494 Words About: Mech Warrior 3050
I suspect most boys enjoy drawing robots and/or mech suits. I was certainly no exception. One of my old Boy Scouts folders has a page in it that is literally covered with a mech suit fighting off an army of robots who are shooting darts at it while pyramids on the back of 18-wheelers fire lazer beams.
Gotta say, it’s pretty rad, and I miss drawing robots.
The inspiration for this science fiction masterpiece was the videogame Mech Warrior 3050 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System(SNES) and the SEGA Genesis. Almost 25 years after spending the evening of a slumber party with one of my friends playing it after he talked me into talking my Mom into renting it from Hastings, I can still vividly remember this game.
Part of it was because I controlled a mech suit.
Another part of it was shooting guns and rockets…from a mech-suit.
It was an unrealized dream of my youth to pilot a mech-suit, shooting robots and monsters, and relishing every explosion produced in the chaos. Mayhaps the Space Force will give some other child this unrealized vision of my childhood, though I suppose that for them it will be less of a fun videogame and more of a horrific nightmare of combat.
Sunrise, sunset I suppose.
I’ve discovered and relished in my new working knowledge of videogame emulation, and when I thought about this game it took me only a few minutes to discover it had a name, Mech Warrior 3050, and that ROM files were available online for download. It took less than the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail to get it downloaded and running on my PC and I spent a few minutes recreating every brilliant moment of this gorgeous Sci-Fi combat.
To be honest, Mech Warrior 3050 is not an outstanding videogame in terms of design, user interface, or visuals, but it doesn’t have to be.
Mech Warrior 3050 is a combat centered game about exploring the regions the player is dropped into and eliminating target buildings. This means blowing up a lot of buildings, it means stomping on enemy soldiers, it means shooting rockets at tanks, it means firing round after round of high caliber bullets at other battle-mechs, and it means firing laser beams that will leave enemy units a smoking crater.
I had a concern while loading up the game that nostalgia was filtering this perspective, but playing Mech Warrior 3050 it became clear almost immediately that, while there were some technical problems, this game was still really freaking rad dude. It didn’t matter that I had issues orienting the Mech, or that I died over and over again on just the first level.
I fired missiles into tanks and watched them blow up, a smile forming on my face.
Two decades after my first time playing, Mech Warrior 3050 offered me exactly what I always wanted: controlling a mech suit, and blowing stuff up…in a mech suit.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
4.17.2025
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