Nope, your battlemech is the classic "Merlin" 60 ton heavy mech. Armed with a single PPC, 2 medium lasers, and lrm 5, a machine gun and a flamer, the merlin stood for a technological advancement, being the only new mech design in over 100 years, ushering a new age of mech combat, even if its weapons loadout left something to be desired.

This comment's a mess, instead of nope i meant to say "Which mech game?", also I forgot the picture of your mech!

I can't get my copy to work anymore, it just seems to kaput itself on start up, at least i was able to get the music files off of it

I'd recommend putting your screen rez down to minimum before launch, if that doesn't work you may have to get a emulator for an older OS. I had to lower my screen rez for Civ 3 to work.

trust me i've tried it all, it allows me to interface with the menu and etc, but launching a mission causes the screen to turn black

Keep looking, mech warrior has a strong enough base someone should have come up with a solution.

well it also didn't help that when I was rebinding all the controls I found out the game wasn't going to let me use WASD for throttle and turning, so maybe the copy has just aged non-gracefully

Look into an emulator, you have a physical copy so it's not technically illegal.