You're seated in the cockpit, twelve meters above ground, your Mech's 75 tonnes stomping heavily on the desert ground. You're getting close to nav point beta, no sign of the enemy, yet. "Enemy Mech Detected!", your computer tells you in a sterile, cold voice.

You arm your missiles and lasers and fire your first salva as you turn your Timber Wolf to the left. More hostiles show up on your radar - this is going to be one hell of a mission. The first of the enemies' missiles miss you by half an inch as you fire all your lasers at their leader.

Seconds later, your Mech trembles under the impact of more missiles. A loud explosion and a heavy jolt tell you they must've hit one of your ammo stores. "Heat Level Critical" the same female computer voice tells you, "Core Meltdown Imminent"

In 1995, Activision released MechWarrior 2 and sent similar shockwaves through the gaming community. But does the milestone game hold up today?

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are club member Hannes ("Mr Creosote") and new participant Emil ("elhammar"), who has studied MechWarrior 2 academically.

Also a big thanks to DGC member "TigerQuoll" for sending in a voice message! It's much appreciated. If you want to send in a voice message yourself, you can email them to [email protected].

This month we have two shoutouts, one to Games Studies Study Buddies who make academic games studies accessible to the layperson, and one to HalfBlindGamer, who focuses on obscure games and dissects them earnestly where others resort to jokes and giggles.

That's all for now. Enjoy!

[ download mp3 ] (182 mins, 208 MB)

* Emil's "The Art of Battletech & Mechwarrior" on Twitter and Tumblr

* Promo Flyer

* Original magazine reviews scanned by DGC member Pix

* Digital Foundry - MechWarrior 2 Versions Comparison

* Games Studies Study Buddies

* HalfBlindGamer