IIRC, the MekTek release of MW4 Mercenaries was only a partial release that contained just the multiplayer mode. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - going from memory here.)

Actually, Mechwarrior 3 and Mechcommander 1 were made by Microprose. Microprose has been passed around by a number of parent companies over the years, but the Microprose brand and some unknown collection of IP appears to have been purchased from Atari Interactive in 2019 by a former Bohemia Interactive developer with the intention of reviving the brand. However, I cannot find anything specific about whether Mechwarrior 3 or Mechcommander 1 were part of this purchase. (They have MW3 and MC1 in a box art collage on their website, but they do not list either of them in their list of developed games.)

...I seriously hate licensing nonsense like this...

100% Guaranteed will buy the second I see it live... ALPHA STRIKE!

You are incorrect, it has the full SP and its better than having the mod packs integrated into the campaign with all mechs available in the stores and all. I only know because it remains installed permanently on my machines. Its def worth getting and putting up with the finiky installation if you can find it. If any of you want just pm me and I can send you the instructions how I figured out to get it working on win 10.

Yes! I knew there was more to it, I completely forgot about Microprose and the mutltiple studios involved in MW3. That dev was a complete disaster

I still run W7 so practical compatibility would definitely be a good thing to know up front...there's a big difference between "we don't want to deal with W7 support cases" and "xxxx.dll is W10 only, otherwise game will crash on startup" when it comes to what the developer/publisher list in the minimum specs.

VMs might be an option, too. If they're still using CryEngine I'd have to run it windowed anyway because CryEngine apparently has trouble dealing with a real aspect ratio like 16:10.

Give us 1,2,3,4 FIRST GOG!

Mech 1 gameplay vid!

Don't forget to always take some time in the day to blame Harmony Gold for everything. Seriously.


Edit: Aaaaaand sniped. Guess someone has got to update that Wiki article.

I tried couple of minutes gamepass version. I thought it had raytracing but for me I only see dlss setting and not else. Also a bit disappointed that in that version for now you can't seem to control menus with controller and so I can't really use that big ass TV to play. Otherwise seemed a good old mechwalking simulator. =D Need to try more to have better opinion.

Edit: I've tried a bit more and the game is pretty fun and bad ass.

Yes, I'd love to see this happen too!

Might be tough though, w/ all the IP owner, licensing, publishing, and all of that madness.

Would be nice to see Heavy Gear series return too, while I'm at it.

Heh. The thing about the first Mechwarrior game is that it is so old that it's a huge PITA to get to even run on modern hardware. It came out in 1989 and ran on, I think, on the 386 processor. Didn't even use a proper sound card. Back in the early '00s I picked up a copy of the 'Powerhits' compilation three Battletech based PC games. Even then it was really hard to get Mechwarrior to work on my PC.

That said I played the hell out of the other two BTech games. BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception and The Crescent Hawks' Revenge. That one was pretty easy to get to run. Very fun game. I think it might have made it to the Archive.org by now, might be able to find it now that it's pretty much abandonware.

Well if nothing else I'm glad more confirmation that H.G. lost the case 'with prejudice'. Which is lawyer speak that the court considers this case settled and that H.G. will not be allowed to try and sue again.

I wouldn't mind playing that game again. Heavy Gear had a fairly different game-play style compared to Mechwarrior, but it was still very good. Both 1 and 2.

So I got ambitious and contacted PGI directly about older Windows versions. The party line is that they aren't aware of any technical blockers to running on 7/8.1, and 8.1 is known to work fine, but they don't test on older OSes so no formal guarantees. Reasonable position IMO, and the 8.1 news rules out a known DLL problem with some builds of the game engine.

Also, they switched over to Unreal Engine at some point. Which is probably good, because aside from the Glorious 16:10 Master Race issues mentioned above the simple fact is Crytek is on life support and everyone knows it.

the blocker will be networks which is killing W7 [by design] but a v-w7 should be doable if you can find a backwards driver

the news that it is Unreal is welcome

I played Crescent Hawk's Inception on the Commodore Amiga 1000, and enjoyed it very much, but I got stuck near the end game on a puzzle that required the manual and its gigantic star map to successfully solve, and I didn't have the manual at the time. I eventually bought the game in a PC compilation CD-ROM around the late 90s, but never got back into that game. I remember it being a sci-fi RPG with turn-based strategic combat, and a bit of a Manga art style. I'd buy it and its sequel from GOG if they became available.

Believe it or not but things like that star chart were a form of copy protection/DRM. Back then every bit of memory was too valuable to waste on complex copy protection systems. Photo copiers and scanners were really a common thing then so they just put something in the manual you had to reference.

Yes, that was common practice. Some games even kept content within the paper manual, so that if you did not have it, as it normally happened if the game had been copied, then you were missing a lot. Lord of the Rings comes to mind.

As usual, my Google-Fu failed to enlighten me, so what do you mean by the "networks" killing Windows 7?