MechWarrior 2: Resource Forum

I used to play this game about a decade (or two) ago. My friend was gonna toss his out when he couldn't get his to work. I told him I'd see what the story is and found this website. There seem to be a zillion different versions of MW2.

DOS
Win95 Regular
Win95 Pentium Edition
Win95 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics
Win95 ATI 3D Rage
Win95 Matrox Mystique
Win95 PowerVR
Win95 S3 ViRGE
Win95 Titanium Trilogy (bundled version)
Macintosh
Macintosh QuickDraw RAVE

Aside from the Mac versions, all seem to require some form of tweaking to get them to work. That being said, which version is more recommended than the others?

I would think the Titanium Trilogy because it has all three games. However if you could locate the games separately (a friend, bargain bin, ebay, etc) which would you want? Is the Regular better than the Pentium as far as playablilty or patch headaches? Or is it the other way around? Or does the DOS version rule the nest? I'd guess no because even the Win95 versions could run under dosbox.

Anyway, I'm just looking for some insight as to what the general consensus is regarding these different versions. I'd hate to pick one up somewhere and then realize I should have bought a different one from somewhere else.

Pretty much the most reliable version is DOS.
The 95 versions generally do work (Excluding: Win95 PowerVR, Win95 S3 ViRGE, Win95 ATI 3D Rage); however, the problem is they either work or do not work. It is seemingly hardware dependant and depends upon whether you have recentely reformated or not. No one knows exactly what works and does not, which is why I do not recommend any of the 95 versions.

In regards to titanium: i would avoid that like a plague, it is nothing like the origional and it currently has an unfixable mechlab bug.
It also lacks music tracks which are on all the normal versions, and the weapon damage is based upon the mercs engine.

I suggest DOS for the following reasons:

1. It runs almost 95% of the time.
2. There are no known bugs which are caused by the OS.
3. The known bugs are minor.
4. If you cannot get it to work via windows, DOSBOX works so long as your system is least 2.2 ghz.
5. Requires no modifications to the game itself, only a bat file with some extra files.

So with that all said, the versions featured on this page I would suggest.