Battletech center?

We had a place called Virtual World out here in downtown Walnut Creek that ran these. I never got around to trying them out. Seemed kind of expensive at the time IIRC (I was in high school). It was during that kind of charming time in the 90's where technology was cheesily cutting edge. Compact Disc format was starting to kick in. Marketing used the word "Cyber" unironically. You could buy computers out of the back of gigantic phone-book sized magazines (Computer Shopper? I don't remember now)...and we were all going to surf this new weird information super highway with virtual reality glasses...

sorry...flashbacks. I wonder what happened to the ones in Walnut Creek.
 
We had a Virtual World center here in Dallas too. Played these maybe 7-10 times. Mech was fun (Yes, I'm going to near-overheat firing this Quad-PPUs all at once, but if I hit you, you're dead no argument.) but the racing game, Red Planet was WAY better, IMO....and I'm a mechwarrior fan.
 
They had a big battle center in Chicago down by Navy Pier. You could play 12 on 12 IIRC. They held tournaments and had league nights. I didn't get that into it, but there were some people that were freakin' addicted to these games. They would hang around waiting for a group to come in and then hassle them if they didn't have enough to fill all the pods. It was like alkys hanging outside a liqueur store.

ken
 
There is a set in storage in Denver. The owner isnt playing nice with his partners so they might never see the light of day.

There is a set operating in Colorado Springs.

Any more details? I'm just wondering what a pair is worth now.

Is the one in CoSp at the Mr Biggs?
 
My wife and I went to Virtual World in San Diego in 1995. I thought it was pretty cool the way they tried to make it so immersive. I've still got the 'membership' card, passport type deal, logs from playing Red Planet and a fold out brochure.

I could take pics if anyone cares to see them.
 
A few shots of the swag.
 

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No clue just saw the article in the paper. They might be as it says in the paper they are planning to shut it all down so there might be an auction in our near future
 
They had a big battle center in Chicago down by Navy Pier. You could play 12 on 12 IIRC. They held tournaments and had league nights. I didn't get that into it, but there were some people that were freakin' addicted to these games. They would hang around waiting for a group to come in and then hassle them if they didn't have enough to fill all the pods. It was like alkys hanging outside a liqueur store.

ken

I was one of those people... still have the tech manuals on the mechs and some of my score sheets.
 
I used to play the various Mechwarrior games and tabletop Battletech (which our gaming group still plays every week) - I'd love to try one of these sometime! Good to know there are several around according to that wiki article.

LeChuck
 
I was one of those people... still have the tech manuals on the mechs and some of my score sheets.

Same here...my handle was Genghis, lol. We always talked about joining a league, but the city was a little too far of a haul to go regularly.
 
We still take them to various conventions. I take some of the Old Chicago set to GenCon, Origins, Acen, and ChiCon. Other cockpit owners take them to DragonCon and several more events.

I'm still operating Virtual World and maintaining its licenses and rights.

Visit www.mechjock.com for updated info (I sold virtualworld.com to a developer)

Nick

Also: the Biggs set in Colorado springs are in rough shape and the owner cannot sell the software, only the hardware. The software still goes through VWE.

All cockpit owners sign an exploitation contract when they buy the pods.
 
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