You're playing it wrong: MechWarrior 2

From thecrankyhermit

MechWarrior 2 was originally released in 1995 for DOS and Windows 95. It was followed up by an expansion, Ghost Bear's Legacy, also for DOS and Windows 95. A number of 3D accelerated versions followed, but only for Windows 95, and only base MechWarrior 2 was enhanced this way, not Ghost Bear's Legacy.

In 1996, a standalone game MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries was released for DOS and Windows 95. The Windows 95 version had built-in 3D acceleration support.

In 1998, MechWarrior 2: Titanium Trilogy was released for Windows 95 only, containing Direct3D accelerated versions of all three games.

So, Titanium Trilogy is the way to go, right? Wrong. It is incomplete, buggy, and very flawed. The engine, assets, physics, and damage tables are based on MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries for all three games, which creates some problems for the original MW2 and GBL. Balance is off, textures are all wrong, the HUD is based on Mercs instead of MechWarrior, and surrealy, your clan starmates use mercenary radio chatter.

Some of its many bugs include weapons randomly misfiring, crashes, sounds not playing, some bizarre heat mechanics, and severe pop-up. The MW2 Mercenaries disc is missing a large amount of its music too - about a minute of each track is missing, for some reason.

The Direct3D enhanced graphics, which is all that Titanium Trilogy supports, aren't categorically better than the software rendering either. Resolution is better, lighting is smoother, texture filtering is better, but a lot of effects are missing, like a wireframe view mode, malfunctioning HUD when your computer is damaged, and a nifty animated targeting reticule. In Direct3D mode everything looks clean and polished - too clean. For instance, in software mode, explosions are nice and firey - the downed mech collapses on itself as its pieces break up into little flaming bits. In Direct3D mode, an explosion sprite appears slightly in front of the mech, and pieces of it fly off emitting smoke. Also, turning on night vision mode in software mode results in a visible switch to something that looks like a night vision mode, with altered colors and everything, but in Direct3D it just looks like the brightness level instantly increases. MW2 Mercenaries in particular has an organic grungy textured look to it, and Direct3D mode's "clean" look ruins it.

So, what's the way to go? Depends how much effort you're willing to invest. On MechWarrior 2, the original DOS version works just fine in DOSBox. It has no textures, but the game was intended to look that way.

If you want textures, then you'll need a 3D accelerated Win95 version. Of the many 3D accelerated ports, the PowerVR version is the nicest looking. But there is no way of playing it unless you have a real PowerVR video card. The 3DFX version is the second nicest looking. Unlike Titanium Trilogy, the textures are good, and all of the graphic effects are intact. But it's less stable than the DOS version, and needs work to run it at all. Follow this guide for instructions.

For Ghost Bear's Legacy and Mercenaries, just stick with the DOS versions. There's no good 3D accelerated version of either, so you might as well stick with the stable, DOSBox-friendly DOS versions. Mercenaries even has textures in the non-3D accelerated DOS version, so it's no big loss.

Graphics comparison:

DOS version of MW2
3DFX version of MW2
Titanium version of MW2
DOS version of Mercs
Titanium version of Mercs