I played my first game of table-top BattleTech in 1989 and absolutely fell in love with the game. Mechwarriors piloting huge stompy robots shooting the crap out of each other with lasers, missiles, cannons was just so cool and really struck a chord with me. Since then I've played nearly every incarnation of BattleTech including RPG's, card games, consoles, PC games, and even played realtime, text-based multiplayer BattleTech MUSE/MUX's in the 90's. If you're not familiar with that last entry, you should look it up. :)
So …