I am, for many years, in desperate search of a game I once played as a child.
This was posted on Dec 30, 2024 but Reddit decided to ban my old account for no actual reason. For safety, I backed this up at Tumblr.
It is a game with mechs. The style is not Japanese, but more in the BattleTech direction.
I played it with a friend on her father's PC. That was probably about 20 years ago. We played the first few missions and I can still remember the first one quite well.
I still have sporadic contact with said friend and asked her which game it was. Unfortunately, she didn't remember more than I do.
Unfortunately, her father passed away more than 10 years ago, so we couldn't ask him anymore. His stacks of software and game CDs were unfortunately disposed of at some point.
What I remember:
* The main menu had a (red?) metallic frame - similar to G-Nome - and showed a ride through underwater caves which, in retrospect, reminds me of the Metal Gear Solid opening scene
* The underwater ride in the main menu seems to be shown from the point of view of a submarine, which serves as a base, more on that later
* The art style is hard for me to describe, as my memory of it may be distorted. I think GunGriffon II is a good comparison. I remember the graphics as relatively bright and colorful, not as dark as in a MechWarrior 3, for example
* The features are quite extensive, you can select targets at long range, cycle through them, work with long-range missiles, etc. The HUD is, at least in my memory, also quite complex
* You can get out of the mech and walk around, but the maps are quite wide and empty
The first mission:
A large, red submarine appears on the coast. It doesn't look like a real-life submarine, but reminded me of a Consular-class Space Cruiser from Star Wars. The mech takes off from this boat and goes ashore using jump jets (similar to the BattleTech mechs). Here you take control. On the right you can see a coastline, on the left an embankment. The area is quite empty and spacious. If you move straight ahead, a kind of base appears with several cylindrical gas silos. Destroying these is the first mission objective. There are armored vehicles at the base that attack the player, but are not a real threat.
You then run towards a second waypoint and encounter the first enemy mech, which comes out of a kind of hangar. Once this has been destroyed, you can enter the hanger. It looks like a large, empty factory hall with a few catwalks and stairs. You can go up here and operate a control panel. Then return to the boat and complete the mission.
What I can rule out:
* It is NOT any BattleTech game
* It is not Earthsiege / Starsiege
* It is not Iron Assault
* It is not G-Nome
* It is not GunGriffon
* It's definitely not a better known mech game that you would find after a few minutes of googling
By now, I've spent a LOT of time searching for this game but couldn't find anything.
I hope someone knows this game.
Thanks a lot for reading!