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Interview with Battlebots Champion

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the rip-mix-burn dept.

Scoop writes "With the fifth season of BattleBots debuting a few days ago on Comedy Central, UGO.com chatted up contestant Jim Smentowski, creator of champion BattleBot, Nightmare. Jim shared his views on the hit show, his experience with Gary Coleman and robotics in general. No word yet on the rumored love-child between Smentowski and BB host, Carmen Electra."

2 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Some improvements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Getting rid of the inanane weathermen-hosts would be a start, too. Perhaps replacing them full-time with Bill Nye. And get rid of those brain-dead interviewers. If your flagship in life is having big breasts and running in slow-motion on television. Someone with an intellect greater than their cup size could provide more insightful questions than "so do you think you're gonna win next time?" and "looks like he broke your shaft" innuendo.

    Then, stop with the horrible camera shots and the painful music that is supposed to build our anticipation during the all-too-predictable battles. And maybe show more than three battles in an episode.

    I was really into the idea originally, but I gave up after two seasons. In fact, I am surprised to hear that it is still on the air. I assumed it had faded away and been replaced by something more interesting, like maybe Sports Night or reruns of That's Our Bush.

  2. BB Improvements? by HappyPhunBall · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I enjoy the Battle Bots show, in spite of the cast. What I would really like to see is the following:
    • Fights to the Death! The points system in place is entirely too subjective. Many times a relatively unknown bot loses to a popular bot after having apparently soundly beaten the popular entrant. The judging is a sham.
    • Get rid of the hazards, or make them way more powerful. Many of them are simply lame and have no hope of damaging a bot.
    • Fire Pete the hammer op guy. He goes nuts on the hammer, repeatedly pounding bots after the driver has submitted. Or he does just the opposite, and takes it easy on the popular bots.
    • Lose the girl she is boring.
    • Better weapons. Build a better arena if you have too to protect the audience. Spinners are boring, wedges are incredibly boring. The innovation in bot design is stagnating. People simply go for the known effective design. If weapon restrictions were lifted, maybe we would see some innovation once again.

    That's all. I will still watch the show, but there are many improvements that can still be made. The competition is even worse, ala' Robot Wars (the US version anyway) where the bots are piles of junk, the drivers spend most of the match crashing their bot into the arena walls because of a complete lack of driving skill, and the house bots decide almost every match.