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The pods still exist and they are still around here in Texas. They usually tour the mech cons. They are known as thr mechcorps.
I played in these in Canberra, Australia for a few years before the center shut down, they also had Mars Races in simulated cargo haulers using the same pods, maximum 8 players for lance vs lance combat!
No kidding, one in Denver you say?
I remember going to Chicago one summer from Michigan, and there was one near Navy Pier. As previously mentioned the graphics were of the day, but how cool was it anyway. Sit in a closed simulator cockpit with foot pedals for torso twist, throttle and stick. Some systems buttons as I recall, but didn't spend enough time in it to really get good. Overall, it was a great experience. I remember entering the darkened room with rows of simulators. Yellow rotating mech bay lights going, and speakers announcing all pilots to their mechs. The claxon started sounding before game started.
That was Red Planet. And it's probably blasphemous to say it here, but I think it was the better of the two games. I could play Martian Football all day. Unfortunately it doesn't have the audience required to make a revival feasible.
I owned and operated 12 Tesla 2 pods for years in Denver. Sadly there are no pods in Denver anymore. But you can still play them in Michigan, Texas, New Mexico and Seattle. The community that came from the pods was one of the best ever. I am still astonished when I am at a site fixing them how many pilots from back in the day come out of the wood work just to play and share their memories. No other game come to mind that has stuck with people as much as they did.
MechCorps also brings the VW Battletech pods to DragonCon in Atlanta. It always has a pretty big draw down in the gaming rooms
I do wish they could update the engine and graphics. MW4 was pretty nice ten years ago, but it looks dated nowadays compared to MWO or the upcoming MW5.
Still, it's a heck of a lot of fun.
I do wish they could update the engine and graphics. MW4 was pretty nice ten years ago, but it looks dated nowadays compared to MWO or the upcoming MW5.
Still, it's a heck of a lot of fun.
The first ones of these were in Chicago, I knew people who worked there. This was during the same time period as the cartoon was in production. The pods were great fun even if in the early days they crashed a lot and it was frightfully easy to game the system. It was too bad they didn't adapt the multiplayer game that was already available on one of the online services at the time (AOL maybe?) since it had full color graphics, terrain with hills and the like and allowed mechs to jump none of which the pods have.
I went to the one in Chicago forever ago with some cousins. We were all tabletop players and really excited to be there.
There was a mechjock there that seemed kind of a jerk and made a big deal about taking us all on. I figured out really quick that the mechjock could torso twist and we couldn't so on top of us playing for the first time, he had a huge advantage. He basically just circled-strafed us to death each time we respawned. I DID end up smoking him on my second go and was the only one in my family with a kill so I was happy about that LOL.
Later I asked the mechjock how to torso twist and he wouldn't tell me. Instead, he told me that torso twisting was disabled for our mechs since we were newbies. I guess he enjoyed beating up on us little kids.
You were supposed to be shown a little intro video before you played that covered all that stuff.
I played in the original square pods back when they had a Virtual World in San Diego. @MechJock is here lurking and still updates the code for the newer Tesla pods (what you see in game for the training simulators).
Yes, At least at first. Wait times were long enough that they ran it in the lobby. Once they added the mining car race stuff I have no idea.Really? They never showed it to us
Yup, I recall that arcade. I think it was in what we called the Hamster House mall, as some of the buildings were connected by glass walkways and such
Really? They never showed it to us
The advanced options are disabled in most setups. It was bad form for the navy pier site to enable it for one guy and leave you with basic settings.
Now the last time I played at the hinkle family fun center in Albuquerque they left everyone with basic controls. It was still a seal clubbing, but at least everyone had the same set up.
On a side note if the dying mech is next to you it will explode and take out your mech too. My wife went full suicide bomber on me when she found that out.
That was where I saw them first too. Top floor of circle center mall in Indy. I loved them but unfortunately I lived in NW Indiana at the time so I only got to play them there a couple times.
Yeah, I thought it was bad form too. After we left we were freaking out and laughing and looking at our battle report sheets, but that incident did tarnish my experience a little bit. We did go back one more time the year after but we never ran into that mechjock ever again LOL.
A little out of my price range (and I'm not sure where they would have gone in my home) but ...
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tesla-ii-battletech-cockpit-vr-enclosed-simulator-set-12
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tesla-ii-battletech-cockpit-vr-enclosed-simulator-set-12
With the proliferation of legitimate in-home VR hardware, someone really needs to make a Mechwarrior VR game. It would lend itself perfectly to a sit-down setup.
Mechwarrior 2 had headset support... It was awesome.
When my office had me build and test a Vive Rig, I went searching for any kind of Mech sim I could play in VR. I couldn't find anything. There were a couple "coming soon"' and several that promised, but did not deliver.