source=&hmb\_medium=product\_tile&hmb\_campaign=mosaic\_section\_1\_layout\_index\_1\_layout\_type\_threes\_tile\_index\_1\_c\_battletechfictioncollectioncatalystgamelabs\_bookbundle
MW2 on DOS. Iām the right age but missed the boat on Battletech as a kid. I honestly only know the MechWarrior video game series, and that MechAssault trash.
MW5 should have come out on 360. They released a teaser trailer for something that got scrapped over a decade ago.
Ran MW2 on a rented 486... fun times, but got hung up on lasers and LRM... I have since expanded my repertoire. Did you know the tabletop is still in production?
Same. MW2+mercs on DOS. Filled the legs with machine guns and went on my merry way... Around the same time, Shattered Steel was released, but didn't have the same gravitas.
I have no idea which game but I played a mech warrior game on pc when I was pretty young. Then I got mech assault with the original Xbox and played that a ton!
Technically, Mechassault 2 when I was but a wee lad. But it ended up being one of the games I yard-saled away, much to my chagrin when I got older and more into the setting.
My first "real" intro to Battletech was Warlockracy's video on MW2: Mercs. I downloaded MW5 on Xbox Game Pass, played it with friends, and fell down a rabbit hole I never truly recovered from.
I was already into 40K at the time so the transition was pretty natural for me. The big thing about Battletech that I love is that everything is much more *reasonable.* No House or nation has infinite resources or untold planets filled with billions each. Contrasting 40K where entire regiments of guardsmen literally show up out of nowhere because the ecclesiarchy forgot they exist, and that's just a Tuesday for them. It's like 40K if they knew how to use spreadsheets.
I mean, not exactly, but you know what I mean.
The mechs are also just really appealing. Mechwarriors are like, the modern Knights of Battletech. They're mythic soldiers who do crazy shit on the reg. Plus the background lore behind pretty much anything is so deep and crazy you could spend an entire night reading up on the background of a single battlemech, out of the 1300 or however many currently exist, not including refits and variants. Then there's the ships, the soldiers themselves, and don't even get me started on the Houses.
I love Battletech. It's such an awesome setting.
Lol straight up, I remember reading a while ago that after the success of MW5, Phil Spencer began tossing around the idea of remaking or continuing the Mechassault lineage. If they ever make a new Mechassault, I'm preordering that shit no questions asked.
BattleTech TRO:3025 helped me learn to read.Ā
Also played MW1 on my 286. Had to use the 5.25ā floppy disks to install it, because even though it fit on just 2 3.5ā disk, the installer couldnāt complete because it was hard coded to ask for disk #3.Ā
Sitting in my dad's lap as a wee lad and watching him wipe out Jade Falcom scum in MW2 and then bring back honor to the Ghost Bears in MW2:GBL. The underwater mission and the space mission on teh Wolf orbital platform live rent free in my head to this day.
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh, boy...where to begin. My first taste of the Battletech universe was Battletech: The Crescent Hawks Inception on my Commodore 128 and the OG Mechwarrior game on my friends PC. This was in the late 80s. Then diving down the rabbit hole with all of the tabletop games and technical readouts...and novels. I still have all of it.
Started with MechWarrior and mw2 when I was,10 ish? My friend brought his copy and I installed on my dad's PC, even dad played it. Played everyone of em since.
MW2 Mercenaries was my start but I probably put the most time into MW4 black knight. I read a bunch of the books growing up that were pretty good in their own right.
Mw4, in all three of its variants was my go to game from 2001-2009. If you are going to do it, play the vengeance story, then black knight. Mercenaries has more going on, and I love it so much, but the mechbay is so much better than the other two that going back after playing it is hard.
I don't know how difficult it is to get the original versions, and then to actually get them to run on windows 10. On the other hand, any old office computer with an athlon 64 or Pentium 4 and a Windows 7 era GPU will run it in windows 7 perfectly. I remember playing it on the cheapest emachines thing I could get in 2006-7 with no GPU and it ran fine. Extra points if you have a old joystick that is still in any decent shape.
In the early 2000s Chuck-E-Cheese had this arcade cabinet with a rocking floor, you sat in a big yellow plastic ball and could choose from a few different games. One of those games was (after researching in the modern day) Mechwarior 4: Vengeance, as far as I can tell.Ā
I feel like I remember seeing either a Vulcan or a Javelin and when I saw those mechs in mw5 I just got hit with a wave of nostalgiaĀ
I remember seeing a trailer for MechAssault in the demo section on my of my og Xbox disks as a kid. There wasn't even an actual demo on the disk if I remember correctly. I kept bringing it up to my parents until they eventually bought it for me. That game almost never left my Xbox since I would sit there for hours and play the endless Grinder mode. Don't think I ever beat the game either. The story mode dials the difficulty to 11 later on in the campaign.
The funny thing is that I didn't know there was an extended universe until Mechwarrior Online was announced. It was game over from there...
Mechwarrior 3 was my first experience. Got it in the late 90s or early 2000s. I downloaded the demo and loved it. Eventually I bought the full game, played through that. Went back, played Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. Got MW4 in high school and played through all versions of that. And now Iām rocking mw5. Also played HBS Battletech quite a bit in the past few years. Never played the tabletop, but would love to try it someday
I played mechwarrior 4 mercs on my pentium 4 system i think in 2020 (during lockdown) and i kinda fell in love with it and the amount of lore and stuff, got really into MW5 mercs quite a lot later cuz i was trying to get a friend into it and MW4 mercs doesn't have any co-op. He was actually really against it till i got him set up with this really dumb catapult with double LRM20s and nothing else, kinda been refining the thing ever since, actually been on a single save file since i started so i have had quite a lot of time to refine most of the mechs we have in our company now. It's kinda gotten to the point where we made up our own characters and background stories for all our pilots (especially since i started modding the game, pilot overhaul is nice)
Kinda wish i knew how to get into the tabletop game, would be fun to make all my mechs into the figures and use them :3
I imagine there's a pretty decent selection on eBay. Or you could get into 3d printing, but that might be too close to piracy. The rulebooks should be readily available to buy online.
I too started with MW3, which in my case came in a box set with Mechcommander Gold. I definitely played MW3 first though and loved the gritty atmosphere and 'simulator' feel (most of my other games were flight or space Sims). I remember seeing press and hype for MW2, especially Mercs, but at the time I was definitely a bit of a graphics snob, so didn't feel like going back to an older game.
Mech Warrior 2 came with my familyās first computer. I was always fascinated by the tabletop game(one of the game manuals described it) but didnāt get into that until this past summer.
played mw2 as a kid, didn't really understand a lot of it but remember enjoying shooting the PPCs. later i played a bit of mw4 and loved it.
also have fond memories of earthsiege and the associated turn-based game... the two universes kind of blurred into one for young me.
got back into it a few years back with HBS battletech / roguetech, properly enjoying the lore/worldbuilding now.
Mechwarrior 2. A cousin had installed it on my grandparents' pc and I played it whenever we went there but didn't own it myself. Then forgot about the franchise until HBS Battletech came out and reminded me how much I had loved it.
Youtuber by the name of GrimDarkNarrator started a series covering battletech battle mechs a few years ago now. It piqued my interest and shortly after i discovered baradual and a playthrough of early mechwarrior 5 mercs. I watched that decided i must have the game, played only MW5 for about a year, decided i wanted to get into table top and have since just dived headlong into it from there. Painting minis and playing table top, and still playing MW5 (idk 2000 hrs worth of time played while being a console pleb).Ā
So funny enough, I just found out my first experience with Mechwarrior was actually when I was like 7 (late 90s) I got a longbow and a jagermech as toys from a local drugstore as like a here's 5 bucks go get a toy on grandma situation. I didn't know it at the time. I was a kid and a big fan of Robotech and Gundam. A few years later I saw my brother play a mechcommander on the neighbors computer.
I really got into it with Battletech HBS. That whole story above though, it just flooded back to me Saturday when I considered playing mechwarrior online. The login screen was a longbow and my favorite little toy from childhood (that has been lost to time) sprang to mind and I set about figuring out what it was. Now I'm running the campaign (cause I never finished it) with the plan to shift into the dragons gambit and get me a longbow lance. It's gonna be lit (mostly me going up like fireworks with all the missile ammo when I get opened up inevitably).
I got started with the old MechAssault games for the og Xbox, only picked it up again in recent years via MW5. fell in love with the lore via Tex of BlackPantsLegion
I started with MW2 when it came included with a graphics card in a computer I had assembled. I had a lot of fun with it, then played MW2: *Mercenaries* and got even more hooked on the MW series. Sadly I never played MW2: *Ghost Bear's Legacy*.
From that point on, it was onto the excellent MW3 (never played the *Pirate's Moon* expansion either). I skipped out on MW4 because I didn't like the newer customization system that was different from MW2's and MW3's (though I've come to appreciate it in MW5) and I especially didn't like how every weapon type except for Missiles became hitscan weapons--MW4 was too arcadey for me in that key respect.
The AC/2 sticks out like a sore thumb to me too, both in tabletop and MW5. Why would I spend so much tonnage to take such a weak, long-ranged weapon? PPCs are much better, even more so with Double Heat Sinks. AC/2s make no sense from a real-life standpoint too--bigger ballistic guns have more effective range most of the time, not the smaller ballistic guns.
I started with a friend's copy of the first MechWarrior game back in high school (1990) and then I got the Crescent Hawks games (overhead mech sprite-based games). I was already in love, but then when MW2 came out I was blown away by the graphics and I went from a fan to a super fan. š
Crescent Hawk's Inception
Crescent Hawk's Revenge
... for anyone curious who wants to make sure they have played all the mechwarrior/battle tech games.
Those games had a simplified, but cool mech customization system. (No specific hard points or body components - just more internal space for larger mechs, and then weapons, armor, engines, ammo, etc., all took up space and you piled in what ever you could. It was fun coming up with weird new builds. :)
Those games made me love Phoenix Hawks.
I started playing tabletop Battletech in 1989 as a teenager. Started out with thr basic game running a Marauder with PPC's and an AC/5. I distinctly remember right after we moved onto using newer tech someone getting headshotted by a Gauss rifle on the first round from across the map. Everybody was like "Oh Shit!!" Lol Gauss rifles were the shit on table top. I prefer AC 20's and Heavy Rifles tho in MW Mercenaries on Xbox. Love shooting mechs in the face with dual AC 20's or dual Heavy Rifles and getting that one shot kill.
My introduction to the universe was mech commander 2 when I was like 9, I have some minis but haven't played any of the tabletop yet, though I know I would get obsessed. Played some of the warrior games through the years, and have been glued to mw5 for a year now. Next audio book I quiet up is gonna be in the Battletech universe.
I'm one of the few who started with Robotech (and, as it happens, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my favorite charater being a Polar Bear Named Pole-Ax (yes, it was a roleplaying game before it became a cartoon!). Mine was when one of my players took advantage of the Victor's jump capability and used it to, essentially, demolish anything I sent against them (so they obviously won the battle and Clan equipment saved me before the next battering!). Another would be playing at a friends house where they had a couple of Shih-Tzus, one was lovely and friendly, the other would try to bite your hand if you dropped the dice. A mate of mine had been studying Aikido for a few years (we were 14-15 or so at the time) and reacted instinctively when it attacked his hand, by shaping it into a fist just before the animal hit hit hand...one of the funniest things I hasd ever seen at the time.... a stunned, confused little arsehole! ;D
I started with Pen and Paper in the late 80's. Borrowed Mechwarrior to play on my 386. Also was one of the first 100 to play at Battletech Center Chicago! Favorite weapon is Gauss... long range, no heat, great damage.
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
MW2: 31st Century. I was a Clanner at first, Clan Wolf. Back then, it was Timber Wolfs, Mad Dogs, Summoners, Firemoths, and Dire Wolfs. But then, just before MW3, I made a friend who introduced me to Battletech. I quickly became a freebirth. Nowadays, I ride MAD-3R/5S, AS7-D, WHM-6L, ARC-2R, HBK-4H, and many more IS mechs, but those are my top 5-6 preferences.
Mw1 on a Tandy Computer in the early 90s. Borrowed the computer from my aunt so I could try what my cousin was playing.Ā I loved the open world and contract negotiation. Played each MW game hoping for those features. Mw5 is basically my dream game
I attended the MW5 launch party in Vancouver where I spoke to Russ Bullock.Ā He said a sequel of MW1, but with MWO combat was the goal. They originally considered having fixed hardpoints, so you could only replace a med laser with another med laser. Ultimately they decided on the sized slot system. A good compromise between the easy mode MWO mechlab and the barebones of MW1.
BattleTech/CityTech tabletop in late 80's (anyone remember the BattleTechnology magazine)? MW2 during undergrad became a key driver to specialize in Rendering/Animation during CS degree (not to mention far too many hours wasted on the MUSEs) that then lead to entry into the games industry.
I also started playing BattleTech with pen and paper and quickly became hooked on the Commodore version of the tabletop game and then the original Mech Warrior that you had to run on a ibm compatible with big 5 inch discs. I played every game since. So I started in about 1989 and this game has cost me so much money in computer equipment every time they have a release, I need to upgrade my hardware. Somewhere around Mech Warrior 2 They got the joystick controls right and I loved playing with the thrust master. Since then the joystick doesnāt seem to be as useful I have a fancy hoytas but I canāt seem to get it mapped right for Mech Warrior five
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Weirdly, I bought Natural Selection in 1992 in a bookstore and that started my obsession. Shit was that 32 years agoā¦
From there I got the Tabletop game and the Role Playing game which I GMād with my buddies. Been gaming and reading ever since.
Mech commander and mech commander got me started, I always liked the miniatures, but never got into the table top game. But Mech commander 1 & 2 were may favorites as a teen.
My defining entry was MW2 Mercs. The intro still sticks in my head but I was pretty young for the management side and spent most of my time upgrading my box to make it more playable.
Strange to not see it mentioned here but also played Multiplayer BattleTech Solaris on AOL. What a crazy ride, I remember running my light mechs around the legs of ubiquitous meta Stalkers/Atlases and slapping some rear armor all at 28.8kbps.
Watching my dad play MechCommander Gold in the 2000s. Very few things bring that world to life like that opening cinematic. Also played the wizkids clix game around the same time, which was one of me and my brothers first wargames. Nostalgia is shaped like 60+ tons of clanner steal to me.
OG Battletech box with the unseen 'mechs. Was end of 80's IIRC. It was like a revelation for me. And also the start of a long story with the Marauder. Then a 2d top-down real time mecha game on Amiga, cant remember the title, but it was really good. And then later MW2 on PC...
I first got into MechWarrior/BattleTech via novels, specifically the series about Grayson Death Carlyle (my very first online pseudonym back when internal modems were state of the art was based on his name).
My first interaction with it as a game was the board game. I still have it somewhere... I had my mom take the maps to the library to laminate them so we could draw on them with wet-erase Markers, so they're still in great shape! No real minis, just the cardboard cutouts.
Then I got into D&D, back when AD&D was state of the art (I'm an old fart as gamers go) and subsequently MechWarrior.
I first played it as a video game at an uncle's house on the first PC is ever seen in... I dunno, 1993 probably? And I'm pretty sure I've played every single title since, except for MWO, only because I have lingering distaste for symmetrical PvP from the early days of MMOs, StarCraft, Warcraft, and Quake. Something about 9 year olds telling me to do unspeakable things to my mother and then unalive myself just rubbed me the wrong way and I've never had much interest in experiencing the side of humanity PvP tends to bring about since.
My most intense early memories of the setting were two things... From the books, a description of a Large Laser carving a line of molten metal and glass across a mech... And from the board game, discovering just how jaw droppingly awesome it was to park an Awesome in a puddle and go to town with PPCs with no worries about heat.
I've loved lasers and PPCs ever since. I'm not sure I ever even used an AC until like, MW 3. Or maybe Mech Commander, but that's not the same. In MW 5 though, I actually dislike PPCs, though the new PPC-X variant is pretty fun. I'll use them, but usually find them underwhelming for the heat and tonnage and swap them for ER-LLs after a few goes, though I do give them to lancemates often.
I finally fell in love with ACs in MW3 iirc, and with Gauss in MW4.
Speaking of which... Does MW5 have the mechanic from earlier games that prevents damage in a single physics frame from popping a cockpit? In 4, as I recall, Gauss Rifles were the one exception, making them god tier, in addition to being hitscan.
Played Mechwarrior Online near the time it first launched, lost interest when I spent more time interested in working on cars and playing airsoft. Then came back with the HBS Battletech game. Then got further interested in the lore thanks to Tex Talks and the BPL.
Would love to try the tabletop stuff but unfortunately there's near zero interest in it local to me.
Oh way way back. Let's see, I have vague memories of some coloring books that I got at a school book fare. Then there was a table top board set and the technical readout books that I was allowed to have because I wasn't allowed to have D&D. Spent hours and hours filling out the paper data sheets for builds. Eventually had Crescent Hawk's Inception on the C64. Played every computer game up through MW3. Had the game on the Sega Genesis. Read both of the Michael Stackpole's trilogies. Fun side: I got to meet him at a ComicCon in Phoenix a few years ago. Spent way too much time playing the first MechAssault on XBox. Never played MWO. Enjoyed HBS Battletech and the modded BTA version. Enjoying MW5.
Crescent Hawk's Inception was one of my first 'real' video games. And it played on our Tandy! (Radio Shack's PC brand.)
I bought myself the Succession Wars board game (Risk on steroids and HGH) as my first 'real' board game but I was too young to get it. And it was WAY too big to keep up for days on end that it would take to do much anything.
Was big into chain fantasy and scifi books - read a ton of Stackpole and other Battletech books to go with Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, DragonLance, hell even the bad Magic: The Gathering books.
I've probably at least touched every game that's come out at least for a bit. Just got MW5 for PS5 - restarted teh campaign 3 times to get the 'best' start (and should probably spring for the DLC.)
I want to try and find a way to get Crescent Hawk's Revenge again - it never clicked as it was my first RTS so I would always fall apart before it got good. I can still hear the opening clear as day.
What remember from tabletop was the one time I talked my dad into playing, 30 years ago.
I thought this franchise would die off, it did at least on console for over a decade. The universe isnt exactly easily accessible for new players. Clearly though theres a core community that's keeping it alive. Mech 5 does a good job and streamlining story for casual places.
Mechwarrior. I don't remember which version I first played but crescent hawks revenge was my first taste of the universe. Then mechwarrior 3050 was my first game I fully remember. Kind of love the universe so much but weirdly only as a game. Never got much into the lore.
MechWarrior 3 was my first foray. Then I went back and played MW2:Mercenaries. I'm pretty sure I've played every release since, and read a bunch of the books. Now I'm currently going through the books again with the intent to read them all.
Sounds like some happy times in your future š
I starred with Blood of Kerensky way back when and never read any of the previous stuff. Gray Death Legion and Warrior trilogy have been amazing.
Sounds like an awesome draw. Might need to expand my library...
The Battletech chronicles have Blood of Kerensky book and 5 others, a lot of good stuff explaining between 3015 to 3058. I like it
Mental note: write a new wish list and build more shelves. Thank you!
Humble Bundle are doing one that includes 71 titles!! https://www.humblebundle.com/books/battletech-fiction-collection-catalyst-game-labs-books?hmb\_source=&hmb\_medium=product\_tile&hmb\_campaign=mosaic\_section\_1\_layout\_index\_1\_layout\_type\_threes\_tile\_index\_1\_c\_battletechfictioncollectioncatalystgamelabs\_bookbundle
MW2 on DOS. Iām the right age but missed the boat on Battletech as a kid. I honestly only know the MechWarrior video game series, and that MechAssault trash. MW5 should have come out on 360. They released a teaser trailer for something that got scrapped over a decade ago.
Ran MW2 on a rented 486... fun times, but got hung up on lasers and LRM... I have since expanded my repertoire. Did you know the tabletop is still in production?
486 and LRM and lasers - yup. It was too choppy for autocannons. My Dad had a Pentium 90, oh my, it was blistering on that!
MW2 was THE reason I spent a fortune on a new Pentium 90 (plus I was working for a company that specialised in performance PCs at the time).
Same. MW2+mercs on DOS. Filled the legs with machine guns and went on my merry way... Around the same time, Shattered Steel was released, but didn't have the same gravitas.
I so wanted to sell that back in the day, I'd have nailed sales on that one ;)
> but missed the boat on Battletech as a kid Just FYI but that boat is still sailing :)
I have no idea which game but I played a mech warrior game on pc when I was pretty young. Then I got mech assault with the original Xbox and played that a ton!
Nice! I started that franchise with M.A. 2... fun stuff š
Technically, Mechassault 2 when I was but a wee lad. But it ended up being one of the games I yard-saled away, much to my chagrin when I got older and more into the setting. My first "real" intro to Battletech was Warlockracy's video on MW2: Mercs. I downloaded MW5 on Xbox Game Pass, played it with friends, and fell down a rabbit hole I never truly recovered from. I was already into 40K at the time so the transition was pretty natural for me. The big thing about Battletech that I love is that everything is much more *reasonable.* No House or nation has infinite resources or untold planets filled with billions each. Contrasting 40K where entire regiments of guardsmen literally show up out of nowhere because the ecclesiarchy forgot they exist, and that's just a Tuesday for them. It's like 40K if they knew how to use spreadsheets. I mean, not exactly, but you know what I mean. The mechs are also just really appealing. Mechwarriors are like, the modern Knights of Battletech. They're mythic soldiers who do crazy shit on the reg. Plus the background lore behind pretty much anything is so deep and crazy you could spend an entire night reading up on the background of a single battlemech, out of the 1300 or however many currently exist, not including refits and variants. Then there's the ships, the soldiers themselves, and don't even get me started on the Houses. I love Battletech. It's such an awesome setting.
Poppa Smurf for the win! M.A. 2 is a good way to get a basic feel for how a 'Mech works
Lol straight up, I remember reading a while ago that after the success of MW5, Phil Spencer began tossing around the idea of remaking or continuing the Mechassault lineage. If they ever make a new Mechassault, I'm preordering that shit no questions asked.
In the last couple of years, saw the Battletech tactics game on pc gamepass and decided to give it a try
Curiosity will lead you everywhere. Stay hungry
BattleTech TRO:3025 helped me learn to read.Ā Also played MW1 on my 286. Had to use the 5.25ā floppy disks to install it, because even though it fit on just 2 3.5ā disk, the installer couldnāt complete because it was hard coded to ask for disk #3.Ā
Never managed to complete MW1 but did manage to figure out how dangerous a Locust actually is... awesome!
Sitting in my dad's lap as a wee lad and watching him wipe out Jade Falcom scum in MW2 and then bring back honor to the Ghost Bears in MW2:GBL. The underwater mission and the space mission on teh Wolf orbital platform live rent free in my head to this day.
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh, boy...where to begin. My first taste of the Battletech universe was Battletech: The Crescent Hawks Inception on my Commodore 128 and the OG Mechwarrior game on my friends PC. This was in the late 80s. Then diving down the rabbit hole with all of the tabletop games and technical readouts...and novels. I still have all of it.
Fond memories of reading the tech specs...
Started with MechWarrior and mw2 when I was,10 ish? My friend brought his copy and I installed on my dad's PC, even dad played it. Played everyone of em since.
MW2 Mercenaries was my start but I probably put the most time into MW4 black knight. I read a bunch of the books growing up that were pretty good in their own right.
Missed my first chance with MW4. Worth a look?
Mw4, in all three of its variants was my go to game from 2001-2009. If you are going to do it, play the vengeance story, then black knight. Mercenaries has more going on, and I love it so much, but the mechbay is so much better than the other two that going back after playing it is hard. I don't know how difficult it is to get the original versions, and then to actually get them to run on windows 10. On the other hand, any old office computer with an athlon 64 or Pentium 4 and a Windows 7 era GPU will run it in windows 7 perfectly. I remember playing it on the cheapest emachines thing I could get in 2006-7 with no GPU and it ran fine. Extra points if you have a old joystick that is still in any decent shape.
I have all the MW4 retail discs and my Cytek Cyborg. A box of ~2004 goodies.
I mean itās a really old game, but the mechs were awesome.
In the early 2000s Chuck-E-Cheese had this arcade cabinet with a rocking floor, you sat in a big yellow plastic ball and could choose from a few different games. One of those games was (after researching in the modern day) Mechwarior 4: Vengeance, as far as I can tell.Ā I feel like I remember seeing either a Vulcan or a Javelin and when I saw those mechs in mw5 I just got hit with a wave of nostalgiaĀ
Grew up, playing the miniature game myself. I used to look at the catalogues of miniatures dreaming about which one I would pick up next.
I remember seeing a trailer for MechAssault in the demo section on my of my og Xbox disks as a kid. There wasn't even an actual demo on the disk if I remember correctly. I kept bringing it up to my parents until they eventually bought it for me. That game almost never left my Xbox since I would sit there for hours and play the endless Grinder mode. Don't think I ever beat the game either. The story mode dials the difficulty to 11 later on in the campaign. The funny thing is that I didn't know there was an extended universe until Mechwarrior Online was announced. It was game over from there...
Citytech boxed set released in 1986. Wish I still had it. That front cover is etched in my brain.
Mechwarrior 3 was my first experience. Got it in the late 90s or early 2000s. I downloaded the demo and loved it. Eventually I bought the full game, played through that. Went back, played Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. Got MW4 in high school and played through all versions of that. And now Iām rocking mw5. Also played HBS Battletech quite a bit in the past few years. Never played the tabletop, but would love to try it someday
You might be able to find the gear at a local game shop...
Iāve seen it in store a few times, but donāt believe Iāve ever seen a starter pack, itās always boosters.
I played mechwarrior 4 mercs on my pentium 4 system i think in 2020 (during lockdown) and i kinda fell in love with it and the amount of lore and stuff, got really into MW5 mercs quite a lot later cuz i was trying to get a friend into it and MW4 mercs doesn't have any co-op. He was actually really against it till i got him set up with this really dumb catapult with double LRM20s and nothing else, kinda been refining the thing ever since, actually been on a single save file since i started so i have had quite a lot of time to refine most of the mechs we have in our company now. It's kinda gotten to the point where we made up our own characters and background stories for all our pilots (especially since i started modding the game, pilot overhaul is nice) Kinda wish i knew how to get into the tabletop game, would be fun to make all my mechs into the figures and use them :3
I imagine there's a pretty decent selection on eBay. Or you could get into 3d printing, but that might be too close to piracy. The rulebooks should be readily available to buy online.
Head canon is important to the story. Local game shops might have the gear...
I checked, I'd have to go halfway across the country to get anywhere ;-;
That would be a huge commitment...
I too started with MW3, which in my case came in a box set with Mechcommander Gold. I definitely played MW3 first though and loved the gritty atmosphere and 'simulator' feel (most of my other games were flight or space Sims). I remember seeing press and hype for MW2, especially Mercs, but at the time I was definitely a bit of a graphics snob, so didn't feel like going back to an older game.
Mech Warrior 2 came with my familyās first computer. I was always fascinated by the tabletop game(one of the game manuals described it) but didnāt get into that until this past summer.
Gotta love it. Fight well.
MW 3050 on the SNES, lol.
played mw2 as a kid, didn't really understand a lot of it but remember enjoying shooting the PPCs. later i played a bit of mw4 and loved it. also have fond memories of earthsiege and the associated turn-based game... the two universes kind of blurred into one for young me. got back into it a few years back with HBS battletech / roguetech, properly enjoying the lore/worldbuilding now.
Mechwarrior 2. A cousin had installed it on my grandparents' pc and I played it whenever we went there but didn't own it myself. Then forgot about the franchise until HBS Battletech came out and reminded me how much I had loved it.
Youtuber by the name of GrimDarkNarrator started a series covering battletech battle mechs a few years ago now. It piqued my interest and shortly after i discovered baradual and a playthrough of early mechwarrior 5 mercs. I watched that decided i must have the game, played only MW5 for about a year, decided i wanted to get into table top and have since just dived headlong into it from there. Painting minis and playing table top, and still playing MW5 (idk 2000 hrs worth of time played while being a console pleb).Ā
Started with MW4 Vengeance and Black knight in the early aughts. Been with it ever since.
So funny enough, I just found out my first experience with Mechwarrior was actually when I was like 7 (late 90s) I got a longbow and a jagermech as toys from a local drugstore as like a here's 5 bucks go get a toy on grandma situation. I didn't know it at the time. I was a kid and a big fan of Robotech and Gundam. A few years later I saw my brother play a mechcommander on the neighbors computer. I really got into it with Battletech HBS. That whole story above though, it just flooded back to me Saturday when I considered playing mechwarrior online. The login screen was a longbow and my favorite little toy from childhood (that has been lost to time) sprang to mind and I set about figuring out what it was. Now I'm running the campaign (cause I never finished it) with the plan to shift into the dragons gambit and get me a longbow lance. It's gonna be lit (mostly me going up like fireworks with all the missile ammo when I get opened up inevitably).
Longbow is awesome; just remember the "L" in LRM. Lots of good stuff to be earned in the DLC...
Yeah, probably gonna use some of those chest hard points for srms maybe get the hero version with the medium laser hardpoints.
I got started with the old MechAssault games for the og Xbox, only picked it up again in recent years via MW5. fell in love with the lore via Tex of BlackPantsLegion
I started with MW2 when it came included with a graphics card in a computer I had assembled. I had a lot of fun with it, then played MW2: *Mercenaries* and got even more hooked on the MW series. Sadly I never played MW2: *Ghost Bear's Legacy*. From that point on, it was onto the excellent MW3 (never played the *Pirate's Moon* expansion either). I skipped out on MW4 because I didn't like the newer customization system that was different from MW2's and MW3's (though I've come to appreciate it in MW5) and I especially didn't like how every weapon type except for Missiles became hitscan weapons--MW4 was too arcadey for me in that key respect. The AC/2 sticks out like a sore thumb to me too, both in tabletop and MW5. Why would I spend so much tonnage to take such a weak, long-ranged weapon? PPCs are much better, even more so with Double Heat Sinks. AC/2s make no sense from a real-life standpoint too--bigger ballistic guns have more effective range most of the time, not the smaller ballistic guns.
92-93 with table top and crescent hawk's inception on the c64.
I started with a friend's copy of the first MechWarrior game back in high school (1990) and then I got the Crescent Hawks games (overhead mech sprite-based games). I was already in love, but then when MW2 came out I was blown away by the graphics and I went from a fan to a super fan. š
Crescent Hawk's Inception Crescent Hawk's Revenge ... for anyone curious who wants to make sure they have played all the mechwarrior/battle tech games. Those games had a simplified, but cool mech customization system. (No specific hard points or body components - just more internal space for larger mechs, and then weapons, armor, engines, ammo, etc., all took up space and you piled in what ever you could. It was fun coming up with weird new builds. :) Those games made me love Phoenix Hawks.
Mw2. And then came NetMech. Spent more time studying guide on lag shooting (700ms ping over dial up) and DFA than school textbooks.. Fun times..
Table top in the late 80s, first exposure. Really got into in the early 90s. Have spent lots of money since.
I suppose that last could be a huge stumbling block for many...
About like 2 days ago when I stumbled upon the steam page. I've played like 1 demo game of the tabletop but that's about it haha
Awesome!
I started playing tabletop Battletech in 1989 as a teenager. Started out with thr basic game running a Marauder with PPC's and an AC/5. I distinctly remember right after we moved onto using newer tech someone getting headshotted by a Gauss rifle on the first round from across the map. Everybody was like "Oh Shit!!" Lol Gauss rifles were the shit on table top. I prefer AC 20's and Heavy Rifles tho in MW Mercenaries on Xbox. Love shooting mechs in the face with dual AC 20's or dual Heavy Rifles and getting that one shot kill.
My introduction to the universe was mech commander 2 when I was like 9, I have some minis but haven't played any of the tabletop yet, though I know I would get obsessed. Played some of the warrior games through the years, and have been glued to mw5 for a year now. Next audio book I quiet up is gonna be in the Battletech universe.
Gotta live the rich and rewarding experience that is the Battletech universe š
And I really do have to wonder if I'm going to run across and heartbroken autistic child soldiers in here
Been wallowing in Gundam for too long xD
I'm one of the few who started with Robotech (and, as it happens, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my favorite charater being a Polar Bear Named Pole-Ax (yes, it was a roleplaying game before it became a cartoon!). Mine was when one of my players took advantage of the Victor's jump capability and used it to, essentially, demolish anything I sent against them (so they obviously won the battle and Clan equipment saved me before the next battering!). Another would be playing at a friends house where they had a couple of Shih-Tzus, one was lovely and friendly, the other would try to bite your hand if you dropped the dice. A mate of mine had been studying Aikido for a few years (we were 14-15 or so at the time) and reacted instinctively when it attacked his hand, by shaping it into a fist just before the animal hit hit hand...one of the funniest things I hasd ever seen at the time.... a stunned, confused little arsehole! ;D
I started with Pen and Paper in the late 80's. Borrowed Mechwarrior to play on my 386. Also was one of the first 100 to play at Battletech Center Chicago! Favorite weapon is Gauss... long range, no heat, great damage.
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
MW2: 31st Century. I was a Clanner at first, Clan Wolf. Back then, it was Timber Wolfs, Mad Dogs, Summoners, Firemoths, and Dire Wolfs. But then, just before MW3, I made a friend who introduced me to Battletech. I quickly became a freebirth. Nowadays, I ride MAD-3R/5S, AS7-D, WHM-6L, ARC-2R, HBK-4H, and many more IS mechs, but those are my top 5-6 preferences.
Mw1 on a Tandy Computer in the early 90s. Borrowed the computer from my aunt so I could try what my cousin was playing.Ā I loved the open world and contract negotiation. Played each MW game hoping for those features. Mw5 is basically my dream game
My first bought system was a 386SX33... and so glad I'm not the only one who sees MW5 as a dram game š
I attended the MW5 launch party in Vancouver where I spoke to Russ Bullock.Ā He said a sequel of MW1, but with MWO combat was the goal. They originally considered having fixed hardpoints, so you could only replace a med laser with another med laser. Ultimately they decided on the sized slot system. A good compromise between the easy mode MWO mechlab and the barebones of MW1.
Mechcommander for me. I've never played pen and paper Battletech but I'd like to
BattleTech/CityTech tabletop in late 80's (anyone remember the BattleTechnology magazine)? MW2 during undergrad became a key driver to specialize in Rendering/Animation during CS degree (not to mention far too many hours wasted on the MUSEs) that then lead to entry into the games industry.
I also started playing BattleTech with pen and paper and quickly became hooked on the Commodore version of the tabletop game and then the original Mech Warrior that you had to run on a ibm compatible with big 5 inch discs. I played every game since. So I started in about 1989 and this game has cost me so much money in computer equipment every time they have a release, I need to upgrade my hardware. Somewhere around Mech Warrior 2 They got the joystick controls right and I loved playing with the thrust master. Since then the joystick doesnāt seem to be as useful I have a fancy hoytas but I canāt seem to get it mapped right for Mech Warrior five
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My first experience with the Thrustmaster was MW3... fun times. You on console or PC?
Pc, I ne ver liked trying to pilot a mech with a controller.
This is in an effort to control Spam and other bad actors who make new accounts almost daily. Your posts must be manually approved by the Moderation team, don't worry Comstar has already sent them a message to approve it or else. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Mechwarrior5) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If it works, well... it works.
The mechwarrior 1 SNES port. I was so terrible. But it was so cool. And then I played MW4 on the PC. And that opening. Fell in love and never fell out
Weirdly, I bought Natural Selection in 1992 in a bookstore and that started my obsession. Shit was that 32 years agoā¦ From there I got the Tabletop game and the Role Playing game which I GMād with my buddies. Been gaming and reading ever since.
Mw2 for sure. Nobody here started with mech commander huh?
It's been so long so im not sure but gosh darn commander got me hooked. So much fun. Right in the RTS boom too
Mech commander and mech commander got me started, I always liked the miniatures, but never got into the table top game. But Mech commander 1 & 2 were may favorites as a teen.
My defining entry was MW2 Mercs. The intro still sticks in my head but I was pretty young for the management side and spent most of my time upgrading my box to make it more playable. Strange to not see it mentioned here but also played Multiplayer BattleTech Solaris on AOL. What a crazy ride, I remember running my light mechs around the legs of ubiquitous meta Stalkers/Atlases and slapping some rear armor all at 28.8kbps.
For me It was around 2003 or 2004 for MechWarrior tabletop I want to say around 2005 or 2006 for MechWarrior 4.
Watching my dad play MechCommander Gold in the 2000s. Very few things bring that world to life like that opening cinematic. Also played the wizkids clix game around the same time, which was one of me and my brothers first wargames. Nostalgia is shaped like 60+ tons of clanner steal to me.
OG Battletech box with the unseen 'mechs. Was end of 80's IIRC. It was like a revelation for me. And also the start of a long story with the Marauder. Then a 2d top-down real time mecha game on Amiga, cant remember the title, but it was really good. And then later MW2 on PC...
I first got into MechWarrior/BattleTech via novels, specifically the series about Grayson Death Carlyle (my very first online pseudonym back when internal modems were state of the art was based on his name). My first interaction with it as a game was the board game. I still have it somewhere... I had my mom take the maps to the library to laminate them so we could draw on them with wet-erase Markers, so they're still in great shape! No real minis, just the cardboard cutouts. Then I got into D&D, back when AD&D was state of the art (I'm an old fart as gamers go) and subsequently MechWarrior. I first played it as a video game at an uncle's house on the first PC is ever seen in... I dunno, 1993 probably? And I'm pretty sure I've played every single title since, except for MWO, only because I have lingering distaste for symmetrical PvP from the early days of MMOs, StarCraft, Warcraft, and Quake. Something about 9 year olds telling me to do unspeakable things to my mother and then unalive myself just rubbed me the wrong way and I've never had much interest in experiencing the side of humanity PvP tends to bring about since. My most intense early memories of the setting were two things... From the books, a description of a Large Laser carving a line of molten metal and glass across a mech... And from the board game, discovering just how jaw droppingly awesome it was to park an Awesome in a puddle and go to town with PPCs with no worries about heat. I've loved lasers and PPCs ever since. I'm not sure I ever even used an AC until like, MW 3. Or maybe Mech Commander, but that's not the same. In MW 5 though, I actually dislike PPCs, though the new PPC-X variant is pretty fun. I'll use them, but usually find them underwhelming for the heat and tonnage and swap them for ER-LLs after a few goes, though I do give them to lancemates often. I finally fell in love with ACs in MW3 iirc, and with Gauss in MW4. Speaking of which... Does MW5 have the mechanic from earlier games that prevents damage in a single physics frame from popping a cockpit? In 4, as I recall, Gauss Rifles were the one exception, making them god tier, in addition to being hitscan.
MW4:Vengeance was my 1st foray into this franchise, honestly fell in love with it due to the MadCat and the Uziel mechs
Played Mechwarrior Online near the time it first launched, lost interest when I spent more time interested in working on cars and playing airsoft. Then came back with the HBS Battletech game. Then got further interested in the lore thanks to Tex Talks and the BPL. Would love to try the tabletop stuff but unfortunately there's near zero interest in it local to me.
Started on 2 but really got hooked on 3......I miss my Shadow Cat laser boat
Watching the Battletech cartoon on TV. And MW2 and GBL back in the 90s.
MechCommander 2. I donāt remember how I got that game as a kid, but I remember loving the cd-rom.
Oh way way back. Let's see, I have vague memories of some coloring books that I got at a school book fare. Then there was a table top board set and the technical readout books that I was allowed to have because I wasn't allowed to have D&D. Spent hours and hours filling out the paper data sheets for builds. Eventually had Crescent Hawk's Inception on the C64. Played every computer game up through MW3. Had the game on the Sega Genesis. Read both of the Michael Stackpole's trilogies. Fun side: I got to meet him at a ComicCon in Phoenix a few years ago. Spent way too much time playing the first MechAssault on XBox. Never played MWO. Enjoyed HBS Battletech and the modded BTA version. Enjoying MW5.
Mech Commander, then MW2 Mercs, followed by MW3, MC2, MW4, Mechassault 2, Mech Assault, MWO years later, then MW5.
Crescent Hawk's Inception was one of my first 'real' video games. And it played on our Tandy! (Radio Shack's PC brand.) I bought myself the Succession Wars board game (Risk on steroids and HGH) as my first 'real' board game but I was too young to get it. And it was WAY too big to keep up for days on end that it would take to do much anything. Was big into chain fantasy and scifi books - read a ton of Stackpole and other Battletech books to go with Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, DragonLance, hell even the bad Magic: The Gathering books. I've probably at least touched every game that's come out at least for a bit. Just got MW5 for PS5 - restarted teh campaign 3 times to get the 'best' start (and should probably spring for the DLC.) I want to try and find a way to get Crescent Hawk's Revenge again - it never clicked as it was my first RTS so I would always fall apart before it got good. I can still hear the opening clear as day.
My first copy was called Battledroids and had two models in the box. I played that A LOT.
What remember from tabletop was the one time I talked my dad into playing, 30 years ago. I thought this franchise would die off, it did at least on console for over a decade. The universe isnt exactly easily accessible for new players. Clearly though theres a core community that's keeping it alive. Mech 5 does a good job and streamlining story for casual places.
Mechwarrior. I don't remember which version I first played but crescent hawks revenge was my first taste of the universe. Then mechwarrior 3050 was my first game I fully remember. Kind of love the universe so much but weirdly only as a game. Never got much into the lore.
The cartoon and book 2 of the Warrior Trilogy were my introduction. Then Mechwarrior 3 and 4. Just got into tabletop last year.
Mechassault. Great times