Welcome to the One Must Fall 2097 Wiki. As per the usual greeting text norms, I must inform you that this is a Wiki, it has lots of text, even some pictures, and I've worked a lot on gathering as much info as I can. And then I bungled it all up trying to organize it, so good luck.
Due to some structural changes, by moving the entire 2097 wiki into its own sub-wiki to make more space for possible other sub-wiki's, I had to make this page to help navigation along. So the main purpose of this page is to introduce people to the sub pages and what information is available, while working as a hub-page for the rest.
Added a system of navigation links to the top of every page to make it easier to navigate backward to the level you want. Clicking on /home/ will take you to the root page of the wiki. /omf2097/ to this start page. And sometimes /pilot/ or /har/ to go back to a previous hub page.
The 1994 classic that proved that fighting games on PCs were not just a bad joke. It managed to build up quite a following, and to this day still amazes me with just how many people say, “Oh, OMF2097? Yeah, I loved that game when I was little!”.
Released a couple of years after Street Fighter 2 had taken the world by storm, and the SNES version of that had finally broken the arcade machine's iron grip on fighting games. Released by Epic MegaGames which helped showing off the game with their marketing idea of showing games through other games (Tyrian and Jazz Jackrabbit being the best examples of this).
The most popular feature was the Tournament Mode, where you could buy your own robot and upgrade it as you won games, until you had a super powerful character that could stomp everything.
This is the main game mode, where you pick one pilot with a background and motivation, a robot that you like or fits your play-style, and take on the world. Those familiar with other fighting games will be familiar with this.
This has the main story line of the game, with different endings based on which character you win with. You will meet each of the other characters at random, and trade words with them before combat. On the highest difficulties this will be the hardest game mode.
Identical to 1 Player except that human players play both characters, and instead of progressing through the story, you just go back and pick a new fight. Pretty standard 2 player mode for fighting games.
One important note here is that OMF2097 traditionally plays best with the arrow keys on the keyboard, this can make it very difficult to setup good controls for player 2, for some reason using for ex WASD doesn't result in as smooth controls as the Arrow Keys and they will often suffer with quarter-circle motions. Gamepads are used, but generally considered inferior to the keyb/arrow keys.
The main idea of Tournament Mode is that the robot fighting tournaments have become a big sport, where contesters enter tournaments to fight to earn cash money, fame and glory etc. The money can then be used to upgrade your robot, or even to buy new robots.
This is the singular most popular feature of OMF2097, and the main reason people still play the game. The tournament mode has been rather unique for a very long time, there are always some games that tries similar ideas, but the robots leads themselves easily to this upgrade mechanic. In addition to the usual damage and hit-point upgrades, there are some that reduces damage, reduces damage done to the stun meter, as well as several speed and agility upgrades that lets you move fast, jump further, and attack faster and making new combos.
There is also the user added Custom Tournaments, which is the only way to expand the game. Since the developers released the Tournament Compiler as a free download, anyone could sit down and make their own custom tournaments. Ranging from the simple to complex in design. Most tournaments made, have been attempts at beefing up the enemies, giving the player harder fights for more money, some of these have abused “over-upgrading” the enemies to create this effect, by giving enemy players higher stats and upgrades than they normally could get.
It's also possible to play two characters against each other with all their upgrades as a 2 player variant, by using the “Simulation” button. Though this only works on the same computer and doesn't work over network play. Usually fun for a laugh or two, since Tournament Mode isn't balanced at all.
For all your further information needs, we got FAQ's, some guides, and other documentation. We also have the entire in-game text document here as well.
If you need help to learn about the game, Robyrt's FAQ's are recommended.
All those things I don't know where else to place
Information about how multi-player works, especially online play. Something I'll work on later.
I have a bunch of things I've started on but never finished, I'll try to stick them all in here for anyone interested. With some luck, someone else will come finish it for me!