I've spent the last three weeks unsuccessfully trying to run MW2 on a retro box. I've tried the Voodoo 2(didn't work using the .bat file trick), using an original voodoo 1, using a TNT2 (for 2d) and then an S3 Virge. Everytime I fire up the game and try to start a mission, it gives me a message saying it can't profile the video modes, then crashes. I've even used a tool to uninstall Directx 6, and install the Directx 2 that was on the disk... Has anyone gotten the 3dfx version to run on Windows 98, or is this a case where I have to install Windows 95? Before anyone asks, I have the Dos version in Dosbox running okay, I just can't get the 3dfx version to run.

You could play it on a more modern system with . This fixes the 3dfx version and some other versions ([url=http://www.gog.com/forum/general/old_3d/post17]more details here).

Assuming you have a new machine too, could you try out nGlide to see if it could emulate Mech 2?

That only works on Windows XP, which I don't have. Also, I thought MechVM doesn't work on the 3dfx version, based on threads I've read.

MechVM works on XP, Vista and 7, but apparently not Windows 8. Some game versions require dplay.dll to be manually copied over from the disc which MechVM doesn't handle.

I don't know about getting it working on 98SE since all recent efforts have been to get it working on XP as a minimum.

To play 3Dfx on a retrobox you need a genuine 3Dfx/Voodoo card which TNT and S3 aint.

Though the OP stated that they did try using both a Voodoo 1 and a Voodoo 2, the TNT and S3 were used as the primary card. Remember that both those Voodoo cards were add-on cards (3D-accelerator only, no 2D capability), requiring a primary (2D accelerator) card in order to work at all.

Bingo.

Unfortunately, I have neither solution nor suggestion to the problem at hand. I just dropped in to correct Strijkbout.

Oh I got it wrong then, I thought that he meant the rendering modes of the game. =/
What might be a problem is that if it was a bundled version of Mechwarrior it might look for a specific card, I have that with a couple of games.
If you can get your hands on Mechwarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy it has a Direct3D version of MW2, although it needs some work too to get working as well and I've been told it has some problems with mission scripts though that may be related to faster cpu's.