The stand-alone follow-up to Mechwarrior 2, Mercenaries puts you in command of a small company of 'mechs whose only loyalty is to money. As there is a brutal war between 2 tribes underway, your goal is to cash in by doing tough jobs for both sides.
Buy and equip your mechs, hire pilots, and fight in a wide array of campaigns against rebels, pirates, the Clans, and even other houses of the Inner Sphere. In the Merc mode you will have to keep an eye on stocks of salvageable material, and use this to designate which Mercs are built next, while Story Mode plays like a straight-ahead action game. Internet options include play with up to 15 others around the world.
In the readme, the recommended detail settings for each class of processors (P1, PII, ...) are listed. At the end of the list, there are the specs for a Cray supercomputer. The recommended settings for it are high detail on everything and a 1024x768 resolution (which the game does not support).
Awards
Computer Gaming World
May 1997 (Issue #154) – Space Simulation Game of the Year
May 1997 (Issue #154) – Space Simulation Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
3D OEM versions
"Mercenaries" was one of the games that used to be shipped with early 3D accelerator cards. That's probably because with its open 3D environments and detailed mech designs it was a great title to showcase the cards' capabilities. At least these specific versions are known to exist:
