On a bright summer day in 1996 my father packed the family into his brand new minivan for a trip to the nearby medium-sized city to visit Circuit City. In which he purchased a Compaq Presario desktop computer pre-installed with Windows 95, a monitor, and several accessories including a Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro joystick.

On the box for this joystick, up in the corner above the picture of the stick itself, was a small picture of a game box below the words “Free inside!”, half the box’s background was black, the other half orange flames, and in the middle stood a really cool looking robot tank thing. It stood on backward kneed bird-like legs, had arms that ended in lasers and machine guns, two boxy missile launchers on its shoulders, and a cockpit that looked like a B-29. It had nose art of this bright green bird of prey holding a katana painted on the side. It was easily the coolest thing I had seen in my entire 9 years on Earth.

Inside this box was a black compact disc labeled Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat.

And here’s the thing, that game did a tremendously bad job of indicating it was from a bigger franchise; other than obviously being the second game in the series. But like I had a copy of Descent 2 as well, there isn’t a ridiculously deep universe behind that one, why would there be behind this one? So MW2: 31CC did grab me a little more than a lot of the other games I had at the time, I didn’t really follow it up much, plus, 90’s kids didn’t have many ways of doing that; Google hadn’t been invented yet, and we didn’t really get much use out of that Compaq’s 28.8k modem. I played the hell out of it, then eventually moved on to other things.

Later on, I was in like 9th grade or so, I was upset about how school was going, and trying to cheer me up my father said “Are there any video games you want?” “Actually yeah, there’s an expansion for Half-Life I want.” “Think Staples has it?” “I think they do.” He drives me down to Staples, and there in the software section (remember when Staples had a software section?) was a boxed copy of both Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and right next to it a box that said “Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance.” I left that store carrying both boxes.

Mechwarrior 4 ALSO wasn’t very good at indicating that it was from a bigger franchise. If anything, knowing only what I had learned from Mechwarrior 2, it seemed even cheaper because they didn’t seem to keep their lore straight. I kept wondering why they insisted on calling the Mad Dog a “Vulture,” the Timber Wolf a “Mad Cat” and the Summoner a “Thor,” and wondering my Star was now called my Lance, etc. then I started playing multiplayer, and I got into this Battletech Universe roleplaying league. And the guys I got into playing with were like “Yeah no it’s this whole big thing with all these novels and stuff.”