This show angered me from the start, and the only reason I'm coming out of retirement to review this thing was because it took an all inclusive event started by an ILM employee, and turned it into this faux kid friendly event, complete with three or four supermassive "arena bots" that you could never beat because of the restrictions on design parameters.
I was at the 1995 Robot Wars, I was also at the 1997 Robot Wars where Bio Hazard took out everyone, even the much feared La Machine. I remember Joel Hodgson from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 as the Master of Ceremonies, being freaked out by the 300 pound Snake-bot build by the guy who had built "the Master" the previous two years. I remember Joel Hodgson taking a dollar from the guy sitting next to me and trying to auction it off to the audience during down time between matches. I remember San Francisco's fire inspector looking none-too happy as he quite literally was inspecting the place (at some point it was SRO). None of the energy, none of the excitement, none of the engineering creativity that was at Fort Mason San Francisco from 1995 to 1997 was in this TV show. It simply wasn't.
What this TV show had was "Dave Lister" popping off smiles and kid friendly witticisms in a venue that was so restrictive as to be obnoxious. You had no chance of taking on the in show arena bots, even though that was part of the challenge. And you couldn't use any of the more effective techniques that were developed by the Fort Mason participants.
I'm sorry the creator of the event lost creative control. I'm sorry his idea got sold to some outfit in the UK that did a half baked high-restrictive version of the San Francisco competition. I'm sorry all that creative Bay Area and American energy got truncated in what seems like a revenge plot for the Revolutionary War. And, worse yet, I'm sorry the show got revitalized last year much to the chagrin of all.
If you see blurays or DVDs of this thing for sale, pass them up, and check out the American Robot Wars videos on YouTube.
Avoid this trash.
