229 replies to this topic

[DrTeath]

I've always loved sci-fi, high tech and giant robots.
I think my first exposure to battletech was the Saturday morning cartoons back in the 90's
At some I got my hands on a MechWarrior 3 demo disk and after watching the opening video I knew I had to have it. I eventually got my hands on MW3 and love it. Was never any good at it but finished it and love it all the same.
Later I found a discount box with MW4, its first expansion and MechCommander 2 on sale and grabbed it as soon as I could.
I still have those disks and probably the original boxes somewhere too.
I saw the Hawken videos before I found out about MWO. Then I saw the MWO teaser trailer (with the atlas high altitude insertion) and suddenly I didn't care about Hawken anymore.
Once a 'Mech Warrior, always a 'Mech Warrior.

[Death Sheep]

Okay, so I started playing the tabletop game when I was 19. Played MechWarrior, Crescent Hawk's Inception and Crescent Hawk's Revenge. Ran a MechWarrior RPG for a while. Then played MechWarrior 2 and 3. I was on the development team for MechWarrior 4 on through all the expansions (you may have seen my pilot as a bot in MP: Death Sheep). So if you see Death Sheep running around online...that's the real me

[thelasttrueborn]

my father played the original and the second, i was around when the 3rd came out, i played it with the original ms stick, FTW. Beat it, went back to mechwarrior 2, couldn't beat it, i'm being honest. Got pirates moon, beat it, got Mechcommander Gold beat it. Got Mechwarrior 4 beat it, and its 2 expansions. Got Mechcommander 2, beat it with an army of Anubis'. Stopped playing. Read the dark age books up to 27, reading 28. got a new computer, now i can play both this and MWLL.
FIN

[BLACKFIRE]

I started in Middle school? With a MW2 disc I found in a friends game I had a hell of a time getting it to load up in MS Dos with my windows 98? maybe it was 95 IDK. I played it as best I could it seemed to be running oddly but I tried I remember the screens and the mech bay like starting pretty well. Soon after I learned that MW3 had come out, I instantly became a huge fan with MW3, the textures! the custom mechs the story I was loven that one. Pirates moon was fun added a few mechs Mech Commander followed and I have played them all since then. I even read a few of the books some Battletech some Mechwarrior Darkages just depends to be honest if it had a Timberwolf in the book I read it, I was hooked on that mech as the iconic symble it was back then. I Have I guess I saddly missed the Pre-Clan BT action, I have always known clan tech.

[PhoenixWright]

Considering im 15, I started playing this franchise with MechWarrior: 3, fantastic gam-"OBJECTION!!! A certain event happened before playing this am i correct'? "Ugh, yes, you are right..wright." About a 2 years ago i found a Russian youtuber named hip0cat, he is the one that got me into even considering playing it in the first place. Now, to many of you it may not seen like such a big deal (you know, getting inspiration from youtubers) but i digress, this specific youtuber had a lets play of all mechwarrior games (MW2-MW4:Mercs). Like all game i play, i play the earlier ones just incase i miss something, so I started with 3, then i went to 4 then i went to mercs. Then i noticed we had a copy of MW2(Original, Mercs and GBL), so i read up on that, installed it. but i couldn't play it (Due to i being for 95 and me being on XP). What im trying to say here is, If it weren't for hip0cat, i wouldn't be here typing this damn thing out.

Edited by PhoenixWright, 06 October 2012 - 07:31 PM.

[Tor Matthews]

I never managed to get into the multiplayer scenes of the older mechwarrior games (mw4 and older), and mainly focused on singleplayer and dabbling now and then in mw4 multiplayer when that came along. between the release of mw4 and now i developed a greater interest in MP games, and singleplayer for most games (barring exceptional titles like warband) lost my interest, at the same time i felt like we really needed another mechwarrior game. Then MWLL came along, and its what first seriously introduced me to multiplayer mechwarrior, ended up getting as close as reasonable was to mastering it, even. If MWLL wasnt around i probably wouldnt even be aware of MWO's existence, and MWO still has some work to do to beat it in terms of gameplay.

Edited by Tor Matthews, 06 October 2012 - 10:31 PM.

[Mechwarrior King]

For me it was back at in 1998 when my family got are new computer and it came with some games. Mechwarrior 2 was one of them. And I love it and played it and other Mechwarrior games ever sins. Mechwarrior 2 was the first si-fi Game I ever played. and as a resalt I bine a Si-fi fan ever sin. not star wars or bigama whereing star trek can say the same. Mechwarrior kicks those si-fi wona be's ***! only Halo came close to Mechwarrior. But Mechwarrior still rule all for me.

[Orthodontist]

Mechwarrior, the SNES game. Balls deep into that thing, renting it nearly every time my family and I would travel to the "video store" to rent movies. Saw the cartoon a few times and loved it. It was my first exposure.

Watched the TV show. Bought some toys based of it (the hunchback with the green rubber tipped missles anyone?)

Played Mechwarrior, MW2. Skipped MW3/Vengance/Mercs.

Played the Card Game extensively. Dabbled in the tabletop, but due to lack of interest from my then circle of friends, dropped it entirely.

And now, I find myself in the MWO closed beta with the NDA lifted. Good times people, good times.

[TrainWreck102]

Well MW3 got me hooked, at first I didn't care about it then I started playing it for myself. I'm not sure how old I was but i'm 18 now. I never knew there was a TT version of the game until I started playing MWO with a group. I'm curious if there is anyone yonger than me that played the older MW pc games, as well as MWO or possibly the TT?


I've always wanted to play MW multiplayer but never could cuz of lack of online players at my time (besides playing with my father in house). Now i'm a beta tester for MWO and love the game play.

Edited by TrainWreck102, 06 October 2012 - 11:48 PM.

[Maestro Baits]

9 years old and seeing this beast on the shelves at Toys'R'Us


My uncle was really into gaming and played mechwarrior on the SNES (didnt know the relationship of the two at the time) and had the original table top box stashed away and I would always bring them out and just play around with them. I showed him what I got and he introduced me to Mechwarrior 2. I got Mechwarror 3 that same christmas (along with earthsiege if anyone remembers that ****!) and whenever I was not sleeping or in school I was playing the crap out of it. Got my own computer the next year and get MW4. Got heavy into the backstory, collected BT books (mostly fed-com civil war era) and wrote crappy 15 year old fan fiction lol. Saw FASA studios go down and read on the forums back then that mechwarrior was pretty much finished after the introduction of mechassault and the wizkids abomination (though I admit the book Wolf Hunters was pretty sick) I laid low playing chromehounds and front mission waiting for the day the franchise will be revitalised.

[zer0imh]

20 years ago(1992), my brother introduced me and my friends to battletech: a game of armored combat... it all started from there.



tons of memories...

Edited by zer0imh, 06 October 2012 - 11:51 PM.

[Chaieras]

I played a lot of Mechwarrior 2 on my dad's old PC, one of the first computer games I played- I think it was one of the games that game in those sleeves with old Gateway PC's.

Fell in love with the universe.

[Elistaire Drummond]

Around 1989 I read my first BT-novel and then in 1992 bought the TT. The rest is history...

[Gobtcha]

Well, what got me interested in the world of mechs was Exo Squad. After that when my brother moved out he left a few things behind one was a copy of Mech Assault as it is labeled on the CD-R, I care not to at the moment to stick it in. I also came across a Mech Warrior 3 that glued me to the computer for a bit enough for me to release some stress after classes in junior high a tough time for me. As for the lore just the bits that the games shared, I did learn I wanna say 5 years back that there is a RPG and table top that went with the franchise.

I am thoroughly excited about MWO.

Sorry about the grammar or grammer off of work and 3 am.

[TJ Saint]

Robot Jocks was the thing that first got me into mechs, back when I was a kid. Ever since then it is just something about giant mechs blowing stuff up... Played MW2, MW3, MW4, never online though. Ahhh, I even played that travesty Battletech on Genesis, where all you had was the Madcat. Loved it tho.

[FD Wulfette]

I feel old now since I got into the verse at the tender age of 5 with a original boxset of BattleDroids. Been hooked ever since. I have played TT now for 27 years and have played every incarnation of the video games from Mechwarrior to MegaMek. Really started to love it back in 1988 with infocoms release of Battle Tech Crescent Hawks Inception.
I do remember the whole deal with Harmony Gold, FASA and Harmony gold wer once running hand in hand but HG got angry when some of their designs got copied to form some of the most iconic chassis in BT history, HG wasnt getting the numbers that they had hoped for and blamed thier business partner FASA for the decline in popularity. B-TECH was going strong at that point. What I dont get is the "UNSEEN" mechs were in the verse for years before HG got thier panties in a bunch and almost ruined the B-TECH series.

1.) When BattleTech was first made, in 1985, FASA licensed the images used for its original 26 mechs from a model company called Twentieth Century Imports ("TCI"), which claimed in turn to have acquired them from a Japanese animation (anime) studio in Japan called Tatsunoko. Those images were of mecha, or machinery, featured in various anime that Tatsunoko had made—and for which TCI had at least acquired the rights to make models. TCI's provenance over the mechas' likenesses was, and still is (for reasons explained later), uncertain.

Many of those 26 BattleTech mechs, including the Wasp, Stinger, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer, Rifleman, Crusader, and Maurader came from a TV series called Superdimensional Fortress Macross, which is better-known in America as the first 36 episodes of Robotech. When Harmony Gold made Robotech, they bought all international distribution rights, and the American copyright, for Macross and all the mecha involved in it. In January 1985, Harmony Gold became aware that FASA was using Macross mecha designs, sent a cease and desist letter, and exchanged correspondence with FASA to determine the source of their alleged rights in these designs. However, no legal action was taken at that time.
In late 1991, FASA hired an agent to pitch BattleTech to several toy companies, in the interest of getting one of them to produce a BattleTech toy line. One of these companies was Playmates, who had already been considering adding some kind of power armor/robot based toy line for several months. In 1992, Playmates declined interest in BattleTech, which was subsequently picked up by Tycho (who apparently nearly rejected it when they saw Playmates's similar new ExoSquad line). In December 1994, citing a resemblance between one of the ExoSquad E-frame mecha and the BattleTech Madcat (as well as other, more minor similarities of mecha and setting) and the fact that Playmates had access to BattleTech promotional materials (some of which they never returned), FASA filed suit.

As it happens, at the time that lawsuit was filed, Harmony Gold had just contracted with Playmates to reissue some of the earlier Matchbox figurines and toys based on Robotech as part of the ExoSquad line. It is apparently a standard practice to meet an intellectual property lawsuit with another such lawsuit (witness Amazon.com's claims that it is only applying for obvious patents as part of a "mutual assured destruction" portfolio which it can use as a defense if its competitors decide to sue it); thus, in January 1995, ten years after the C&D letter exchange, Harmony Gold filed suit against FASA for using those Macross designs. Harmony Gold claimed that TCI did not have the right to license them to FASA, and so the license was invalid. After some legal wrangling, the two cases were consolidated into the same courtroom, although they ended up meeting different legal fates.
According to the briefs available via Lexis/Nexis, the FASA vs. Playmates case was decided in favor of Playmates. FASA made some good points, rebutted most of Playmates's challenges, but was not quite able to meet the necessary burden of proof. (For more information on why the case was decided in this way, find a libary with Lexis/Nexis and look up the Findings of Fact.) The case moved on to the penalty phase.

It is apparently a common practice in intellectual property lawsuits that a losing plaintiff pays some or all of the legal fees of the defendant. However, this award is left strictly up to the court's discretion, and Judge Castillo determined that FASA had not litigated in bad faith or unreasonably. Thus, FASA was not ordered to pay any of Playmates's legal fees. Playmates, who claimed to have spent $2.5 million on its defense, appealed, but the appeals court sent it back down for Castillo to clarify his ruling.

In his fourth and final brief, Castillo reaffirmed his decision not to award Playmates its legal fees. He wrote that FASA's case was meritorious, and that FASA had done well enough in responding to most of Playmates's challenges that "if one evaluates the actual results of this lengthy and involved litigation, one does not reach the conclusion that Playmates achieved a true victory."
Castillo also noted that an award to Playmates would not serve any useful creative purpose, and that there was no reason to reward them for making a conscious choice to go ahead with a very similar toy line after it had seen FASA's promotional information--behavior that seemed to Castillo to be only barely within the bounds of the law. From reading this opinion, one gets the sense that Castillo did not think very highly of Playmates; the way it seems to have been intentionally delayed so as to be released on April 1st, 1998 is another clue.


However, the Macross mecha case, Harmony Gold vs. FASA, did not reach a verdict. After producing only two briefs (the one in which the case was filed, and a brief addressing documents Harmony Gold had provided FASA as evidence and then sought to retract, claiming they'd been issued by mistake and citing attorney-client privilege), the case was dismissed and settled out of court in June, 1997. Because the terms of the settlement were confidential, we will probably never know the true compromise that was reached—nor will we know for certain whether FASA's license truly was or was not valid. However, even before the settlement, FASA had already phased the disputed mechs out of its game products. They declined even to produce new artwork for those same mechs, "to avoid any confusion among players that could occur if the names or statistics of the discontinued 'Mech designs were used with new design images."

In an interesting footnote, a Japanese court decided in January, 2003 that the rights to the images and mecha designs actually belonged not to Tatsunoko, but to Studio Nue, one of the other studios involved in the production of Macross. However, because Tatsunoko—and thus Harmony Gold—still owns the international distribution rights, FASA (or, rather, WizKids) would still not be able to use the images without satisfying both Harmony Gold and Studio Nue. (NOTE: I am not a lawyer; do not consider this to be legal advice.)

There is the synopsis of that little gem.

Edited by FD Wulfette, 08 October 2012 - 09:57 AM.

[Wolf Hreda]

Oh, man. My start with the Battletech universe was around 2000 to 2001, a friend of mine sat me down at his computer in front of Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. Oh. My. God. I was hooked ever since. Now I've played all the iterations of Mechwarrior 2, I've played Mechwarrior 3, still haven't beaten Pirate's Moon, Mechwarrior 4 Mercs, MechCommander 1 & 2, MegaMek, and Mektek's Assault Tech 1: Battletech. I'm reading the novels in chronological order, currently I'm on Far Country (arguably the strangest entry thus far), and now I've got MWO, and hopefully soon MW Tactics, to fill my Battletech needs.

[Syal]

My first stint with the mechwarrior video games was with the one for the SNES. From there I branched into mechwarrior 2 when it came out a few years later and that was the best thing since sliced bread! I bought a MS sidewinder joystick for it because it had a twisting action for the torso. I thought I was hot stuff back then. Since then I've played pretty much all of them except for living legends.

[barracuda1]

Firstly, STOMP, thank you for posting this! I just today discovered this game, I have been out of the community since the very end of MekTek's battlepacks. That was, I think 5 or 6 years ago. I played a little MW2 when it came out...then MW3 came along and I jumped on it but by the time I really devoted some time to it then came Vengeance. I played solo for a little while but was taken in to a small band of pilots known as =VTL= or Five Tiger Legion, and we allied ourselves with the 57th Blackhearts and Lost Souls. My callsign at that point was =VTL=BlackTIger, and after we disbanded because of real world happenings, I was picked up by MidnightCobras or MNC and changed my callsign to Barracuda. AAAHHHHHH the memories!!!!! Anyway, prior to MW4 , I was never in a dedicated group or clan before so it was a real huge kick in the butt seeing my buddies on the field, plowing through armor with my fat Land Pig, good ol 3n4 we used to call her, 3 gauss and 4 ERLL Daishi, she ran a little hot but was manageable. I always loved it when the lights and mediums came in to do a circle of death around me , thinking they would get away with legging a 100 tonner consistently, I found a great way to line em up and drop em. Thanks for making me think of those great days and I look forward to running around the field with all of you and make some new memories! CHEERS!!!!!!!

[barracuda1]

DrTeath, on 02 October 2012 - 08:46 PM, said:

I've always loved sci-fi, high tech and giant robots.
I think my first exposure to battletech was the Saturday morning cartoons back in the 90's
At some I got my hands on a MechWarrior 3 demo disk and after watching the opening video I knew I had to have it. I eventually got my hands on MW3 and love it. Was never any good at it but finished it and love it all the same.
Later I found a discount box with MW4, its first expansion and MechCommander 2 on sale and grabbed it as soon as I could.
I still have those disks and probably the original boxes somewhere too.
I saw the Hawken videos before I found out about MWO. Then I saw the MWO teaser trailer (with the atlas high altitude insertion) and suddenly I didn't care about Hawken anymore.
Once a 'Mech Warrior, always a 'Mech Warrior. <---------I agree 110,000% DrTeath!