January 17, 1991

I was living in Chicago on January, 17th, 1991. My two roommates, JP, Tim and I lived in a 2500 square foot apartment a little north of Wrigley Field in a part of town called “Uptown” or “North Wrigleyville” depending on how cool you wanted to sound about where you lived.

The space was plenty enough room for three people. So for some reason, we had four of Tim’s friends from his home city of Lansing, Michigan living with us at the time. They were staying with us for a few weeks until they could find jobs and apartments in the Windy City. Their names were Randy, Pete, Carol and John (JD).

My roommates and I worked in retail – record stores to be specific. And this particular Thursday was one of those rare occasions where we all had the same day off. JP pitched the idea that there was this new Battletech war simulation down at North Pier, a large shopping mall/tourist trap that sits right off the lake at the edge of the Chicago river.

Battletech was a fantasy world JP had been infatuated with for a number of years. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s based on an elaborate story of warring “Clans” that fight for honor and survival in large robotic war machines called “Mechs.” (Short for Battle Mechs.)

These gigantic war machine Mechs are outfitted with state-of-the-art weapons systems and vary in size, shape and speed depending on what variant of Mech robot you’re dealing with.

My roommate was really into this fantasy world of war robots. That is to say, he had read all of the books, and had even played a role playing board game based on the story. Over our morning coffee, he often detailed dreams he had where he would be piloting one of these giant war crafts, laying waste to his enemies.

JP told us about this business at North Pier that had 20 simulation pods that apparently mimicked a Mech battle. (Insert the words “Virtual Reality” here. Except, the words hadn’t been coined as a phrase yet in 1991, or at least as a mainstream buzz-phrase.) This wasn’t just any old video game, he explained. It was a state-of-the-art war simulation with teams and a common enemy. It sounded grand. And for this military-quality simulation, we were told, the cost was $10.00 for 7 minutes. I was kind of curious to see the place, and after all, I knew if we didn’t go, JP would be bugging us for weeks. So we willingly gave up half of our day off to go downtown for a war.

We arrived at North Pier in the late afternoon of this extreme winters day. I won’t get sidetracked on what it’s like to endure a Chicago winter – or to have to be out in it. But suffice it to say your muscles often hurt from all the tensing you do when that winter wind shoots off the lake and cuts right through you. (The only good thing about the cold was that it seemed to keep all the complete nutcases and mutants off the streets and trains.)

But anyway, brushing the cold from our coats, we strolled through the brightly-lit shopping mall. Tourists still left over from the holidays strolled around hitting the after Christmas sales. Soon we found the Battletech shop. It was on a nearly deserted arm of the mall. It was huge.

The decor was elaborate. Walls were sculptured to look like bulkheads on a spaceship. The floors were marked with stern yellow warnings and arrows emulating the floor of a hangar. Flashing lights strobed across the ceiling and holographic images of the available battle machines filled display cases. TV screens out in front of the shop showed continuos movies of the battles raging inside.

Giant robotic beasts skipped across the TV screens emptying armloads of missiles and body-mounted machine guns into each other as they locked in an ongoing fierce battle. It was weird to think that these computerized images were actually being piloted by real people.

Except for the Battletech T-shirts for sale on the wall, and of course, the three geeks standing there slack-jawed out in front of the shop, the vision of the Battletech fantasy world was nearly complete.

JP’s mouth might as well have been wide open. Keep in mind, he had just walked into one of his own dreams. He had entered the Battletech Zone. His eyes gleamed with a certain fervor – like Jimmy Swaggart at the pulpit. He didn’t say anything for quite a long time – but we weren’t worried about him. He mumbled something about machine guns and headed off into the darkness of the shop. (Ok, in retrospect, perhaps we should have been worried. But I knew he was unarmed.)

We strolled up to what served as the front counter of the establishment. It was decorated like a machine shop bench. And I gotta say, the guy behind the counter was a real sight. He worried me more than JP did.

Either because he was really into it, had lost track of reality, or was being paid to do so, this Battletech employee acted like he was some sort of army officer. He was outfitted in elaborate body armor and combat fatigues, and medals for apparent victories and “bravery” adorned his chest.



He introduced himself as Lars Tailgunner and then added, “of the Dark Hawk clan.” He explained that he was a Vulture F2-17 pilot from the Planet Zegrata.

I introduced myself as Craig Mitchell and then added, “of the Kick-ass clan.” I explained that I was a record store manager from Chicago, Illinois on Planet Earth.

We bought our ticket from the guy from the Dark Hawk clan and proceeded to watch a completely corny “training video” meant to acquaint us with the Mechs we would soon be piloting.

And then we had to pick the Mech we wanted to pilot.

JP chose a really fast, bird-like Mech that lacked very good armor but appeared to be able to run circles around the other Mechs. Even though JP had never been in the simulation before, I had no doubt he would soon be Texas line dancing his war machine around us, blowing our brains to smithereens.

Tim chose a really goofy looking Mech, one that looked like a giant metal clown complete with the stupid smile. This was Tim through and through: be good, but look stupid doing it so no one thinks you’re really into it.

I chose the heaviest, most stalwart, nearly invincible tank of a Mech I could find. That was my style. Forget about being fast or funny, just pound the shit out of people and laugh when their weapons bounce off in pathetic counterattacks.

Soon it was our turn to engage the enemy. We listened to the officer’s call to arms, entered the launch bay and climbed into our battle pods which locked firmly in place around us. I adjusted my pilots chair, donned my radio gear, and adjusted the mouthpiece to my mouth.

“Breaker 9 four, this is Jimminy Cricket comin’ at ya!” I said over the radio. “10-4 good buddy. Hammer down, rabbit ears… There’s a smokey da bear on Inta-state 4 ohhh 4!” I laid down a heavy southern accent to accompany the CB lingo. My voice boomed out over the command channel frequency we had been trained to use.

My teammates replied to say my ‘mic was working, they were receiving my CB-talk transmissions… and shut the hell up. So instead of annoying my teammates, I busied myself with testing my weapon systems. For some reason, I couldn’t shoot them off in the launch bay. I guess the simulation had precautions in place against sick motherfuckers like me.

Suddenly I heard a claxon and the launch bay doors slid open. I slammed the throttle forward and my Mech careened out of the launch bay, clipping a few of my teammates that were struggling to get out.

I crept over the sand dunes, loping along like an old folks’ shuttle bus on a field trip. For awhile I didn’t see much except sand and a scraggly tree here or there. So with little else to do, for the start of the game I was a tree hunter. I lasered them down to burning stumps.

After awhile, I spotted a Mech that looked like JP’s. I waited until I had missile-lock and let him have it with a volley of missiles. I watched my rockets dip up and down over the sand dunes, homing in on their target. Wait a minute. Wasn’t he on my team? Oh well. Friendly fire is a fact of life in war.

There was a massive explosion. The wounded Mech I presumed to be JP bounced a few times against a mound of sand and took off out of sight. The bastard had survived… Dammit!

Soon my Mech came onto the scene of a huge battle. No one here seemed to be practicing any strategy at all.

There was one central blackened area of sand where everyone had emptied every possible weapon into each other in a frenzied all-out attack that had left most of them powerless and unable to move. Damaged and smoking Mechs limped across my viewer screens, pitifully trying to attack each other with whatever weapons, limbs or power they had left.

I checked my instrument screens. Power? Full. Heat? Good. Weapons?…

Ready to kick some ass.

I charged in and started dismembering some of them. I gleefully took one of their heads off with a missile volley. I blasted one guy’s arm off in machine gun attack and laughed when he was unable to counterattack.

I downright rammed someone I thought was probably Tim. His clown Mech grinned back at me as I plowed into him at full speed, nearly knocking him prone into the sand.

Then out of nowhere, JP is on the scene.

He pulled a “reverse Han Solo” on me. That is, instead of telling me, “You’re all clear kid!” and letting me blow up the Death Star, he proceeded to cut my Mech in two with a couple of cleverly placed laser blasts to my pelvis.

JP is evil. Or maybe he’s just pissed that I nailed him to the sand dune with the missile attack within a minute of the start of the game.

My Mech shook back and forth, mortally wounded by JP’s laser scalpel work. Inside, I rocked violently back and forth in my pilots chair, lost control of the giant machine and veered off to the left, plowing through the wreckage of one of the mechs I had dismembered.

And then… it was all over, the pods were opening, alarms were sounding. Our time was up. The war was over and I was dead.

I heard the excited shouts of teammates and enemies alike as we exited our pods and headed to “the debriefing area” we heard about in training where we’d be able to view movies of the battle. The new teams were already moving into the launch bay heading for our recently evacuated pods.

They were really excited, telling us “the bombs are dropping.” I looked at one of the incoming pilots and I’m like, “What bombs? I only had missiles, lasers and machine guns.” I was kind of bummed. I should have picked a Mech that had some of those bombs.

“No way, no bombs got dropped on me,” I insisted.

But I didn’t get any explanation. The pods were already locking and the new teams were preparing for battle, yelling things back and forth at each other on their perspective team radio frequencies.

We filed out to the debriefing area where fourty or so TV screens would show us the battle from every conceivable angle. Problem was, when we got into the room the TVs weren’t displaying the Mech battle.

They were displaying a different battle.

The scene we saw was the nighttime sky above Iraq. Lit by the neon green glow of infrared cameras, Iraqi flak blanketed the sky in a desperate attempt to shoot down one of the numerous unseen American aircraft laying waste to the outskirts of Baghdad.

Every one of the fourty TVs was tuned to CNN. We stood there unable to speak for a long time. A cold shiver ran down my spine. We were witnessing the very first moments of a real war. We had exited a simulated battle of war robots to find a real battle of Stealth bombers and cruise missiles on the TV.

JP was pissed that we weren’t getting to see the replay of our battle and headed off looking to score a videotape.

Iraq was in flames before our eyes. Dan Rather was on the screen soberly telling the American public the war with Iraq had begun. We learned the main attraction even had a title. It was called “Desert Storm.”


Someone suggested we should go home.

When we were finally able to pull our attention away from the TVs, I noticed that half the mall had converged on the dark, shadowy world of Battletech to watch the real war going on across the world.

A small crowd stood out in front of the shop watching the action unfold on the monitors: The girl from the cookie shop in her apron, the guys from the bookstore stood there still holding books they were filing, the mall security men… They were all watching. No one was doing their jobs. No one was working. Who cares? There was a war on.

The TVs out in front no longer showed BattleMechs engaged in battle. Instead, precision bombs hit their targets as news commentators wearing gas masks speculated about casualties. The employees of Battletech were no longer helping customers or prospective Mech pilots. They stood there in their fake combat fatigues and fake armor watching the battle unfold on TV.

On the screen, real soldiers moved across a desert landscape driving real tanks and toting real weapons. We didn’t see it on the screen, but somewhere off in the distance, out of the glare of the cameras real people were undoubtedly dying.

On the way home, the trains were filled with people talking about the war. Normally people keep to themselves in Chicago. It’s a big city and everyone’s a stranger. But the war had brought us together. Anyone would talk to you if you knew something about the war they hadn’t heard yet.

On the last train of the evening I spotted this really hip, beautiful punk girl and half considered trying to pick her up. After all, a war was on. We might not live to see tomorrow. I could start off the conversation, something like, “Hey, how about those SCUD missles. Pretty big threat huh?”

She must have read my mind, because she gave me one of those looks. Don’t even think about it geek.

My roommates and I arrove home to find a party of sorts going on. Everyone we knew in Chicago had shown up at our pad with hors d’oeuvres, liquor and beer.

Between the roommates, we knew about ten people in Chicago that we considered good friends. And consequently, there were over fifteen people in our living room watching CNN. Of course, mostly it was the same footage over and over but it didn’t matter. The night had a familiar feel to it – like a Super Bowl party or something. Everyone gets together, gets drunk, eats “little smokey” miniature grease sticks and roots for the underdog.

The only difference that night was no one was rooting for Iraq.

A few of the guys had started a board game of Risk… the game of world conquest. The irony was not lost on me.

Our new houseguest Randy handed me a shot of a really vile looking black liquid. It smelled like licorice and was introduced to me as Jagermeister… an exotic new liquor that was reported to be filtered through some sort of halluncigenic root with apparent opiate qualities. (Yes, late 1990 and early 1991 were the years this store-bought poison started becoming widely available.)

I downed the foul liquid and chased it with a beer, raising a toast to the Allies, the brave Kuwaitis we were apparently defending, and more importantly-the United States’ oil assets that were greatly at risk.

On the screen, Wolf Blitzer gave his commentary from a Baghdad hotel roof. He didn’t seem scared at all despite the fact that American bombs were falling all around him on the city. What a guy. This would make his career. It would have made our night there in Chicago if someone would have dropped a bomb on Wolf Blitzer.

At some point JP managed to distract us from the real war. He had scored a videotape of the Battletech War we had endured earlier that afternoon.

The crowd in our living room cheered as JP’s battle Mech roared onto the scene and cut my Mech to pieces. I was greatly humbled. The rewind button on the VCR was used gratuitously to replay my Mech’s arms being cut off one by one. Likewise, there was an earlier scene that was replayed over and over where my Mech could be seen far off in the distance… heroically shooting down trees.

The party raged on into the night, growing in numbers until it was a full-fledged bash. Around midnight, someone took Africa and most of the United States in a totally fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants military maneuver. But it was only a board game of Risk so no one was very upset by it. On the TV a war continued to rage, but no one was really too upset by it. It was just a game. It was just a weird movie called “Desert Storm.” In the coming weeks everyone tuned into the pay-per-view event of the year.

The lucky ones had Cable TV and CNN.