Name of old mech arcade game

Question

I remember going to the arcade/GameWorks in the early 90s for birthday parties. I know in Indianapolis they had this mech game where 10-20 people could play at once. Each person would get into their own pod, and the screen inside would wrap around you close to 180 degrees. You would pilot a mech and do a team battle against the other 5-10 people. At the end of the round, everyone would exit and view the leaderboard outside. We got a stats sheet at the end of our day. Kind of similar to how laser tag works these days.

I've been searching for BattleTech, MetalTech, but all I can find is console/PC releases.

The game may have taken place on Mars, I dunno why that stands out in my head. But definitely a desert landscape.

Answer

I used to play at the one in Chicago before it closed. They offered two games: BattleTech and Red Planet.

BattleTech was typically either free-for-all or team-play (up to 8 players total), and offered a variety of environmental options such as fog, nighttime (there was a infrared mode you could activate, iirc), maps (there was at least one city map for close-combat focus). You also selected which mech you wanted to pilot from a variety of basic models and variants within each model. Some of the different weapons were lasers (in a variety of sizes and strengths), gauss rifles, and missles (LRM and SRM). The cockpit controls were fully customizable, and included multiple screens, some of which were dedicated to system status checks and weapon configurations.

Heat buildup was a major factor in the game, causing a temporary shut-down if heat levels became too high.

Damage could destroy limbs, reducing mobility or removing weapons mounted on the limb.

Before the game, new players could watch a training video featuring Cheech Marin.

The Red Planet racing game took place on a fictional futuristic Mars, dominated by mining facilities. Players raced modified hovering mining vehicles, and had weapons ranging from lasers (I think...) to mining rivet guns, to the ever-popular demolition charge (you'd hear a beeping as you got close to an active charge, and triggering one while at full speed would frequently catapult you out of the racing course for an instant kill. There were multiple classes of vehicles (light, medium, and heavy varieties), each with sub-variants, and different weapon and boost layouts.

Boosts allowed short bursts of speed, and, in some vehicle configurations could be stacked two or even three times.

Scoring was based primarily upon completing circuits of the race course, with multipliers being added for consecutive circuits completed without dying. Faster speeds also got you faster scores. You also got points for damaging or destroying opponents.

The graphics and speed of gameplay were very impressive for the time, particularly Red Planet in the upgraded "Tesla" pods, and the game play was very addictive.

If you couldn't tell, I had a LOT of fond memories of playing those games!

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