On this date 20 years ago Activision released Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. It is heralded as one of the best Mech simulation games with an amazing soundtrack, a great simulation engine, impressive FMVs, and an audiovisual design that really made you feel as if you were piloting a big and clunky robot. To celebrate its 20 year anniversary and the impact it had at the time on the video game genre landscape, I collected various links and references to commemorate what a classic game it was.
If anyone wants to play it on their modern computer, go over to mech2.org and download MechVM - my preferred version of the game is still the DOS version, since it had less bugs than the 3Dfx version and also allowed for 1024x768 resolution
Screenshots of the game
Promo screenshots of the game
A magazine advert for the game
Gamespot's review of the game back in 1995. :
If anyone wants to read up on the history of the Mechwarrior series in general.
If anyone wants to play it on their modern computer, go over to mech2.org and download MechVM - my preferred version of the game is still the DOS version, since it had less bugs than the 3Dfx version and also allowed for 1024x768 resolution
- The amazing intro for the game . It was actually made by the same studio who many years later the popular Gears of War commercial. The Clan Wolf intro and the Jade Falcon intro were also really impressive.
- The classic soundtrack composed by Jeehun Hwang. It came as a Redbook audio on the that you could pop into your CD player and start.
- The manual was small, but thick, and had all these scribbles, quotes, and backstory of the Battletech universe. It was great to skim through and a really high-quality PDF can be downloaded here.
- Read up on its development history at Local Ditch. (essential reading)
- Read Eric Peterson’s (R.I.P.) detailed overview of the development saga of MW2: Part one. (also essential)
- Read Obsolete Gamer's take on the soundtrack
- Listen to Upper memory block’s retrospective here.
- NostalgiaNight's youtube video on Mechwarrior 2.
- Background information by Eric Peterson, the father of the MW2 engine, who unfortunately passed away recently.
- if you want to get your 90's nostalgia on, here's IE Magazine's preview of the game from 1994
- Interview with Jeehun Hwang on SoundOnSound:
Jeehun admits this was something of a gamble, since at the time he didn't have any equipment to his name (he wound up selling his only possession, a car he'd bought with his first six months' earnings, to buy a new Korg X2 keyboard workstation so he could commence the task) and he'd also never composed for orchestra. "I had never even composed music that didn't have lyrics!" he says. "But I just did what I thought would work, all on the X2's internal sequencer. Mech Warrior 2 is set in the future and is basically about clans fighting each other with hi-tech robotic weapons. I was creating lots of tribal sounding music, but also flavoured with out-of-this-world futuristic sounds. After I'd written a few songs I took them in and there was this big meeting with everyone, including the head of the company, where first they played all the music the other guy had done and then they played my music. To my surprise I got a standing ovation!"
Knowing a good thing when they heard it, Activision set Jeehun up with a computer and a small budget for equipment. Using Opcode's Studio Vision sequencing software, the X2 and a new Roland JV1080 with the Orchestral and World expansion cards, he scored the entire game.
"I was literally learning as they were paying me," he remembers. "It was the very first time I'd used a computer sequencer: prior to that, I didn't even know they existed! They also wanted me to score the movies -- the intro and outro -- so I got an old VCR with timecode and pretty much scored everything in real time and then went back over them. It wasn't really the conventional way of doing things and it took a long time, but I worked very hard on it."
His score was unconventional to say the least. Streets ahead of other video game music of the time, it seamlessly blended orchestral and contemporary sounds with elements of both classical music and hip hop.
"I was just trying to be experimental, and as I didn't have any experience writing for orchestra I just built the songs up with the sounds I liked, without adhering to one particular style," he says.
If the music was ahead of its time, so was the game's technology: Mech Warrior 2 was one of the first ever video games with full Red Book audio. Each track is burnt directly on to the CD-ROM as opposed to being coded as MIDI with sound coming from the player's computer soundcard -- the common standard at that time. With a happening soundtrack, superior sound quality and sensational graphics, Mech Warrior 2 was an overnight success.
"It sold millions of copies all around the world, was named Best Game of the Year, and I got Best Music of the Year in a lot of the game publications," reports Jeehun. "Activision were literally flooded with e-mail from people commenting on the music, many saying they'd have bought the game just for the soundtrack."
Screenshots of the game
Promo screenshots of the game
A magazine advert for the game
Gamespot's review of the game back in 1995. :
This is no cake walk: MechWarrior 2 is a tough, demanding game, with challenging controls and opponents. Maneuvering both the Mech and the turret can be a tricky proposition at times. With controls more like those of a flight sim, and a need for strategy and planning, this is not your average action game. It demands a lot of computer systems and gamers alike, but it delivers like nothing else around.
If anyone wants to read up on the history of the Mechwarrior series in general.