Is there even a chance that happens?

In addition to the rights issues (Mech2 was Activision, plus other companies with rights), there are issues getting them to run. You need something like MechVM to get them going. They were the weird era of gaming that was DOS but also Windows 95.

I have no idea what the chances are due to the licensing mess, but I would love to see those games released on GOG. I do know that someone is trying to resurrect Microprose so maybe there is a chance that Mechwarrior 3 and Mechcommander 1 could make it back eventually. The rest, I am not sure. The Crescent Hawk's Inception, Crescent Hawk's Revenge, Mechwarrior 1, Mechwarrior 2, MW2 Ghost Bear's Legacy and MW2 Mercenaries all run fine under DOSBox. I hear rumors that Mechwarrior 3/Pirate's Moon runs in Windows 10 but with some issues, and Mechcommander 2 and Mechwarrior 4 run just fine. (But there are probably DRM issues with some of these if you are trying to run a non-cracked retail copy.)

Topps I guess with Microsoft having a license to produce video games. As for the old Mechwarrior games this also should be agreed on with developers / designers & producers (original concept) with or without publishers which paid for game development. It's a pain and probably not worth it for big clumsy companies to initiate a legal work but it's possible that some other entity would emerge out of nowhere with big money and act as mediator between all parties, the most problematic part would be to get their final "Yes" in this.

We have not get original Wizardry games even though the last parts are widely available. I guess the chances are slim, but wonders do happen.

I agree. I think that what would be required is for a game publisher to hire a copyright lawyer who is also a die-hard Mechwarrior fan and who would be paid to locate all of the relevant rights-holders and secure agreements from them to publish the games. This would probably be an expensive/time-consuming effort which could potentially lead nowhere given that copyright law is what it is. So that's probably why it hasn't happened yet.

I wish that someone somewhere with both technical and legal experience would be willing to put forth the effort to try to get all of the legal agreements in place though. The Mechwarrior and Mechcommander series are the #1 thing that I wish GOG had on their site.

Wasn't the rights leased to Piranha for the release of the 5th game?

I must understand that the rights for the videogames are property of Microsoft.

Yes, the Mechwarrior rights were licensed to Piranha for MW5, but the rights to the other games are a bit murkier. Activision made all of the Mechwarrior games up to and including Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, Microprose made Mechwarrior 3, the Pirate's Moon expansion, and Mechcommander 1/Desperate Measures. Then Microsoft made Mechwarrior 4, its expansions, and Mechcommander 2. However, recall that this is all based on Battletech which is a separate license. I don't recall Microsoft purchasing the rights to the older games themselves - just the rights to make games based on the Battletech IP. And then to further complicate things, the older Mechwarrior games contain some of the "unseen" mechs which were licensed designs from the Macross series.

Well. It makes sense. Microsoft owns the rights to develop new games, not the old games themselves.

The rest should be a confusing mess between Activision, hasbro/microprose, microsoft and probably three others.

Annoyingly, Mech 4 was freeware for a while, but that got slammed shut after the rights got tangled again.

The Mechwarrior series is one of the best. Highly recommended.


As for Mech 3 on windows 10. I've tried it... It seems to run fine, until a mech you're fighting randomly bounces off into the sky. It's like they get hit, or take a step and it just goes straight up out of sight.

It makes it very hard to play the game.

I got them to play in dosbox; Although the framerate was fairly slow for as little as there was for 3D CGI work. Major issue being the DOSBOX CD player wasn't working right, and if DosBox was set wrong it would try to enhance the crap resolution which took way too much work for too little in return.

Hmmm.... it's really hard for me to care about them at this point.

Hmmm, did you limit framerates to maybe 30fps or 60fps? Sounds like some physics, graphics, and/or DirectX stuff is going out of whack here.

Also, b/c this is an older game (that used DirectX 6.1) - yeah, that could be another problem. So, you might want to install and/or inject DGVoodoo or any DirectX wrappers that support older DX versions, just to try to interrupt/intercept the DX10 calls to get them to run properly w/ wrappers that act more like older DX versions.

EDIT:
You also, might want to check the PC Gaming Wiki too:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/MechWarrior_3

You're probably correct, it likely has something to do with the framerate.
I did use DGVoodoo but that didn't completely fix the issues, I may try again sometime just to see if limiting the framerate would help.

I did find a solution that worked great (but you're not going to like it), I just used my old win98 pc. Ran like a charm on it.

Couldn't GoG just buy the rights? Or whatever needs to be done?

For those interested, a small article on how the Mech mess began (the article is dated from before the legal settlement):
https://www.pcgamesn.com/battletech/battletech-harmony-gold-lawsuit

And this is after the legal mess was solved:
https://www.sarna.net/news/harmony-gold-and-piranha-games-lawsuit-has-been-resolved/

I'm no copyright specialist, but I suspect that a Mechwarrior 1+2 re-release would need to involve both Activision and Harmony Gold.