Mechwarrior was a game developed by
Dynamix and released by
Activision in 1989. It followed closely on the heels of two previous
FASA-licensed
BattleTech games,
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception and
BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge by none other than
Infocom.
Mechwarrior blended together a fair bit of role playing and some very well done (for the time) in-cockpit 'Mech shooting. You play the role of a guy who is supposed to inherit a planet, but his family is killed and the special chalice stolen. You must find out who did it and exact revenge. Most of the game is spent between flying from planet to planet finding information, and doing mercenary work to earn money and build up enough 'Mechs to face the bad guys in the end.
Mechwarrior featured an EGA combat engine with polygonal models for buildings, mountains, and 'Mechs. There were at least ten different 'Mechs to choose from in the game, and they were reproduced fairly accurately in terms of size, armor, weapons, and so on. 'Mechs could even jump and fly around a while using their jump jets, and heat played an important role in how often you could fire your weapons, just like in the board game.
The interface was a little clunky, and the environments were somewhat sparse in terms of detail (but it *would* run on an XT). The accuracy system in the game was heavily skewed, all you had to do was aim for the head and you could kill one of the Battlemasters with a couple of PPC shots.
It was followed up by the very awesome Mechwarrior 2 in 1995.