The Return of Heavy Gear

I have no idea how I managed to miss this one. Back in August, I received an e-mail that must’ve gone straight to my Spam folder and was wiped out before I had a chance to see it. Now luckily, I managed to spot a redundant backup of the thing today, because it was the official press release for the new Heavy Gear game!

Stompy Bot Productions is publishing Heavy Gear Assault, which is currently in development by long-time mech gamers Mektek, most recently known for re-releasing Mechwarrior 4.

Following the path of Mechwarrior Online and Hawken, Heavy Gear Assault will be a free-to-play online battle, with additional content available for purchase.

I’m pretty pumped to see the Heavy Gear series make a return. If anyone knows how to do this series justice, it’s the Mektek team. With all of the recent offering popping up in the genre, now is an excellent time to be a fan of fighting robots.

More Walkthrough Updates

Just a few more updates and polishes. Most are behind-the-scenes, with broken links fixed and an updated sitemap. The big change you may notice is that there’s now a site search listed above, via google. So, if you’re looking for something in particular, just run a search, and hopefully, it’ll get you straight there.

I’m still working on the Mercenaries Walkthrough and it’s improving every week. Most of the missions are up and the HTML formatting has been added. I’m hoping to finish it up in the next two or three weeks.

Also, the Heavy Gear codes page has been added.

Updates:
Heavy Gear Codes – Page is up
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries Walkthrough – HTML formatting added

Lines of Time

As promised, I’ve got my method to convert Mechwarrior 2 from the standard Windows 95 version to the 3Dfx version up. In addition, the Mechwarrior/Battletech timeline is up, which will give a good indication of when the games take place not only in dates, but also in context of the (classic) Battletech universe.

The Heavy Gear section has been revamped, much like other parts of the site. Now, it’s frameless and all the code is compliant. There’s a few updates among the pages, so take a look around.

Updates:
Heavy Gear Links – More links added
Heavy Gear 2 Codes – Santa Hat Easter Egg added
Heavy Gear 2 Downloads – Severs.dat file added
Mechwarrior 2 FAQ – 3DFX Conversion is up
Mechwarrior Timeline – Up and complete

Servers with a Smile

I just so happened to stumble upon this site while I was googling HG2 + Battlezone. Now I can’t help, but remember the last time I was here I was following a link from the last HG2 server that was up.

Were you guys the one who maintained the HG2 server for all these years?

Glad you found the site again. To answer the question: No, I’m not responsible for anything to do with the last A-net server (besides telling people where it is). It’s being run by some Battlezone players at BZ 911. Click on this link for the Anet Server Stats.

Mecha

While I’ve got the itch to play through some old games, I decided I’d give Heavy Gear II another run through. The hardest part about the game is adjusting my mindset. I was still stuck in the walking-tank mode of Mechwarrior. After realizing that in a Gear, being stealthy is as much, if not more, important than being able to take a shot, it all clicked back in place.

Good news, for me at least, is that despite all of the trouble that I’ve heard people having trying to get the game running on XP, I just installed it and it worked. Now, I still ran into a couple of glitches and bugs, but I didn’t have to do any special patching, for whatever reason.

While Heavy Gear II is a cool game, I was never sucked into the universe the way that I was with Battletech. So, on a related note, I thought I’d start to write that Mechwarrior/Battletech timeline I’ve been talking about.

I didn’t.

Instead, I wound up writing about the history of Mechwarrior. It’s a good story, so be sure read through it all.

To this date, I’ve not played through Ghost Bear’s Legacy, so I had to change that. MW2 is still cheap on e-bay, so I picked up GBL and another copy of MW2. This’ll be my fourth. The first being the good ol’ DOS version in 96. The second was an ATI 3D Rage version that came bundled with a new computer. So, I sold the DOS version off since I only really need one copy of the game. I didn’t think about a future where I wouldn’t be using an ATI Rage compatible card, but sure enough, it happened. So, one day at a KB Toys, I picked up MW2: Titanium Edition. And now, years later, I’ve got the 1.1 Netmech/Win95/DOS on one disk, so I think I’ve got my bases covered.

The point? Expect a slew of Mechwarrior 2 and Heavy Gear related updates in the future.

Updates:
Mechwarrior History – Complete

Fresh Paint

As usual, I’m back to updating things bit by bit. So we’ll start with the biggest news first: the Mechwarrior pages have been redesigned. As with the rest of the site, it’s gotten a fresh coat of paint that is strictly html 4.0 compliant and tweaked up a little bit. The navigation scheme should make it easier to find whatever your looking for as well. The content is mostly the same at this point, but you can bet that in the near future, there will be more up there.

Also, I’ve added preview movies of Interstate ’76, Nitro Pack, and Heavy Gear in their respective sections. All were pulled from other Activision game disks.

Updates:
Heavy Gear Downloads – New preview movie
Interstate ’76 Downloads – New preview movie
Nitro Pack Downloads – New preview movie
Mechwarrior – Entire site redesign