Well, it seems like I have the same driver version.
So I installed windows95 instead of 98, with the diamond drivers. And guess what?

No change, well that backfired.

I have the original mw2 3dfx orchid CD en route from the US with an eta of feb the 17th. Maybe there is something with the archive.org image.

Tbc.

What about DirectX? I have mine updated to 9.0c.

What good would that do?
The game, nor the card is using any of that. 🤔
And win95 only goes up to 8.0a.

The newer DirectX packages also include all of the previous versions of DirectX, so updating ensures you have the latest DirectX 2 that MechWarrior 2 uses.

Reinstalled win98SE with dx9.0c 2006 release.
Tried Diamond and orchid drivers.
Still the same result.
Waiting for the Cd's to arrive a week ish from now.