Words from a Mechwarrior Historian

Hi Localditch, I’m so happy to see you are back up and running again. This is by far the best site on the internet regarding knowledge and research on mech games, especially Mechwarrior. My name is Emil and I’m the guy who’s running the Art of Battletech and Mechwarrior archive and doing all of the modding for Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries (and soon this week Clans). I have a very deep interest in the history of the games and your resources have been an absolute godsend over the many years. I also work as an academic and I’m looking to detail the history of mech sim games a bit more. I actually have a research paper being presented in September about the history of the mech sim genre and I will definitely make more use of your work. I can also reveal that I’m embarking on doing a remake of Mechwarrior 2 in MW5 Clans. I already have Silent Thunder up and running (and previously I did Pyre Light as a demo / prototype in MW5 Mercs in case you haven’t seen it). I really want to establish some sort of contact with you and hear more from you or even ask some questions, because you clearly know a whole lot about many things 🙂 I’d love to know more about your background and how you got to know so many things about the games, and if there’s anything I can provide you with – e.g. some of my archived work on the Mechwarrior games that I’ve gathered over the years, including original MW2 and MW3 renders by Scott Goffman and Eric Chadwick that they sent over.

Hey, great to hear from you and thanks for reaching out! The Art of Battletechis frikkin’ awesome. I’m so glad you’re archiving this stuff. I may have nicked an image or two here or there for the site, haha. It’s really cool to hear you’ve got a presentation on mech sims. Feel free to use any info you need off of the Local Ditch. I unfortunately started the site a long time ago, so things are not quite cited as well as they could’ve been, though I try to do better on more recent info and updates. I did see a video of your Mechwarrior 2 level in MW5. Looking forward to the MW5: Clans versions. All us old timers will love it!

As far as my background goes, I’m just a fan running a hobbyist website that’s basically just outlived a lot of others. I started playing MW2 as a kid and would periodically revisit it, usually having to figure out how to get the the thing running again. Some of the old info was common knowledge of the time. Some of it (well, probably a lot) was copying it from sites of people that knew more than me. Some of it was reading a ton of video game magazines and sites, then trying to make a coherent story on all of it (especially the MW2: The Clans info).

Feel free to ask about anything. If you have anything cool that you feel should be on the Local Ditch, send it my way and I’ll put it up!

Also, image courtesy of the Art of Battletech, of course.