Long ago, when Street Fighter was still very popular, a programmer named Rob Elam, who was 'addicted' to fighting games, decided to make his own. At that time, Rob and his brother, Ryan were living in Tampa. Ryan was working with another company, while Rob was still going to school. He and his brother teamed up and began working on a game called One Must Fall. The original One Must Fall (OMF Beta) was a martial arts fighting game that had 2 human fighters. You can find that in my downloads section. Later, as the idea developed, they decided to use robots instead of humans and they came up with another name called WAR Machines. Ryan contacted Epic and told them about the game and then Epic helped Rob (financially) to finish the game. They were planning to release the tournament mode as an add-on called The Circuit. However, later things changed. The name One Must Fall: 2097 was used and The Circuit became a part of the original game. As soon as OMF: 2097 was released, the number of players began increasing rapidly. The success of the game was mainly due to how fun it was. On February 10, 1999, OMF: 2097 was announced Freeware by Diversions Entertainment. This caused even more of players to join in and the game became even more well known. Even today, years later, so many people still play the game (like me).

OMF: 2097 is all about fighting. Imagine being in a 90 foot tall metal robot and having to fight another and rip the metal armor apart. Each character (pilot) has a unique background, fighting style and personality. There is a huge company called W.A.R. (which stands for World Aeronautics and Robotics) that seems to have a lot of control over global issues. The owner, Major Hans Kreissack has a plan to take over the solar system and declare himself the emperor. For this reason, he gathers a team of scientists and builds a robot that is capable of holding a human brain in it (he needed it since he was a weak 103 year old). Two of the scientists, mother and father of Christian and Crystal, later found out the cause and stopped working on the project. A group of mercenaries called the Iron Fist were hired and they were killed in what looked like an accident. Crystal knows they were killed and seeks revenge and her brother, Christian wants to protect his sister.
On the other hand, the son of the actual owner of W.A.R., Milano Angston, wants his father's company back and run it for its actual causes. He changes his name to Milano Steele and joins the tournament to claim his company back. Other characters include brats like Steffan, intelligent people like Ibrahim, powerful people like Shirro and many more who just fight it for control over Ganymede. (Jupiter's moon with a lot of minerals). In the end, Kreissack loses and one of these pilots win (we don't know who won, but will find out in OMF: BG). There are rumors that Shirro won, but this may not be true because we have seen lists of players in OMF: BG and Shirro's name isn't there... but you never know. There is also some hint in the game Tyrian (also by Epic) that Steffan won the tournament. You can collect data cubes in the game and one of them contains a letter from Steffan to you in which he says, "everything is going well here on Ganymede" and that he would "send over some HARS, but your fight is with starships, not robots." This could either mean he won the tournament and gained control of Ganymede, or someone else won the tournament and he ended up getting some sort of powerful job in Ganymede.