playing mechwarrior online has peaked my interest back to the originals that made it so great. possibly others as well. bringing them to gog asap might be a grand idea to piggyback on the publicity and get hundreds of sales from. I don't know the legals behind getting a game on gog but if this is possible I would love a chance to get back in on of the original cockpits of a mech.

my 2c worth. post you thoughts please.

MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries was released a while back as a free download. For best results download the .0028 full install with your favourite torrent program (e.g. ), then install it with [url=http://www.mektek.net/downloads/mtx/beta/SetupMTXExtract0.0.1.5.exe]MTX Extract, then download and run the patches ([url=http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mekpak31.0029(0028)-final.exe.torrent].0029[/url], [url=http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mekpak31.0030(0029)-final.exe.torrent].0030[/url], [url=http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/mw4/hotfix/mekpak31.0030c(0030x)-hotfix3.exe].0030c[/url]).

Getting the MechWarrior games on GOG could be tricky. The rights are held by Microsoft but only MechWarrior 4 was published by them (MechWarrior 1 and 2 were published by Activision while MechWarrior 3 was published by Microprose). Microsoft licensed the rights to Smith & Tinker for MechWarrior Online so there could also be some sort of exclusivity deal in effect.

Arkose has already given you the link for the Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries game which was given the rights to be freely distributed legally. The site that maintains it also does a lot of mod and content additions to it so you can get a lot of mech action for 0 cost!


As for the other mech games I suspect that they are big enough titles that GOG would love to get them onto the site if they can get the legalities together. Sadly the gaming world has always been very unstable and companies form and fold very fast, which can lead to all sorts of nightmares for the legal teams as rights end up being moved around, sometimes being held by investors or banks or other outside the market parties who are not as keen to get back into the market- whilst other times you can "lose" track of where the rights for something have ended up.

Best thing you can do now is head over to the wishlist and vote for the games and cross your fingers. That said check out Amazon and ebay - there were soldout software and bundles of the old games around for a good while (GOG was not the first to re-release old games - its simply the first big online distributor to do so who also patch the content to modern OS compatibility when needed). Chances are you might be able to find some of the games.

There is also some sort of rights issue with the mechs in one of the games last I heard.

Oh yeah, that too. MechWarrior 1 and 2 (and possibly 3) include some of the "Unseen" mechs that are no longer licensed for use.

I really would like to see the Mechwarrior games on GOG especially the first ones and MW3 Pirate's Moon which was never released here in Germany.

EDIT:
Also the Crescent Hawk's games would be nice.

3 should not contain any "unseen", that game was made after the whole legal debacle was settled.
That whole legal issue stinks though. For those who don't know, FASA got the rights to use these mechs from their creators, yet the company that released the movies/tv-shows containing those mechs in the US went to court against FASA due to those mechs being included in Battletech

Anyway, MW3 has some serious compatibility issues on modern hardware. While some people have been able to get the game to run, many others have not. The most common issue is a simple crash to desktop, but other issues have been reported, like bouncing tanks (that sooner or later will bounce so high that they'll never land) and things disappearing into the ground.

Microsoft currently has all the video game rights to the old FASA games (or at least Shadowrun & Battletech), so GOG needs to strike a deal with them. It is possible that they'll also have to get Catalyst Game Labs (and thus Topps) involved as well, as they currently have the rights to most of the Battletech (& Shadowrun) things. And even then, the individual game rights are scattered all over the place.

I actually still have the original CD's and case/manual for Mechwarrior 2 Titanium Pack, though I'm missing the Ghost Bear Legacy CD... -__-

However, if GoG were to release Mechwarrior 2 in both 8bit and 16bit, I'll buy it right away. In fact, if GoG releases Mechwarrior 1, 2 (8bit and 16bit), Ghost Bear Legacy, Mercenaries, 3 and 4 <--------- OMG! I will explode in a fiery orgasmic supernova. ^_^

Alas first half and other half published by different companies. Yes I know MW4 is free, but still if all of it was released as one GoG super pack, I would gladly buy it all.

I need sleep, but there are so many games... So many good sales...

Thanks for that link Arkose