Probably the very first giant robot game that can proudly claim to be a simulation than a straightforward action shooter, Mechwarrior is a great game set in FASA's famous BattleTech world of giant robots. It was, and still is, one of the best BattleTech games ever made.
In this game, you play a young man whose reputation has been soiled by an evil usurper. You have five years to build a force of giant robots and great pilots strong enough to attack your foe. Take on mercenary missions for any one of the 5 houses from the first generation world of FASA's BattleTech (Kurita, Davion, Steiner, Marik, Laio). The missions themselves take place from first-person perspective, in 3D-rendered worlds, where you pilot your robot, fighting other robots of the same ilk.
Gameplay, based on Dynamix's excellent physics model used in its early flight sims, is top-notch. Robots move convincingly, and the 3D polygonal graphics are exciting for its time. Add some slight roleplaying, team building, planetary intrigue, and goofy EGA pictures of non-player-characters and you've got a great classic that goes a long way toward immersing you in its world. The role playing was primarily textual - reading paragraphs, choosing between fight or run, and then being killed or moving on accordingly. The game's main focus, robot fighting, is very exciting. Combat usually lasts under 10-20 minutes because the maps are small, the opponents are few, just with less dense graphics and more abbreviated gameplay.
Overall, Mechwarrior is a must-have for anyone even with a slight interest in giant robot games. It sets the standard for other games in the giant robots genre, and its role-playing elements are sorely missing from today's mech games where the focus has shifted to strategy and 3D graphics than plot and atmosphere. Two thumbs up!
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
Mechwarrior 1: First time you avenge someone, or your own ass as mercenary.
Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries: Second time.
Mechwarrior 3: Skipped Mercenaries sandbox.
Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries: Third time.
Battletech: Fourth time.
Mechwarrior 5: Omg all the mods and customization and graphics and stories and, and and....
I was good at this game and maxed the money you could earn. I had planets full of mechs and used a locust to kill the enemies.
sorry for the previous aneurism of a comment. The games pretty buggy and im pretty sure it just had some file corruption and im tired of fixing it. If your interested here is a list of bugs I have found, targeting box dose not show up, legs cannot turn independently from torso, game goes into infinite loading when a mission is completed unless mpu401 is set to = uart, game will randomly get file corruption and freeze up when you use the GUI ((reinstall required :D )), and finally the game will completely stop loading you into combat and will instead instantly complete the mission and pay you with no scrap as if nobody showed up.
The game is pretty buggy, most are not an issue (like the targeting box not working) however im having a not game ending issue but still an extremely annoying one, for some reason when ever I launch a mission it instantly ends, and I get payed with no salvage as if nobody showed up how ever it has been happening on every single mission. Note missions were working previously, the issue came up slowly (ie more and more mission were getting skipped until all of them were).
my screen stays blank and doesn't go to end mission screen after first mission. Anyone know how to avert it?
It seems to me that the version here is broken, probably from the patch that removed the protection. 3D battles don't start properly most of the time.
Getting a different version with the protection still intact has fixed that problem for me.
A Buddy of mine bought this when it first came out. Even by then we were Grizzled Veterans of Both the Battletech Board Game & Mechwarrior RPG. (Actually, we often integrated them AND the sadly-neglected Aerotech Space Combat Boardgame.) A standard mission with our Merc Company was to Jump In-System, use the Aerotech Game for any combat that would arise, then land & use Battletech if there was any Mech Fighting to be done. Great Stuff. This Game was THE closest to those experiences when it came out.
Absolutely Fascinating News though- In the Youtube Video " Lostech: The BattleTech Center: 30 Years of Heavy Metal Mayhem " The Creators of Battletech say that the Battletech Center Simulation Pods (That were first opened around 1990 in Chicago) were the ORIGINAL GOAL they wanted to achieve!
Meaning the Board Game & RPG, which have long, long since overshaded the Sim Pods were only a MEANS TO AN END! They were hoping to start an entire franchise of Battletech Centers (Sort of like a Chuck E. Cheese for Adults) & the Pen & Paper game was just a sideline to help fund it!
AND they thought this could be achieved with the technology of 1980, when they first conceived of the plan. To me, as a Veteran Gamer since that time, this was completely shocking. Our group & nearly everyone else who knew about them, thought it was the other way around.
Lastly, for all of its flaws, 'Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries' remains the best inheritor of this classic game's legacy.
I remember when this came out, my brothers and I played it a ton. It is still fun today. If you play with the AC 5 just right you can hit the enemy mech from really far away and get them with a headshot. Another thing you can do for quick money is to go to Steiner near Kurita, somewhere near outback, can't remember, buy mechs in Steiner and sell in Kurita just across the border. In a few trips you will have a Battle Master without any fights. Another fun trick is to get all BM's and then pull in a locust and run up behind the enemy while your guys head from the front. You can take them out real fast. Don't do it too much though because the computer will start putting out one light with three heavy/assault mechs.
Not that it is critical to the game playability but any idea why the rectangle target isn't available and the right bottom screen doesn't display a picture of the current target selected?
Also doesn't look like the E command [-- Damage readings for Targeted Mech (Friend or Foe) ] works?
Can see a sample of what the current target rectangle & the display of the bottom right screen in one of the snapshots at
https://www.moddb.com/games/mechwarrior/images/image-2#imagebox
@ERNIE Neither designers nor players have imagination anymore.
Great game. It is interesting that even with all the capabilities of modern computer they still struggle to provide anything close to the gameplay of this game. What has happened to modern games, why can't they be more like this?
Can you play this game on the Android?
Thank you so much! This is trip to memory lane! I felt young again!
Hello. I have the game working and changed the config file, but the game runs at lighting speeds. How do I get the game to play at it's normal speed? During combat, everthing moves as if in fast forward, my mech and the enemy mech. I can't complete even one mission. Thanks. I hope someone is still looking at these posts.
here is download link to preconfigured preinstall of first mechwarrior game for dos and yes i give myabandonware.com permission to make use of this file for their site: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/292885066789683200/548447111566458895/MechWarrior.rar
At the Battletech Retro Gaming league discord chat server we have in our download channel a preinstalled dos copy of this game. if you wish to access it here is invite link to our discord chat server: https://discord.gg/rxrddpA
I bought this game when it first came out. Stayed up late nights playing it. Won it. played it again. This game still rocks!
I found a fix for the codes here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/mechwarrior/hints/hintId,6/
not sure if it works.
Also does anyone have a crack to disable the annoying input codes?
Does anyone else think it odd that it gives you "Tandy MT-32" and "Roland"? Shouldn't it be "Tandy" and "Roland MT-32"?
sorry for my grammar
Thanks for the help, but do u play it on D-Fend because I did the step but it play's on a small screen and I cant full screen it play, also its no on my D-Fend
Fix for hang up without using a frontend. (Thanks BOOPY for this final solution)
*try midi setting "mpu401=uart" in conf.*
For Windows 7 and maybe others:
-Go to where your DOSBox is installed
-Open "DOSBox 0.74 Options"; Select All; Copy
-Open Notepad; Paste
-Go to the midi setting and change "mpu401=intelligent" to "mpu401=uart"
-Save as "gamename.txt" inside your Mechwarrior folder
-Copy a new shortcut for the DOSBox App
-Right-click, go to Properties, and set Target with file locations similar to this:
"DOSBox.exe location" -conf "new notepad txt location"
Example of my target:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -conf "C:\Games\Mechwarrior\mechwar\MW_1.txt"
-Rename your new shortcut to "MW-DOSBox" or something of the sort
-Now drag your "MW.exe" application into your new MW-DOSBox shortcut and the game shouldn't hang up anymore.
I hope this helps and is not too confusing :)
@ boopy
Thank you very very much!
i found a solution of hang after mission.
try midi setting "mpu401=uart" in conf. (using frontend like D.O.G is easiest way to change conf settings.)
it works fine on DosBox 0.74
I had the same problem playing the game, but I read elsewhere it works better with DOSBox 0.61. Sure enough, using this version of DOS Box solves the problem of it hanging with a blinking cursor after missions. Now I'm mech-ing it up left and right!
It can't be worse than MW2, can it?
nice blog
I'm having the same issue as Colonel. Screen goes black with a blinking cursor in the top left.
Anyone know the solution?
awesome game, needs to be played
...Jeez, kids these days. Try speaking a *real* language, ya thugs.
DOPE GAME YO!! CHECK IT OUT MANG!
peace homies.
yung buck put em up, riding high
Having problems after killing my first mech, the game seems to hang up.
After killing the first mech, the screen goes black with a blinking cursor (like it's going to go to another screen) but it just sits at the blinking cursor..
any ideas?
I loved this game as a kid. My friend and I used to play the board game (BattleTech, not the MechWarrior RPG). I used to sit in front of the screen manning the guns on the keyboard. My friend would sit next to me with the old Tandy joystick. We would run as many missions as we could that way. So much fun!
The only funny quirk- You can take out almost anything in a Locust by running up to it (even the leg of a BattleMaster) and then just pounding like heck on the machine guns until you blow the leg out.
So much fun!
this game is awsome i remember playing it as a kid and i enjoyed playing again. it was better as an adult becaus i payed attention to the story.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.