A little off-brand for this channel; based on an old script I wrote two years ago. Wasteland 3 is next. Most of the gameplay footage is borrowed from @SirxMMPD who runs a Mech 2 channel: www.youtube.com/@SirxMMPD/videos Alex' Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/sneksock (for commissions) Their Patreon: www.patreon.com/sneksucks Their Twitter: twitter.com/sneksucks Support Alex and Inna!!!!!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

"Kill the meat, Save the metal" is such a strong quote... that is exactly what i expected out of a American-Made "Armored Core".

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

Zhukov heavy tank: published in a BattleTech sourcebook in 1989 with that illustration you showed, 7 years before Red Alert was published.

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.

Nothing like a good blast from the past to get 2023 started. This game a lot of my childhood! I don't know if you played Interstate 76 but that was another "how dare you have story like this" shocker for the 90's. It wasn't great it was just bizarre and great! RIp scholastic school book catalogs getting me into 90's C&C, x-wig/tie fighter and hordes of other classics. Thanks for the video!

Having currently put well over 500h into MW5 running tons of mods, it really pains me how much better the presentation and flair is in MW2. Also I appreciate you diving into really niche games, without needing to find the worst ones.

0:23 I could have swore that the newscaster was saying "MethWarrior 2" 😂

That will be an interesting watch. Hopefully MW3 and MW4 are in the cards as well sometime in the future. Thx.

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.

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.

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.

Man, every single game you end up talking about is either really fucking good or super interesting (yes, even Alcatraz and Marauder). I love this channel.

MechWarrior 2 was my introduction to Battletech some twenty-ish years ago. Just the other day, my son and I were playing a lance vs. lance match on tabletop. I'll love this franchise forever.

Thanks Harmony Gold for taking this from us

This game was always a little mysterious to me in a somewhat peculiar way due to how I came about finding it. There were a brief few years I spent during the start-to-middle of my time in highschool wherein I'd take trips into my hometown to scope out two out of the three thriftstores we had for stuff that appealed to me. At one point in time, a very particular one was run by a family who were able to take in a number of very interestingly diverse items for a shop in the thick of the deep south (I'm from Alabama) and two of the items I can remember with clarity were BattleTech-related. The first was a boxed compilation of DOS games, 'Triple Action - Vol. 2' by Prism Leisure Co., which included 'The Crescent Hawk's Revenge' and the second was this game, Mechwarrior II, just the CD in a loose jewel case. Oddly enough I was only ever to get the older DOS game to run, but even as a teen I knew Win95 games were a shot in the dark. Sometimes a Win98 title would run on my crummy 2012 laptop though it'd usually have to be 3D or use Directx -- Anyways, the point is that I could never get this one game to run and I've only seen a little gameplay of it sometime after I bought it. That copy is long gone, along with CD copies of Duke Nukem 3D, Revenant, and other DOS games that were burned onto homebrew blank CDs. Sadly, that thriftstore was eventually bought out by another family and a lot of the techy stuff started disappearing. Most I found in there after the buyout was a Phillips CD-i that was missing a controller and only had some FMV golf game sole separately, which I had barely any interest in, *but probably would've went for these days.* The last few times I went in there they were primarily focused on selling typical southern knicknacks, pottery, homemade crafts --- and I understand that all has it's crowd, but all the older PC and videogame stuff would have easily made them just as much of a profit. Though, I moved out earlier last year, and I don't have any interest in ever going back (aside from maybe visiting SOME of my family, but even then... Eh.) I haven't even watched the video yet, I'm paused at 1:19, Warlockracy is an uploaded I've come to enjoy so I know the video will be of his usual quality. I'm simply reminiscing over just having seen the game's title again after so much time has passed. Maybe I could find some way to play it these days now that I have a bit more knowledge on getting older stuff to run on PCs. Or there might be some modern-enabled rereleased that I haven't looked into yet. ... Welp, back to lurking on KZfaq(! ! !)

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.

I was not expecting a video so soon but your quality and production has always been solid, Love your videos man and happy new year.

The ending of this video has been nothing short of life-changing. Thank you, Mr. Warlockracy.

The thing I love most about this universe is they have planned out the common languages, and religions, in the regions of space. It's very interesting to see a far future with Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, being worshiped by people who may be speaking a language composed of 3 or more recognizable ones today in some odd homogeny. It of course all comes together when those same people then smash giant mechs into each other for money, homeland, prestige, and survival.

The Clans are not space nazis exactly, but they are DEEP into eugenics and distinctly look down on civilians in general. Deeply into the military junta thing too. And by all accounts SHOULD have dissolved a short bit after they got beaten by a combined Inner Sphere, but someone really liked Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon so now one of them rules Terra.

I think some of my earliest memories were of MW2 Mercs, picking it up at a Micro Center along with the strategy guide. I still have both the guide and the original CD..

The Atlas defeating the Kodiak is also ironic considering the former was designed by the leader of the original clanners. I played the majority of Mechwarrior 4, I think I played part of Mechwarrior 1, and I read one of the books. I'm still shockingly ignorant of the lore though, so I appreciate the nuggets in this video.

The problem with most mech games is they don't get the scale right. All enemies are scaled up so you just feel normal sized in minitaure city arenas

Things will be different depending on your camera angle!

Such memories! I remember that I didn't know much about Battletech when I first played this, and got taken completely by surprise by the clan invasion. I remember getting my shit wrecked by them on the Oberon mission. The follow-up mission to escape was also super hard (at least when I was young), and I remember that's where I got stuck the first time I played the game. One other neat thing about the game is that the campaigns are somewhat dynamic, and even failing a mission outright won't necessarily end the game. For example, I remember having trouble with the ice-hauler mission, and because I failed, I got a mission to basically escape rather than continuing. Also, an interesting fact about his game is that originally, the salvage was completely hardcoded into each mission. You could and would never get anything different than what was scripted. Dynamic salvage was added in (I think) the Direct3d version of the game.

Nixe trip down memory lane. MW & MW2 (w/all the expansions) is what had my buy my first PC & got me hooked on the BT Universe in 95. I played all subsequent games at least a bit & hot my boys into them. I played the tabletop Heroclix game in the early 2000s & now in '23 am getting intonthe OG BT tabletop. The game & cuts ends were fantastic & the opening scene for MW2 & the Ghost Bear expansion still give me chills. Apparently MW2 is shareware now & I was really tempted to get it running & play the campaign. Anyways thanks for this video!

This game was my jam growing up. Thank you for covering it! I hope you cover other MechWarrior titles!

Thanks for the amazing content Warlockracy. I found your channel about 2 weeks ago and your videos have inspired me to pick up many classic rpgs like Arcanum, Baldurs gate, and Gothic. I love classic fallout and ive been searching forever for games that capture that experience. I actually havent been able to fully watch your videos on those games yet as to not spoil myself, but your series on Fallout, elder scrolls, and stalker are classics! Thanks for the videos and your dedication to spreading the word and history of these classic games!

Who knew people just wanted to play as a mercenary mech pilot? Me, I knew.

My favorite bit of bizarre Mechwarrior lore is how the Clans, due to basically only being able to reproduce and have children when approved by the government eugenics committee have an attitude towards sex that most people in the Inner Sphere find uncomfortable due to the average clanner just walking up to someone they're interested in and asking if they want to fuck. More abhorrent is how incest (due to the aftermentioned lack of risk of unwanted pregnancy) is common, especially in certain castes.

Was just about to fire up Mercenaries to play a couple hours when I saw this pop up in my recommended. Great video! I really appreciate that you added bits from the Mechwarrior's journal. It's all so well written and I think is often overlooked by players. Gives a great taste of the Battletech universe too. It should be noted that the video footage you are using is from the Titanium Edition of the game, which introduced "Dynamic Salvage," allowing for each playthrough to be a lot more varied depending on how you played. The base version of the game has Scripted Salvage, which provides you with weapons and 'mechs at specific points in the game, and can even change depending on what order you choose to do campaigns, or if you fail certain missions throughout each campaign. Also I now consider Wojack Grady to be the canon protagonist for this game from now on.

8:55- Same issue with Cyberpunk rpg where China was shown as run down backwater country with USSR becoming state capitalist. Not sure about recent lore, but it seems to be going for alternate history since USSR still exists. This also apply in recent Battletech lore where it has “Chinese naming” policies as a justification for update from writers with new info about China. Formerly it was using Russian or even Greek terms (would be surprised since Battletech is multiethnic with, Kurita has Scandinavian Christianity and Hindu were accepted as “state Shintoism” while largest Buddhist Temple is in German Lyran Commonwealth).

YESS the pods!!! I played in one of these at some kind of mall or arcade when I was little, maybe 6 yrs old. I think the ones I tried were a whiteish gray color on the outside. My dad took me to them one time. I never hear people bring these up, we need more stuff like that today, real physical sims for these kinds of games are so freaking cool!

Awesome video as always! Thank you for playing through and preserving the stories and quirks in these old games.

Discovered your channel a few days ago and I've already binge watched 90% of your videos. I hope you someday cover Underail, with the amount of fallout 2 videos I think it might be a game you'd be interested in.

BattleTech was sort of the entire reason for Titans to be added to 40k as GW wanted in on that big ass robot action. Best part is that their Titan game intorduced the Horus Heresy Imperial civil war as they only had one model for the boxed set and needed a reason for the same models to fight eachother.

Thanks Warlock, this was pretty good! I always got to play the original MW2 but never managed to get my hands on the Mercenaries version, third world availability in the 90s being what it was. I love how deep they went into representing the lore as well as they did, it's so rich.

One of the first games I ever beat. Such a classic. Thanks for sharing!

Starting the new year with another amazing video! Thank you Warlockracy! You have quickly become one of the best in the business for me! Keep up the good work!

My introduction to Mechwarrior/BattleTech was the OG Mechwarrior 2 that I found for $2 at a yard sale. I would give almost anything to have all the old Mechwarrior games remastered and put on Steam.

Happy New Year to you and yours. I always wait for your videos, I love your style of delivery and storytelling.

I remember my dad having this game when I was growing up but I was too young to really understand how to actually play it competently so I never got that far into it. Eventually my uncle got me Mech Commander 2 and Mech Warrior 3, which ended up being my proper introduction to the Battlemech series. But I always wanted to go back to two and give it a proper try. Just to see what it was about. Sadly couldn't get it to work, though. So yeah, thanks for making a video about this little gem of a game!

I remember this game. It was super cool and innovative for its time. Happy New Year!

This was very nostalgic for me. When you look past the bugs this was a GOOD game with a GOOD story back in the 90's

an instant classic, maybe one of my favorites from your channel. this era of science fiction worldbuilding makes me feel so warm inside would love to see content for the new tamriel rebuilt update... ty for everything warlockracy

Cool runthrough, I did enjoy MW2/mercs back in the day. Fun bug is if you throw / quit out of the final solaris match, then do Wotan, you'll get a madcat as loot.

Such a welcome surprise, nice to see more battletech content on the youtube and especially from your channel man

This game has such a cool artstyle. It manages to look very realistic while being low res.

Truly the successor to Space Invaders.

In Kerensky we trust. Thank you Warlock. I really appreciate seeing you cover the battletech universe! Happy new year!

A little note on mech tonnage. The mechs weigh way more than their listed tonnage. The tonnage value written in TRO's and on record sheets is actually how much weight of parts and equipment the chassis can support.

I love all things Battletech so I was very happy to see some Mechwarrior content. Especially glad with the cursory overview of the BT universe too. Well done!

love it love it. Guaranteed view for anything with stompy robots! I mean I watch everything you release anyway BUT I love me some Battletech. Happy New Year, Warlock!

Always a pleasure to drop what I'm doing and watch your vids man. Keep em coming, love the longer vids!

Warlock thank you so much for making videos every time you upload is a treat for me your videos are awesome

Just started watching Battletech history and behold, a video uploaded just yesterday! Thanks man!

What a trip down memory lane, thank you for covering this! That intro really hammered home the setting of being a mercenary company in Battletech, the newer games are really lacking in these kinds of impactful cinematics. The other memorable one was Mechcommander's cinematics, all very well done IMO. Mechwarrior 2 was one of the first PC games I played, and sparked my love for big stompy mechs. I got the game in the Titanium Trilogy pack, which included Ghost Bear's Legacy and Mercs. Even though the graphics are really shit by today's standards, back then it was mind-blowingly amazing. I hope you cover the other games in the Battletech series too in the future.

I somehow ended up with this game when I was 9. I had no idea what I was doing, and it crashed constantly. I was never able to finish the first mission on my Windows 98 machine, lol. I remember the giant manual being the best part of the game. I would look at all the badass art and statistics of the mechanics for hours. It will be cool to see what the game is actually like!

Your videos are quite something, I really enjoy watching them. Thanks for your high quality work. P.S: Also thanks for recommending Battletech, it its really good strategy.

First I've seen from this channel, and what a video! Really enjoyable and well presented. I'll be checking out the other videos for sure. I also have to recommend Mechwarrior 3 for anyone who is interested. It has hands down the most immersive and best presented single player campaign in the series. Brilliant stuff. I

I just love your work and i am always happy to see new vids on my feed thank you for your hard work keep safe and see you next video

Wonder what it would be like if PGI were to use the graphical layout and engine that they used for MW5 "teaser" video, then turned around and rebuilt MW2:Mercs, in its FULL glory... Story, Travel, The whole 9 yards. After all, story-wise, this is one of the best MW Games to have ever hit the market.

I've always wondered how a crossover with Macross would play out, mostly cause of the design background for Battletech. It'd be pretty cool seeing the various factions respond to NUNS contact

My first MechWarrior game was MechWarrior 4: Vengeance. This series will always hold a special place in my heart.

What a fantastic new years gift mate, cheers.

You should make another video of a similar length to the Deus Ex one. That video kept me occupied for days after I got evicted/assaulted and had to pull my life together again. I cannot understate how much happier I was to almost have company in your videos at the time.

love love love your videos dude easily by favorite video game retrospective channel

im really glad to see you cover battletech stuff ! it really has had a new wave of popularity thanks to the newer battletech and mechwarrior games so its always good to see more content on it !

didn't know you were into Mechwarrior. Your breakdown of the BT world, factions and mechs was really good, hope you make videos about the other Mechwarrior games as well I love TES as much as anyone but BT and MEchwarrior was the first PC game i've ever played and has me hooked since

Damn man great vid :D never heard of the franchise, but i'd love to see more like this!

OMG, I thougth you would leave it at the youtube short, I'm so glad there is a full video on this!

warlockracy, I dont have words to describe it, but your videos have kept me sane through these past couple weeks. I went without power from a storm and used the hotspot on my phone to download videos on my pc just to watch your videos. Your channel is probably the only channel I dont feel are selling their soul to do something they dont like. I hope you stay safe and continue to grow on yt. Once I'm able, I will subscribe to your patreon.

As someone who recently got into Battletech! I love this so much, and I really appreciate the work you did pulling up old TV footage, that's really going above and beyond!

Amazing video Warlockracy! I do hope you do more Mechwarrior videos like you do with Classic Fallout!

your videos are amazing dude, i could listen to you talk about anything

28:25 Holy fuck. First contact with the Clans. That's _damn_ cool.

Warlockracy thanks for covering a series close to my heart and not just Mechwarrior but Battletech overall. More people need to hear about this series!

Your channel is like- I enjoy almost literally ANY of your videos and the longer the better, so I always anticipate you making another video on games no matter what kind.

That final news clip juxtaposing MechWarrior 2 and the O.J. Simpson trial is wild

I hope one day the old Mechwarrior games comes to GOG or Steam. Effin love mechs!

It's the first MechWarrior game I played, back in the days. The one game that introduced me to the best sci-fi universe ever: Battletech. I still play this game from time to time. Immortal classic!

I've known nothing about this series, but I love mechs and politics. So thanks, I think I'll be looking into this series. Fantastic video Warlockracy, always a treat to watch.

Ah the Ying to MW4's yang. Glad you covered this. Its wild how the series's 'feel' has changed over time.

Mechwarrior 2 and Ghost Bears Legacy were amazing games. I'd played Earthseige earlier, on my 486, and finished it a few times. But I got a copy of MW2 with my Matrox Mystique graphics card, and it was surreal level good. Probably the best version of that generation of 3D cards, even without the bilinear filtering of the 3Dfx version, the Matrox version just had better colours, crisper edges, darker atmosphere and the best music. Even after I bought a 3Dfx card, I always used the Matrox to play Mechwarrior. Still have the entire OST on a playlist on my phone.

I started with Mechwarrior 3. Loved that game. Whoever did all the voice acting was incredible.

I remember going to the local Elecronic Boutique after school and bought this game for myself mostly because of the cool box art. Little did I know it would start a life long obsession with a game franchise.

I was waiting for this. I sensed a long time ago from your taste in games that you are a MechWarrior fan. Will you be reviewing other games in the series? It would be a treat to hear your thoughts on MW4Mercs in particular. Happy new year Warlock!