Widescreen Gaming Forum

Eons ago, back in 1995, there was this DOS game called MechWarrior 2, which to this day is the finest mech combat game ever created. It had two expansion packs - Ghost Bear's Legacy, and Mercenaries. Not much longer afterwards, Windows versions of these were released. However, this was during an awkward period when Windows was new, and 3D acceleration was new, and there were several video cards out there, none of which followed any universal API standards. So, they released a different 3D accelerated Windows version for each card, none of which work on modern systems.

Pretty soon, Microsoft released DirectX so that stuff like this wouldn't happen. Activision then released MechWarrior 2: Titanium Trilogy - a pack of all three games with revamped graphics and reprogrammed to use the Direct3D API.

Then Windows XP came out, and Titanium Trilogy simply would not work at all no matter what you did to it. And the original DOS versions were out too - DOSBox would not be advanced enough to play them for years, and even when it was, computers fast enough to handle them wouldn't be available for more years. Even then, you'd still have to deal with the knowledge that a better version exists, and you aren't playing it.

Two days ago, I stumbled upon an unofficial patch that allegedly made Titanium Trilogy work in WinXP. I dug out my copy of it, and amazingly, it worked! I spent a good amount of yesterday working on creating a custom installer that installed a pre-patched Titanium Trilogy.

But then I made a mistake. I looked up Titanium Trilogy on Wikipedia. To my horror, I learned that the Titanium Trilogy was "criticized" for having an incomplete soundtrack. Wikipedia even had a listing of the original versions' soundtrack, and a comparison between that list and my CDs showed that not only was the Titanium Trilogy missing several songs, but almost all of the ones left were shortened.

So now I'm eBay hunting for the DOS versions of all three, entirely for their soundtracks. I intend to make a Frankenstein-style monster CD of each one, using the data of the pre-patched Titanium Trilogy and the soundtrack of the DOS versions, but re-arranged to match the Titanium Trilogy order. It won't be the first time I've done this - I've done similar things for Quake, Quake II, and Civilization II as well.

And if it works, then I'll fruitlessly pray that GoG.com picks up this project so that everyone else is able to enjoy the ultimate MechWarrior II edition as well.

There are plenty of people who still play it online, using the DOSBox or Pentium version; I didn't really pay attention.
Try mech2.org, I have a friend who's an admin there and has an enthusiasm for BT/MW2 I've never seen before. He/the community might be able to help.

Online play isn't really one of my goals. My project is focused on getting the best singleplayer experience possible from the game, and I feel the Titanium Trilogy's revamped graphics is necessary for that.

Dare I ask? What is the widescreen support?

I *LOVED* those games. I would be massively excited to play them again. A bunch of us in college would hot seat the missions, all using the then top of the line MS Sidewinder joystick. The one with the throttle on the base, and the twist handle. Those are great memories.

No widescreen support unless you use 3Dfx mode and configure a Glide wrapper to force a widescreen resolution, which doesn't seem to work on all systems. If it works, like it does on my laptop, it's stretched. On my desktop it does not work - any resolution higher than 640x480 results in a black screen but with a functional HUD visible on top of it.

I'd say widescreen isn't worth the effort or the mention.

They still might be able to help. Just sayin'.

I have an old DOS/Win95 copy of Mercenaries here, I'd be glad to send you the music - PM me if you're interested or if there's any more info you require!