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Comedy Central Cancels BattleBots
Rathian writes "Bad news for BattleBot lovers, I saw on the BattleBots Builder's Forum that CC is NOT going to film Phase 6.0 of BattleBots. You can see copies of the email from the BattleBots founders Trey & Greg at RobotCombat.com, and at Team DaVinci Robots
God willing, another network will pick it up and keep this sport alive!"
BattleBots was the most innovative show on TV... i loved it ... sad to see it go.
100% Insightful
Battlebots is quite entertaining, but I would hardly call it a sport.
Not everyone deserves a 320i
Not to be a troll, but the whole BattleBots concept has gone from new and fun to watch to rather dull within the span of a couple of years. That's why they had to throw Carmen Electra on, right? People weren't watching, and a little sex appeal was required?
Not that I don't think something BattleBots-ish won't survive for a while, but I doubt it'll be for long. Just a prediction.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
...as aired in the UK.
But there's still a dozen shows like it.
Also, what made it so funny that it was on COmedy central in the first place?
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
they will replace it with re-runs of "The New WKRP in Cincinatti." God, I swear, every time I see that show, I laugh myself sick.
How many times can you watch remote controlled scrap metal bump into each other and flip each other before it gets boring? For me.. it only took one episode. Not to mention the show has no business being on COMEDY central, since the only funny thing is watching the obviously fake "chemistry" between the hosts. Oh.. and whatshername's boobies are nice.
The show wasn't really "funny". I mean, I never laughed. If anything wresting should be on comedy central. Now people pretending to hurt eachother while young rednecks actually believe that they are hurting eachother - That's comedy!
sorry for the troll, but how is this a sport?
dont get me wrong, i love it and watch it all the time, but sport? sigh..
It's off Comedy Central! Yes, finally. Now, maybe they can put some COMEDY on.
Maybe FX will pick it up, they seem to have lots of fighting there... TNN already has it's own robot show, so they're probably out.
Never understood why it was ever on Comedy Central to begin with.. should have been on TechTV or The Learning Channel or some such.
i'm a loyal battlebots viewer.... but with the advent of 3-4 other 'bot' fighting shows, someone had to die.
battlebots is RAW, its just the bots out there with some minimal hazzards. you look at other shows like robot wars, and each individual bot makes little difference to who wins. there are like 5 huge 'house bots', and all you have to do to win is watch the house bot push the other guy in the pit. lame. shows like robotica are just glorified RC cars that race around. lame.
battlebots did everything right, no compaints here at all. i'll be watching the re-runs after back to back to back SNL marathons i'm sure.
on a side note, be sure to check out the new season of INSOMNIAC on comedy central, its fucking hilarious.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Nice concept but the WWF feel made it unwatchable for me.
It's alive and kicking.
I admit I never watched BattleBots. But I would have watched it if the show featured real live people wearing battlebot armor beating the crap out of each other. Something along the lines of the hydralic lifter suit Sigorney Weaver wore in Aliens. It would be challenging for the contestants to figure out what bodypart to 'enhance' with robotic technology, assuming that a full-body suit wouldn't be practical (do you turbo charge your shoulders, arms, torso or legs?). And controlling the suit while moving your own body would probably require some fancy physical skills. But just watching a couple of machines fight isn't too exciting to me. Who cares who wins or loses?
God willing, another network will pick it up and keep this sport alive!"
I assume this is a joke. BattleBots may be entertainment but it's no more a sport than playing a videogame.
GMD
watch this
wasn't it getting kind of old anyway? check out http://www.bestinc.org for some real robot stuff.
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
I stopped watching Battlebots after season 2. It just wasn't compelling TV. Most of the matches were like watching drunk boxing--A lot of swinging, but little contact. What I think needs to happen is for them to approach it from a whole other angle. The bots must be independent.
Independent bots would force the bot makers to build navigation systems (to avoid the hazards), target acquisition systems (to find the other bots), decision making (push the bot toward the hazard, or try to flip, or run away and hide until my buzz saw starts working again?).
Additionally, they should build a better arena and allow all those weapons currently outlawed, like EMP weapons, chemical, flamethrowers, magnetic grapples, swarms of multi-bots, etc. Should be much more exciting.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Actually, I did enjoy the technical aspect of the show. Making a working battlebot would require some ingenuity and skill, and it was cool to see what people came up with.
However, I must definately agree that a self-contained/controlled bot would be way-cool. Perhaps using one of the mini-ITX boards/setups mentioned previously on slashdot, you could build some decent bot AI. If the bot needed to be controlled remotely, a wireless ethernet card would work.
Anyone on slashdot want to take a shot at a mini-ITX project that makes an AI battlebot?
No T-800's please... killing audience members is frowned upon
I didn't think much of battlebots anyhow. Most of the contestants are basically radio control cars with some simple weapon (sawblade, flipper) tacked on.
And most of the best performing bots were all of the same design anyhow... try and keep anything from getting under your bot, and try to flip over other bots.
The concept is neat, but this show got really boring really fast. Not much innovation going on.
Every original program on basic cable with no connection to psychics is to be cancelled.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Hmm, there was talk about this on TiVo Community (a TiVo forum) back in May. But, from that thread, it looks like the plan might be just to move BattleBots to another network (or so I would hope).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Even though I never watched BattleBots, I watch Robot Wars in England. I'd have though BattleBots would be more suitable on Discovery or TLC rather than Comedy Central (like Junkyard Wars/Scrapheap Challenge)?
I'd think that it should have a chance of being picked up by another network, because a series like this that sparks innovation and interest in construction is better for Joe Public rather than Big Brother X (despite the 'socialology' aspect of it), The Mole, etc.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I don't know who's fault it is, but the battle bots were pretty lowsy.
Some fall apart with the first hit, so many just get flipped over, and what's worse is the hazards in the arena. They at least should have had the saws and everything else on timers, so it would be reasonably fair.
What would have been better is a course with no hazards, and no time limit. Then the wimpy pushing and shoving bots wouldn't have fared so well. Someone could just make a bot that moves fast, and have the opponent kill himself by hitting the hazards that you can avoid.
When they make some decent changes to it, I'll start watching again. Until then, season 1 was my first and last.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If they ever continue, it may be more fun to watch if CC provided the same mechanical parts to each team; this could occasionally prevent simple armored RC cars (boring) from being used; WIFI and more complex semi-autonomous things would be more fun to watch too;
funny coincidence since I just got this email today from the MIT EECS mailing list
-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Hunter [mailto:anneh@eecs.mit.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 4:47 PM
To: jobslist@altoids.mit.edu
Subject: MIT BATTLEBOTS Info Session Tomorrow!
Do you love designing and building your own robots?
Are you looking for an exciting senior thesis?
Do you want a chance to build your own robot-dominating machine?
Then MIT BATTLEBOTS needs you! In preparation for the upcoming Battlebots
(tm) season, MIT BATTLEBOTS is looking for active people to design and build
the next wave of robots! If you're interested in working on this amazing
project, please join us for an informational session:
MIT BATTLEBOTS info session
"Meet General Gau"
Thursday, Sept. 12, 2002
6:00pm
Room 4-402
For more information, visit http://web.mit.edu/edgerton/battlebots/index.html
Freshmen through seniors are welcome. Feel free to circulate this message.
Last time I checked, there were lots of rip-offs of the battlebots concept, with varying degrees of quality. Unless all of these have died out without my noticing, and Battlebots is the last one, It seems like robot-smashing will be around for a bit longer.
Of course, these too will eventually die off if they haven't done so already. To me, Battlebots was a novelty thing. It's interesting the first few times, but after a while the effect wears off. Maybe it's different if you're a follower and you know all the robots and root for the ones you like, but all the best designs have been copied up the wazoo, which really runis it for me. Half the fun at first was saying "Ooh. That's a clever idea." Once that wears off, it's just a bunch of the same old wedges and blades fighting with annoying announcers, and the occaisional gimmick to help add variety and attract interst (supermodels, Bill Nye, "multi-bots", etc.) I for one won't be greatly missing the show, but it's still a mildly entertaining way to deal with insomnia.
The problem with Battlebots is that it never really grows. It might help if the competitions were geared such that certain familliar bots fight more often. Like a celebrity bot. (Anybody remember Jay Leno's bot? heh)
I don't have any immediate ideas how they could easily incorporate that into their current system. Maybe they could have teams of bots?
I think this has been a long time coming, the fighting has to stop.
These cheap TNN and TNT rip-off shows where people slap a cooking pot on top of an RC car and race around a rat maze with flame-throwers scorching their tires.
:-D
Hosts, which are more than drunken, overweight ex-NASCAR commentators looking to pay for their recently upgraded mobile home.
It sickens me to see all these cheap K-Mart quality knock-off shows, which cheapen such RAD programming such as BattleBots.
This kinda crap happens with -EVERY- form of popular TV entertainment. Look at Reality TV for fucks sake. First it was Survivor, -HUGE- hit. Then came Big Brother, Temptation Island, Fear Factor, Worst Case Scenario and a slew of other knock-offs, which have watered down and sucked all the fun out of reality TV.
I guess basically it all boils down to me being pissed off my TiVo will no longer have robots ripping the crap out of one another.
Junkyard Wars (aka scrapheap) is a much more entertaining series in the mechanical sport genre in my opinion, it has room for varity in the different channelges they get given and the like, I wouldnt mind seeing a corperate robot wars style program however, such a Fuji made robot Vs a Sony one and so on,.. That would be pretty cool.
1. Too many weapons restrictions
2. Carmen should never be allowed to say anything
3. Get rid of the WWF spin crap and treat it like a nascar event.
4. Battlebots started making corporate deals poisioning the rules further by restricting equipment.
Got Code?
I always thought that battlebots was kind of dumb. I mean, at first it was interesting because it was new, but after it's newness wore off, it got very boring. Most people won by flipping their opponent over. I could enter a hampster in a ball and stand a chance. (Mutated, ill-tempered hampster, of course).
All I'm saying is there really was no battle. It ought to have been last robot to move, or until surrender. I mean, where were the hydraulic crushers, or the high power lasers. Or anything really. Something that can be damaged by a good kick doesn't deserve to be called a battle bot.
Why go miniITX? How about use a bot system thats already out there. Lego Mindstorms Robotics has a fully funcitonal robotic controller and pieces parts ready to go. I have built my own bots to battle against each other with mindstorms and have had fun with it but cant find anybody else around my area who does lego robots. I have, however, seen mention on the internet about lego bot contests.
"Get Moose and Squirrel!"
the rules they had for what your bot could and could not do really limited what sort of bot you could build. That is why you mostly had wedges, spinners, lifters, spikers, and one capture bot.
It would of been cooler if it was like on Robot Wars (does anyone even watch that? the announcer sucks) but they have pits with fire, and their bots hav emore flexability as to what weapons they can use.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
or one of these days, i'm gonna punch you in the face!
What about Junkyard Wars? I believe that TLC really did something original with that.
Also, didn't TNN's Robot Wars come out before battlebots? I remember when battlebots first came out, the first ad I saw for them was during watching Robot Wars on TNN. I could just be mistaken and it was an ad for a new season of Battlebots and I hadn't cared.
Still, It is a shame that they are canceling battlebots. Not to be a troll, The only thing I didn't like about it is comedy central put that dumb carmen electra slut on there for sex appeal. Why couldn't they have put some prety girl on there who actually knew something about electronics.
Erutangis ym si siht.
only on slashdot is something where you only have to move your thumbs a sport...
--gk
However, I would have been willing to endure the misnomer in the title for the chance to see the engineering and problem-solving involved. Except that the announcing...oh my dear god, the terrible announcing. There are several levels they could have chosen. Calm and relatively sedate (regular televised sports). Hyped and taking themselves seriously (like WWF). Hyped and not serious (Junkyard Wars). Instead, they chose hyped, not taking themselves seriously, but thinking they are the funniest thing on the planet. Of course, that's a Zappa for ya.
i loved watching the robots fight, people losing thousands upon thousands of dollars as sparks flew up and metal launched across the "battlebox"
... to ...
but the commentary gets worse and worse. the last episode i saw, they nearly had carmen electra perform soft-core porn.
i'm sure they did focus groups. but people in focus groups are going to see fire and say good and see the crap they aired and say good, just for the joke of it. there are some things that if you show them, even if they suck, people in certain age groups (even if they honestly don't like it) jokingly cheer.
to recap:
from an hour of deadly fighting
30 minutes of [you know what]
give me back my chainsaws and my mental patients!!!
and for god sakes, stop interviewing gary coldman!!!
then i'll watch again.
(since it seems relevant via demographics, i'm 15, male)
Unless you meant the World Wildlife Foundation?
How is this a sport?
they aren't hurting each other?
that just brought my whole worldview crashing down on me.
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obviously, I'm some sort of moron, because every time I start liking a show, it gets cancelled. Politically Incorrect, The Job, Dennis Miller Live, X-Files and now Battlebots. This REALLY sucks.
it actually took comedy central out of my rotation when 'scanning' for something to watch. Except for South Park at 10 wed., it was nothing but decade old SNL re-runs and BattleBots. I'd be more likely to find something entertaining on QVC.
.22 cal shells to shatter things, the other had an oxygen torch. The "house bot" had big hydraulic pincers.
They weren't robotic, and hardly battled. They didn't have any 'weapons', anything interesting to see. Just oversized remote control cars smashing into each other.
The concept of robots fighting each other with crazy weapons is good, the reality a la this show, was a bore.
I saw something (didn't catch the beginning) on the Discovery Channel (?), which was a special that had two submarines 'battling' in a swimming pool. It was some university team vs. the naval academy. One of them had a 'boomstick' which used
The navy 'robot' was completely demolished. They didn't simply bonk into each other for 5 minutes. All their hard work was destroyed.
That should have been how BattleBots worked. Rather than running around bonking into each other but having no actual damage happen.
It just wasn't a very good show. Maybe ESPN2 will pick it up. I saw them run live coverage of a 'Magic: The Gathering' tourney.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
that pathetic show got old after about 2 episodes.
I'm all for remote controlled battles, but the only reason I watched that show was to see Donna and Carmen. (mmmmm....Carmennnnn.....)
The "hazards" made me sick because it just seemed like there was some four year old pressing the button when the robot he didn't like got near one.
The Battlebots show was getting a little stale. You had robots being designed just to beat a particular other one. Designs were converging on a few models. Carmen Elektra's sexual innuendos were getting tiring.
The next step, I thought, was to to add some intelligence, not more titanium or hydraulics, to the robots and make them move and attack by themselves. Take the remote control away!
That's the spirit of drunk America. Actually, no culture - no spirit. Period.
Part of me will miss it, that's the part that gets to watch 1/2 hour Battle Bots show in about 7-10 minutes... That 30 second skip button on the ReplayTV is very handy not just for the commercials, but to skip over all that WWF style announcing. I'm not knocking folks who like wrestling and such, but I don't think I would have the patience to sit through a whole 1/2 hour or 1 hour episode of the thing un-skipped.
The show certainly shouldn't cost that much: from what I gather, they shoot the whole thing over the course of a single weekend and then add all taht announcy/interviewy stuff later. I'd love to see TLC or Discovrey Science pick it up without all the fluff. Show us all the matches farther back in the rankings so we can follow the "career" of the bots better.
Too bad I don't get the original British Robot Wars on my local PBS station anymore...
The Digital Sorceress
personally I have only watched the show a couple times seems like the same thing over and over again. I agree with everyone else who said they need to be allowed more flexibility with weapons and should use AI to fight instead of RC. I think battlebots would be more intresting to watch if
A) it was at a live event
B) the bots were bigger
C) More people like carmen electra announcing (hehe sexy women and robots blowing each other up... sweet)
All I asked for was sharks with fricken laser beams on their heads.
If ever there was a network born to show BattleBots, it's TechTV. Something tells me the budgets wouldn't be as high, but that might be a good thing. There wouldn't be as much impetus to tart the show up so much just to draw in the viewers required to pay back the budget.
Personally, I liked the original Robot Wars UK show the best. I did think the house robots had a little too much direct impact on the outcome, but I liked the concept of having qualifying rounds where the bots had to overcome challenges, followed by the individual combat rounds.
Maybe what's needed is some new thinking, like team robot combat. Maybe a capture-the-flag sort of thing. You could have robots optimized for offense and defense, which might add some interesting twists to a show. The problem would be that the costs to assemble an entire team of robots would be drastically more than for an individual robot or two.
One thing that is missing from this show: a variety of weapons. The weapons shouldn't be limited, this just makes the teams stagnate with their wedge or flipper or spinner designs. The truly original bots just aren't seen anymore because they get beaten to shreds by the people who make the old, tired, (albeit successful) designs. I think allowing for more weapons will add variety to the field.
We can only hope that ESPN picks this up.. then they'd have something to show on ESPN2 that's not jocks having a pissing contest.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Besides, I can hardly call those things "robots." More like RC death machines. When I think of robots, I think of more autonomous machines with some built-in intelligence. To me that would have been way more intersting to watch. Although, I guess watching some poorly programmed bot drive along the side of the ring the entire match might get boring. Oh well. Something like that.
TLC has a new show starting soon that may be intersting to see. With the original girl host from Junkyard Wars and, I think I saw him, Henry Rollins. I guess we'll see.
Big Brother came before Survivor. It was extremely popular in Germany (c. 1998-1999) and the US version was virtually identical to it. So your theory has holes.
Maybe FX will pick it up, they seem to have lots of fighting there...
A Toughman-BattleBots crossover show would be cool to watch! Have 5 battlebots attacking some plumber or construction worker or something. While he's got his hands full with fighting one robot, two others are hammering away at his feet! So he bends over to pick up one of the machines when a third one shoves a corkscrew up his...
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe this crossover show would be more suitable for Comedy Central...
GMD
watch this
Project Spotlight ... Battlebots ... Project Spotlight ...
I say put Denis Leary in the cage with a battle bot. The winner gets to have a time spot.
BTW: Project Spotlight, the worst show ever.
Wha .. If that's a joke, I don't get it.
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
That's a typo, he meant spork.
Besides, i prefer robocode.
I'm glad they canceled the show...It wasn't funny. I go to Comedy central for shows that are funny, like standup routines, southpark, the daily show. Battlebots just didn't belong.
Celebrate the finer things in life
BattleBots does not belong on TLC ... they already tried it...it was called Robotica!!! But, what we should really be getting behind are the shows like Junkyard Wars.
As I'm sure others will point out, these were generally nothing more than glorified remote controlled cars. The truly inovative bots were few and far between, and most of them were either designed as a "wedge" or a "flipper".
I'm not saying that shows like this shouldn't exist or even that it doesn't take know-how to build them, it's just that most of the ideas have been done over-and-over again...anyhow, I'ld call 5 years a pretty good run for most any show...I mean how much longer can you really go until there's nothing new being done. I actually think we're there now, we just didn't realize it till now.
You might get something as a Saturday Morning show on one of the networks, but I wouldn't count on it.
Here's a question...why can't the contests continue without a TV Show? I mean, anything that I'ld actually term as a sport should be able to survive without prime-time television coverage. And if it honestly holds such a large "geek" audience, then companies like IBM, Dell, and Apple should be scrambling to sponsor events and bots...
On a side note, I personally enjoyed the shows, but like most ppl thought it was out of place on CC.
Does n't TNT or TNN have a similar show that
hosted by tha wff wresler
Explain how shooting is a sport. Pull trigger
Speed walking a sport? walking
Archery? pull string on a curved stick
Hitting small white ball w/stick to make it go into 4 inch hole
Running?
Sport is defined by who can produce the best spin
THIS IS NOT A SPORT!!!
Nor is race car driving, ice skating, golf (yes I love it too), horse back riding or any number of other games competitions or whatever.
To be a true sport...
These other things can be games, competitions, whatever but they aren't sprots.
Some examples to help you...
American football, soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, boxing, tennis, and even fencing are sports, as well as many others.
Golf (again I love to play but it's not a sport), auto racing, horseback riding, ice skating, ice dancing, and gymnastics while all very difficult and enjoyable in there own way, are not sports.
END RANT...
You didn't know someone could get so worked up about something so stupid did you? Oh, what am I say you guys are part of the Free Software Community, of course you knew that. BTW, Linux advocacy...not a sport.
I never really liked BattleBots.. The hosts of the show were way too cardboard-ish (or football-ish, or something) for my tastes. I've enjoyed TNN's Robot Wars much more, even though it's hosted by an ex-wrestler (so I'm told.. I was never into wrestling, so I don't know). Even with what TNN has done, I think it could be much more entertaining.
Somehow, it just seems like this is a sport by and for regular people, so it's really weird to see clean-cut jocks and dressed-up chicks talking to Joe Blow from down the street. BattleBots has way too much cognitive dissonance going for my tastes, I guess..
Being a "HUGE hit", and being the first of its kind (in the US anyhow), does not excuse it from being insipid garbage. In fact many thinking people realized it was exactly that at the time. In fact I could be talking about BattleBots also.
Battle bots was a mole on Comedy Central, which is about the only chanel I watch, after HBO.
First of all, the robots went from beautiful works of art, to awful construction equipment:
I don't want to see a miniature tank, with an axe mounted to its top. The "robots" where
nothing more than evil looking lawnmowers.
They should not have rewarded the most destruction resistant robot, but the most technically
advanced. The idea of a "fight" is simply flawed, and reeks of testestrone driven, cheap male
entertainment.
Speaking of male entertainment, carmen electra has no business in a friken bot fight.
I would pay $$$$ to see autonomous robots, put into a "maze" and let them discover their
own exit paths. It would also be a great idea to encourage alternative robot designs, not just
wheels and tank chains, I wanna see snake like bots, flying bots, swimming bots, you could
also explore alternative sources of energy, instead of just relying on batteries; give boneses
to bots which power their onboard computer with sun lights, etc.
There is alot one could do with robot building skills, instead of investing resources on how to
build the next destructive machine. They could cut down on the weight too, some of these beasts
weight as much as 500 lbs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First Sept 11th 2001, all the terror and stuff
Now Sept 11th 2002 battlebots is canceled...god help us all
just kidding, battlebots sucked
I always thought battlebots would be cooler on water. I mean, usually the robots don't destroy each other, just hit each other. Sometimes... but not usually. Think of little boats trying to sink each other though. Those spikes could puncture airtanks for floation, destroy outboard motors... They could even have underwater cameras.
I think it'd be a lot cooler.
Not that I'm a fan of BB, but leave us not forget that CC is the same bunch of bozos who cancelled the greatest TV show of all time: Mystery Science Theater 3000.
that was the most boring show i have ever seen. A bunch of stupid little radio controlled buckets of steel hitting each other. Oh my the drama. I would rather sit and stare at a wall. Or watch fletch...
All Americans willing to prove the lack of national culture are welcome with comments like the quoted one.
All American willing to say something proving that the stating the lack of American culture is wrong - are welcome as well.
The lack of comments will prove that the most of Americans do not care about their culture at all.
Today is the right day to show what is the spirit and the culture of America.
Battlebots appeals to my raw manly desire to see well engineered machines disembered in brutal ways.
And to see Carmen Electra in a tight tanktop.
UGH! ME WANT MORE!
If you post it, they will read.
What is the reason that Comedy Central Scrapped the program ?, I dont think its lack of viewership.Hey this is a country of gadget lovers.
For even more Saturday Night Live
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
Battlebots was good when it was a once-a-year geek-a-thon, not a show on all the fucking time w/the same boring, old, shit.
/. and other places on the 'Net once a year. It was fun. I got to see a lot of ingenious designs, etc. On TV it was crap (especially when that fat fuck from late night TV had one w/his face on it, fan or not, it was lame).
I was excited to see the tournament on
It was all over when they got rid of Bill Nye. You gotta love the "Science Guy"
TechTV expressed interest in BattleBots before Comedy Central picked it up, but he with the bigger pockets wins.
Survivor sucked ass. Other forms of reality TV suck ass too.
The other half is probably the entire audience for the show, which means that advertisers are reaching at most about a thousand geeky teenagers and poor college students. Anyone can see that those economics can't support a cable tv show.
The rules are too boring. No fun weapons are allowed.
Dammit, I want explosions, flame throwers, stun guns! Most of battlebots comes down to
1. A robot breaking from bad design.
2. A robot being flipped over in some way.
3. A draw.
There are very few good hits.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I watched two seasons of BattleBots, and then gave up. The show just started getting too boring to hold my interest. There were some really great bots, but some battles were just lame and went nowhere. Also, I felt that they should have shown more about the building of the robots, similar to Junkyard Wars (we miss you, Cathy Rogers!)
At least it wasn't as bad as Robotica.
Oh wait, the show wasn't bad, it was the Zappa that was bad.
The problem is that lately the comedy channel seemed to be trying to turn the show into a vehicle for Carmen Electra and the hosts and only having breaks from this for actual robot fighting.
While Carmen is nice eye candy, having commentators that are making more inane comments than Dennis Miller ever did is too annoying for most people, and this probably caused the kill off.
I know its not 100% on topic, but Farscape has also been cancelled. When the "best sci-fi show" on television on a Sci-fi only network can't make it, what hope is there for finding quality televsion anywhere?
Like you said, every robot seemed to boil down to either a wedge or a flipper. The show killed itself via restrictions that ultimately only produced these two forms. The robots rarely did much to each other because of this and the controlers had such shitty control you had to wonder if they ever tested their robots before coming on the show.
They have to start allowing projectiles and chemicals. Base the show out at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in a concrete bunker/sound stage with remote cameras and allow for some real robot wars.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Trying to keep your eyes off of Carmen Electra's boobs, now that is a truly challenging sport!
another network will pick it up and keep this sport alive
It's not a sport if you can drink a beer while participating.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I couldn't agree more. Comedy Central tried to take something that's interesting and entertaining in its combination of technical details and battle, and dumbed it down to a level that pained anyone who tried to enjoy what makes robots fighting worth watching. I got really excited the first season, and kept hoping they'd move away from the dumb-as-fuck annoucers and babes, and towards the more detailed descriptions like what Bill Nye (went to my high school :) would provide. But they didn't, so the show sucked, and refused to watch. Fuck them, it's a viable format/content for a show, so someone will get it right we'll get robot-fighting goodness.
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I never understood why battlebots was on comedy central. I never found it funny (nor interesting). Maybe they'll bring back "Strangers with Candy."
What made me stop watching battlebots is it seemed they played with the times it was playing on....They switched the time temporarily I fell out of the habit of watching it as I am sure many other people did...
well, i guess we'll ahve to start watching robot wars or robo challenge or depth charge or...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I used to think the way you do, that RobotWars was great, and Battlebots a pale imitation. Two things changed my mind.
First, discovering something of the history behind the two. Battlebots was originally called RobotWars, but a promotion company stole the name and sold it to the Brits.
Second was watching them head to head one night. The RC "bots" on the show called RobotWars are pathetic, wimpy little things compared to the monsters on Battlebots. They have prettier paintjobs and grillwork, combined with "weapons" that can barely scratch tinfoil. If "functional" and "actually able to cause real carnage", and "shredded steel plate flying through the air" are "simple", then give me simple any day.
That said, the Comedy Central coverage of the Battlebot events is pretty bad, and getting worse. I'm a huge Craig Charles fan, and would rather listen to him than anyone who has ever worked for "Comedy Central Sports". But dismissing Battlebots because the coverage is lame is like dismissing the Olympics because NBC is lame -- it's missing the point. I think that Comedy Central dropping the show may be the best thing that could happen to the show.
First it was Real World/ Road Rules.
They were crap too.
So now all the battle bot owners can just convert there shit to robot wars and we will have just one show instead of 2, which I think would be better anywho.
Ave Molech Setting
The idea of making a machine to go in their to kill other machines sounds really cool. Hell, for the first two seasons, I watched it religiously, making it one of only two shows I watch regularly (the other, South Park, only having like 4 new episodes every six months anyway, so not all that time consuming).
However, by the third season, I (and I think *most* people) started realizing the choices of possible machine types, as limited by the extensive rules, made every "new" combat nothing more than a replay of something I'd already seen, with a new paint job.
Even now, I would start watching it again, if they ditch 90% of the rules. As long as a bot won't explode (and even "small" explosions, such as their 3" thick plexi cages would contain, seem alright), no holds barred. Flying bots? If someone can make them, good luck. Projectiles? Yup. Fire? Yup. Electricity? Yup. Entanglement? Again, Yup.
Make it a *real* contest of who can build the better bot, rather than who can build the better table-saw-or-jackhammer-on-wheels, and it would become interesting again.
I want to see REAL robot destruction. I don't want every match to end with one bot immobilized, mildly injured from a battery wire breaking, or its antenna clipped, or havings its wheels chopped off. I want sparking circuit boards, small explosions, the smell of ozone (well, okay, the home viewer couldn't enjoy that part), chunks of metal everywhere, etc.
Until then, I don't even care if Carmen starts hosting it nude. It has completely lost its "newness" appeal.
A ton of comments that say "Battlebots blows, Robot Wars where it's at". I'm sure Robot Wars will be cancelled next season. You don't make money peddling to geeks. If everyone here was happy, we'd be watching the 30th season of Star Trek TOS on linux boxen. Of course someone would be trolling saying "Spock's gay, I like Windows 98, and my SUV is the biggest".
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The same thing will happen to Junkyard wars. They jew it up and people no longer like it anymore.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Keep battlebots alive?
Hey man, battlebots were already around before Comedy Central decided to turn it into a tv series. Battlebots is an independant organization, that will likely return to its hobbyist roots, and be better off than it was before.
The mantra is not so much "keep battlebots alive" as it should be "free battlebots".
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Sorry, gotta disagree here, and the reason why are the weapon limitations.
:)
I mean, it just gets friggin BORING watching two wedge designs trying to flip each other. Start allowing team melees, projectile weapons, acid/flamethrower weaps and small explosives and lets see what happens.
I had a bot design in mind that involved launching drone bots forcible at the opponents with two swinging axe arms. it would get demolished by a little wedge, but whats more exciting - a 'mothership' bot with 4 ramming/piercer drones that launch forcibly with swinging axes or a little wedge with a lot of torque?
That's what I thought
when all is said and done, all a man has left are his blades and his honor.
How will the cancelation of one robot fighting series preclude the end of all mechanical combat sports? I think we can all agree that back-to-back-to-back-to-back battlebots episodes lead to an early death by overexposure, not a failure in the premise of the show. I'm sure as long as monster trucks hold some sort of "rally" somewhere, and giant transforming tractors spit fire, there will be exhibition competitions of remote-controlled (and autonomous) creations dueling it out. Even if they aren't always televised, they will continue to exist. And with the removal of the stagnant Battlebots from the running, maybe we will see some real innovation. Or at least someone will bring back the fun.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Many of you slasbots dont seem to realize that battlebots is a separate entity from the battlebots show. It was going on before the show and before the Pay-Per-View event some of you may know about. Comedy central tapes the competition and edits it until it turns to utter crap. They pick 3 fights for every thirty minutes and pack mind-numbing fluff between them by:
a) having those boring(and often lame) "meet the builder" blurbs before the fights.
b) have one of the interviewers do a blurb which usually ends up being worse than the builder interview blurbs.
c) show the post-fight interviews featuring either a blank-minded barbie asking idiotic questions or the comics cracking a joke.
They could easily put in 6-8 fights per 30 min (12-16/hr) if they just eliminated a and b above, and had interviewers who knew their shit. That way the majority of the show would consist of fights, and therefore allows for the full tourney tree to be broadcasted.
I should also mention that advertising for the season 5 premier was virtually nonexistant, and after the idiot execs saw the ratings numbers for the first few season 5 shows, they decided to cancel it.
C'mon guys it's boring after the first few matches.
:)
Now... when the 'bots are Mech. sized with full armament that's a whole new ball game.
Andrew
Have they filmed any of them? I'd guess a low-bucks television show like battlebots being shot on video tape rather than film.
The 'bots can live in peace, sing music in the sun and put flowers in their hair.
Wouldn't it be a wonderful world when every battlebot in the world would stand together in a line holding hands, grapplers, chainsaws, hammers etc and sing Kumbayaya.
Now that peace has a chance we should embrace this oppurtunity to make this planet a better place for Humans and 'Bots alike. Let the barbaric killing for amusement stop and these simple machines rove around the fields of daisys like they where meant to.
>
Yeah but the European versions have nudity and stuff :P
I loved Battle Bots.
I didn't like the fact that the arena was the same each year... I didn't like that the bots got points for nudging each other...
I want to see bots that use the hammer to charge a weapon, I want to see other ways people can recharge their weapons.
I want to see Thermite, I want to see EMP, I want to see electricution,
(I don't want to see radio jamming... though... with artificial intelegence bots catagory, that would be fine!)
I want to see spray paint that can cover up sensors, I want oil slicks,
I want welding torches,
another way of saving it would be to:
Have a device that the bot must protect/keep from breaking while driving arround... and still perform other tasks.
That way you could standardize the challenge somewhat, while still having unlimited combat.
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
battle bots was so much better when it was a pay-per-view event. no crappy commentary, just robots smashing each other. it lasted something like 3 hours! it was still PPV in the spring of 2000. if i remember right, the first season on CC was a rehashed version of the last PPV (that I saw, at least.)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
I didn't mind BattleBots at first until I learned (via Janeane Garofalo on an appearance by her on The Daily Show) that the series that had been canned to make room for BattleBots was The Upright Citizen's Brigade, which was one of the funniest sketch comedy shows out there.
After that, I couldn't stand to look at BattleBots.
--AC
I like testesterone driven, expensive male entertainment.
I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars to build a cute gee-whiz "technologically advanced" robot. I am am planning to spend thousands of dollars to build (and test, and repair) a semi-autonomous fighting robot that I can pit against other similar devices.
Yeah sure -- and there is a lot one could do with automobile tuning skills, instead of investing resources to build the next rubber-burning nitrous-powered drag racing machine. Sure, I could have spent the $5K to convert my car to electric power...But you know what? For many people, big/powerful/fast/dangerous hardware is FUN.
Okay, on that point I agree with you 100%. They should have gotten Cathy Rogers (Scrapheap challenge, aka Junkyard Wars), or some other photogenic female with a three-digit IQ.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I've been to a battlebots show, live. Yes, fellow slashdotters. You could envy me. But you probably wouldn't want to.
It SUCKS. It takes maybe 45 minutes in between rounds to set things up, you get to see a 3 minute fight, and you don't even get to stare at the hot announcers. Plus it's not a great place to pick up chicks. No wonder it was so easy to get our robotics club tickets...
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
Good. Now maybe they can use that timeslot for my series THE BANANA CHAN ANIME HOUR! The scripts are available on-line at my web-site at http://members.shaw.ca/fhs/AlanHolman.htm It's Comedy! -- and they're Comedy Central! A perfect fit! ...oh someday I'll stop finding lame excuses to peddle my wares...
sorry.
That way, you can watch a 30 minute episode in about 10 minutes, skipping all the commercials and filler.
I see a lot of comments about how it wasn't innovative and didn't evolve but I think it did. And even though more fights were boring than not, when there was a good fight, it was really cool. Even though the show had the 'feel' of Pro Wrestling, I never thought the fights were pre-determined - don't see how they could have been.
I hope some other network picks it up - I would miss it.
We had Robot Wars, which was much much better than your version (late night bravo anyone?). I can see why they want to cancel it. Live in the 'land of the free'. America shouldn't be called that for a long time now. The real 'land of the free' at the moment is england :)
I've been to the last four Battlebots season events, and they were a lot of fun. It definitely ruins the TV show for you, because TV cannot come close to the live event. It's truly sad that they're having problems. I will miss it incredibly if they can't defibrillate it somehow.
That said, it was clear from the last event that Battle Bots is on its way out. The robots are getting stale, and the rules surrounding robot design and weaponry are too restrictive. There were few, if any, innovative robot designs this last time. Mostly the same old robots you see each season, or knockoffs of existing robots. They even had to cancel the customary rumbles which take place after the finals (and even had to cancel the last half of the last final), because they were shut down by the San Francisco FD after one of the robots started ripping holes in the battlebox and spewing metal projectiles into the audience. We were rather disappointed at the whole thing, and decided to only see the last day of competition next time (it takes a weekend for them to do all of the filming). Looks like there may not be a next time.
Seems like it will take a bit of work to resurrect the show. Not only will they need to get a new sponsor, but they'll have to spice it up somehow to get better robots. They will also need a better battlebox...
To be a true sport...
you should have to compete directly against another person(s) or team(s) (notice the word "directly"?)
Ok bunch of guys driving cars on the coarse competeing directly against each other.
there has to be an objective measure of victory (that's right no French judges that have been bought off...this applies to boxing, too...it's only a sport when someone is knocked out)
Some one crosses the finish line first.
you have to exert yourself physically (that's right chess isn't a sport nor is EQ)
You try driving a multi-ton(with aerodynamic down force added in) car throught a corner at 200 miles per hour with out power steering. Its hard, it make you exert yourself.
you have to be able to be injured in the normal course of play not as some freak accident.
People crash and hurt themselves in almost every race, that is the reson that most people watch.
the athlete has to be you (not a horse, dog, robot, or blow up doll)
They are the ones driving the car is just a tool. It is like saying that hockey is not a sport because they use sticks and skates.
ideally there should be an object to struggle over such as a ball, puck or some such but this one has been waved by my brother-in-law who pointed out that boxing doesn't have this and boxing is definitely a sport as long as it doesn't go to the judges...that should be considered a draw if no one goes unconcious.
They struggle over the space on the coarse. Other than that I completely agree, I had the same kind of arugements during the winter olympics because there are lot of non-sports in the winter olympics.
One day people will learn the folly of Winbloze, Linux Rules!
What makes robotwars so entertaining is that the robots are made by a couple of grease monkeys in their garage on a 2 thousand dollar budget with lawn motor engines and old shoes. When one of the really well made spinning disks hits a piece of junk it breaks into tiny peaces.
Some of them are well made, and they usually rip the competition in half. When two monsters face each other it kind of sucks (like the world championship between drillzilla and razor that was on TNN recently) but it's not that bad because it's always some kind of grudge match.
In battlebots, all you get is invunerable robots scoring points on each other by getting weapon hits and doing no damage. They never show the little guys running around trying not to catch on fire.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
That show freaking owns! It's a show where players try to guess who of them is the insider paid to keep them from winning money. Whoever knows the least about the mole gets booted every show. Great show!
l /signed.cgi? mole3
WHY WAS IT PULLED?
The winner was Bill, the admiral. Friday Sept. 7 they said the next episode will be the 14th. The week of Sept 11th, on Friday, America's FUNNIEST OME VIDEOS was on instead!
Apparently because Bill, an Admiral, was the Mole, ABC canned the show to avoid making the army/navy look bad. True! Thank disney.
The show returned in the summer..
to face AMERICAN "IDLE". Yes, people watched American Idol instead of The Mole.
So. The mole is a sweet show but they gave out too many easy clues like the episode 9 clue with AdMiRaL in green INTRO text, which I discovered.
Sign the mole 3 petition (come on SlashDot readers work together!)
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_per
8,500 SIGNATURES!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
The sport of combat robots is growing quickly, yet quietly. Three years ago, BattleBots didn't even have a TV contract.
Now, there are several private, local tournaments held semi-annually, thousands of robots in weight classes ranging from 1 lb to 400 lbs, Toys, Video Games, and even competing shows such as Robot Wars, Depth Charge, and the recently cancelled Robotica, which was pretty boring.
Some may see this as the end of BattleBots, but I beleive it is simply part of a transition from the wrong TV network (Comedy Central) to one that will present the event properly, as a incredible mechanized competition. This could be TLC, Tech TV, or even a cable sports network that could present it in a NHRA-type of broadcast.
For those who are bored with it, take the time to find a live event near you and you will understand how amazing the sport (competition) of robotic combat is.
D
I'm glad comedy central canceled it. I've seen similar shows. (they showcased a similar program, (from the UK, I believe, though don't hold me to it) on PBS a few years ago, and it was done VERY well, but the presentation of the comedy central version, well, no sir, I don't like it. maybe someone else will pick it up, and do it RIGHT.
... they started doing random drug tests on the RC'ers. The free agent market also picked up and the agents for the 'bots started getting greedy.
I think they canceled the show before there would be a labor strike, personally.
Isn't Disney going to have a show on it, sans Carmen?
This space for rent.
I like the concept of battlebots, but their weapons are too limited. Rarely is there much damage, there is hardly any innovation of design, new weapons, new techniques etc. they look like a bunch of lame bumper cars. get the show exciting , C'mon.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I far prefer the condensed late-night version of Robot Wars hosted by - of all things - Joanie, where it's nothing but fights. No interviews, no filler, no inane chatter. Just killing and lots of it.
Barring that, give me the British version of Robot wars every time.
The only useful thing from Battle Bots were the killsaws - cool.
RIP Battle Bots.
D.
Does this mean Carmen Electra will have to go back to posing nude in playboy to make some cash? Thats a lot safer for her, this way overweight geeks can just stare at her picture and she doesn't have to worry about getting to close to them during interviews.
Check out my life
The show really took a nosedive when it started to get all self-conscious and trendy anyway. I mean, you can get announcers who look like models but fercrissake, at least let someone with a brain write their commentary for them so they don't sound and look like complete annoying morons.
Battle Bots, like most TV shows, only survives as long as it draws an audience. And as cool as those robots all were, after a few episodes only "loyal" viewers kept watching because there was a clear "glass ceiling" that was limiting the performance / size / appearance of all the robots.
In a few years once technology has put more gadgetry in the builders hands, the show will be back.
How does killing the show translate into killing robot fighting? IIRC there are several groups popping up that fight robots in the street, parking lots, a variety of locations. I know when I was in university there were a lot of people who were talking about this and building bots - there are already lots of organizations looking at other robot sports, like robot soccer and AI kart racing.
YMMV.
..don't panic
(* How many times can you watch remote controlled scrap metal bump into each other and flip each other before it gets boring? *)
That is like saying, "How many times can you watch a bunch of sweaty guys bounce a ball around a wooden floor and toss it thru a ring." Yet sports fans can never get enough.
They have to treat it more like a sport, including making the builders into celebrities. I am sure there is a Kobe Bryant of smashbotics out there.
And finally, they need *explosives*. You have to get rid of the idea of a live audience, at least a close one though. But roughly 80% of all men like explosions.
Make it a true sport with explosions and it becomes a sure winner with males.
BTW, why no Geek Channel? Or at least a Guy Channel. Then we can see the 3 Stooges too. Most females lack a gene to make them appreciate The Three Stooges and explosive hardware.
Table-ized A.I.
...calling this nonsense a "sport" is possibly the dumbest thing I think I have ever read. It's geeks with remote controls and shares about as much with sports as dog shows, wrestling, and dare I say it, NASCAR.
Fun to watch, possibly. Actual competition, ok. But a sport? Give me a break.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
oh my, oh my! C3PO
Posted as AC to protect the innocent(me)
I was an intern at ZDTV (now techtv) back in the red-head Kate Botello days when battlebots(tm) first started pitching the idea of turning their event into a television broadcast. ZDTV was the first bidder and was very interested, but eventually lost out to Comedy Central. Now that TECHTV has a larger audience and the deep pockets of one Paul Allen, it will be interesting to see if they pursue the broadcast rights to this program.
The hot chicks in BattleBots aren't that bad, because they're only there for the T&A, and dont do any real announcing. Carmen is actually not bad at all, and the bots this year are looking cool too.. :)
Hopefully some other station picks it up. It didnt really fit on comedy central, but it was a good show. Much better than Robotica or RobotWars (the TNN peice of crap at least).
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Hey Folks,
Cool to see that BatttleBots has made the Slashdot news :)
My name is Jon Autry, I have competed at two of the BattleBots competitions, and at several smaller regional competitions. I have been building bots now for close to two years: http://www.robot-village.com
Here are a few comments from a BUILDERS perspective: (these comments and thoughts are my own, and in no way reflect the opinion of BattleBots INC. or any other builder)
As a competitor at BattleBots, I had mixed emotions when I heard that CC had decided NOT to extend their contract.
I remember hearing the first commercial for BattleBots on Comedy Central. I thought: "Sweet! That sounds like it will ROCK!" but I was also confused as heck as to why in the world Comedy Central would be picking up the program?! Hey, I didn't really care at the time... I just thought the idea of seeing machines fight was awesome, and would take it any way I could get it.
After watching a few episodes, I was addicted to the show. All I could think about was: "What kind of bot would I build?!". I went along like this until I finally decided to try MY hand at fighting robots.
It took me nearly six months to make my first bot, and I can tell you that I learned more in those six months than I did in High School. You cannot appreciate the time, work, and research that goes into making one of these robots, until you do it yourself. The science and physics involved in engineering one of these machines needs to be focused on more, (IMHO) instead of "dumbing the show down".
After attending my first BattleBots in Spring 2001, I couldn't wait for the new season to air on CC. However, after seeing the competition live, watching it on CC only made me frustrated. Here are a few of my "gripes" with the way CC presented the show:
Those are a few of my main beefs with the way the show is presented. I have to give CC props for picking up the show in the first place though, otherwise I don't think that I would be building bots now. But I think that they will do more for the "sport" (or whatever you want to call it) by letting it go, than they ever did by picking it up in the first place.
If and when the show is picked up by another network, I hope the focus shifts more to the competition, and away from making it into a circus.
Just my opinion...
How is it that talking about Battlebots and the show that got cancelled because of it is offtopic?...and in every post that mentions UCB no less. Compared to UCB, Battlebots is nothing.
Every time I turn on Comedy Central, there's either a crappy 80's movie starring a Wayans brother or that annoying news spoof (aka Dennis Miller rip) on.
I think Comedy Central kills alot of shows due to bad scheduling. I used to watch Ben Stein and then they shuffled it around. I watched Battle Bots when I was home and it was on (rarely). I certainly try with all my might to watch the Man Show, but its just on at a bad time.
They say they can't hold due to no funding from comedy central. Well how much do they need? I mean crap if its a measly 50K then that shouldnt be that hard to raise.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I'm an avid BattleBots fan. Every week a new episode airs, I'm planted in the chair with my beer and popcorn. Unfortunately, the show is losing it's appeal. I enjoy watching the fights. It was great during the second and third season when they would air back to back episodes, because I could count on seeing up to eight fights in a night. This limited the chance of seeing some wedge weenies bumping around and increased the chance of a couple of spinners knocking themselves silly.
I think the show started to go bust when they went from two commentators and an interviewer, to a team that rivals professional baseball coverage. Do we really need this many people to host the show? Season 5 is by far the worst in this respect, with plenty of Carmen dancing in tight shirt and short skirt, and Tony Rock being Chris Rock's brother. The builders do not make good interview subjects, and the interviewers are even less apt in their role.
To get more viewers, they need to show more fights, and less talk. The big attraction for me is to see machines that are not quite fully controllable ripping each other apart. Fully armored wedges are no fun to watch, but the point system can be adjusted to insure that these bots don't win. The best fights are usually the lightweights, as the power of the machine surpasses the ability of the driver to control it, and the low weight means little armor. Spinners are great fun (Ziggo!), especially when they fight each other. Spinners are even fun when they malfunction, as they tend to tear themselves apart when they become unbalanced (Mauler, Son of Whyachi). Flippers are entertaining as well(Toro!). I'm sure that the builders will continue to come up with more ideas on how best to wreck the opponent. I think the current set of limits on weapons are not hampering the builders either. In fact, I think the limits are fair. How much fun is it to watch one machine douse the other in water? About as much fun as the dunk booth at the county fair. The show needs to go back to a four fight format. Get rid of the useless interviews, prancing, and posturing.
"BattleBots may be entertainment but it's no more a sport than playing a videogame."
I resent that. My right hand is quite athletic now, thank you.
"Derp de derp."
The UCB was THE greatest show of all time! They used to put them on at like Saturday morning at 1:30 a.m. but then they finally removed it. People haved all the episodes on VHS and VCD available on ebay. The UCB has tried to make a DVD available but friggin CC wants no part of it. I hate Comedy Central. Now Kids in the Hall isn't on at 2 anymore and they cancelled Strangers with Candy. The Man Show has its moments but it has run its course. Win Ben Stein's money is the same, its dead after this season, Southpark needs to be put down. They are donkey raping shit eaters.
(* I have noticed a real growth in the types of weapons over the years. *)
I forgot to meantion shooting (in addition to granades). Why can't they have Gatland guns and the like? Toss the live audience and let them go a it.
(Then send the winner into Bin Laden's cave.)
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, Mr. Norton or Martin Sergeant mentioned something about that recently so they are aware.
:)
.) she kills it. That Tracy chick that used to do it was better. Not better looking, but better with a mic. Carmen kept trying to force something and it just wasn't happening. If you can't get Tracy back, give it to Morgan Webb.
I always liked the show, but I stopped watching when they bumped the time slot to 10:30 after the world's lamest golf show with Bill Murray (now that show SUCKED!!!). That's too late to stay up to watch battlebots. But I do enjoy the show and I have yet to see one of the rip-offs approach Battlebot appeal.
What I like about the show is that it's NOT AI. Human on human in real-time. AI's about as exciting as watching those old vibrating football tables - only less so.
I hope Tech TV picks them up. BattleBots is far more interesting than Leo book plug reruns (not that I don't like them the first time around!).
Carmen Electra is always fun to look at, but every time she opens her mouth (to speak . .
Robots and nerds are far from sexy anyway - wrong venue.
I just bought a //e for $12 /me thinks back to summer long ago spent working to be able to buy a $1600 Apple //e...
$12? [SOB!]
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Maximillian vs. Robocop...
Terminator vs. IG-88...
Johnny-5 vs. R2-D2...
Data vs. Gort...
C3-P0 vs. Cylon...
even if it wasn't real... i'd still probably watch it...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So will the SciFi network pick up BattleBot as it saved MST3K in the past? It would seem a good fit. Of course a minor management change will replace it will replace it with a John Edwards dopes pinheads show or whatever. But hey, an extension is an extension...
I kinda wish I could remember the password to my account (or had access to the now dead net-mail website to get it) so the points that're going to be used to mod me down won't go to waste, but oh well.
Battlebots was boring. You could tell that the hosts and most everyone participating (except maybe the shut-in oddballs who spent thousands making their SUPAR WEDGE ROBOT) clearly weren't into it, with the extremely forced commentary coming from the hosts, and the slightly bemused audience members half-heartedly waving the posters that were handed to them so they'd look half-enthused instead of wondering why they weren't somewhere else.
The "Fighting" was nothing to write home about either. With the exception of a few bots, the rest were rather poorly designed "wedge bots" that really ARE just hunks of metal with wheels that run into things aimlessly. Watching most of the "battles" was depressing for me on the occassions I found myself watching this thing, waiting for something better to come on.
a fair amount of the matches I saw went on like this:
1. The two bots aimlessly try to charge eachother, while the "drivers" fiddled with their controls.
2. After 1-2 minutes of missing eachother by a few feet, the bots run into eachother with a dull clank and a couple sparks. The blinking "Cheer" light comes on, and the audience pretends to be amazed.
3. One of the bots is hit by one of the various moving obsticles in the arena, which promptly breaks (I can't remember how many times the giant hammers at the corners of the arena fell out).
4. One of the drivers parks over a saw like an idiot, and gets his bot prompty torn to shreds. The audience cheers wildly because it's over, then the opposing bot is awarded the victory because the driver managed to not destroy his bot by slamming it into saws and sharp things.
5. Carmen Electra realises the camera is on her, immeadiately removes the look of dispair and depression from her eyes, and quips off a one liner about how great the fight was before interviewing the greasy-haired winner about his stunning display of 3l33t sk1llZ.
6. I sigh, and change the channel, and think back on the days when Bill Nye actually had something resembling a career.
~Fin~
I much preffered robot wars anyway. for one thing it was the original series or at least based on it. technicly even though battlebots has become synonymous with robot fighting it is the rip off along with robotica.
but this isn't just a troll I'll give some perfectly good reasons why I preffer robot wars.
environmental hazards. this allows for a smaller faster and better controlled bot to have a fighting chance over heavilly armored goliaths.
bigger bots. with a weight limit of 500lbs and bots almost half the size of their creators these bots are much more than little RC cars with shells.
better designed bots. no wedges and flippers here. with most of the bots either self righting, or just plain unflipable the wedge and flipper designes are a rare sight. more often the bots are designed to totally obliterate each other. not a competition for someone who wants to take their robot home at the end (robotica)
and finally my personal favorite. House bots.
I know some people don't like them but when a robot just stops due to bad design it deserves a little more punnishment than just a count out. and sir killalot is just plain cool.
Ummmmm......
Ummmmmmmmmmmm.........
Fuckin lameness filter.
If you think there are not injuries or pain involved in professional wrestling then you you probably just don't care enough about wrestling. That's not a bad thing; there are more important things to worry about like world hunger, homelessness, and terrorist threats. However, I respectfully ask you to respect wrestlers who get hurt every night. Do you think Mick Foley faked his ear getting cut off or Jumping off of a 15 ft cage? Do you think Lita's broken neck is a publicity stunt? Do you think Owen Hart's DEATH is just really good acting? It's not supposed to be "real", but fake is not a real good word for it either. Try taking a suplex once and tell me if it's real or not.
"First it was Survivor, -HUGE- hit. Then came Big Brother, Temptation Island, Fear Factor, Worst Case Scenario and a slew of other knock-offs, which have watered down and sucked all the fun out of reality TV."
Erm, slight correction. Big Brother is a UK invention, and has been running here for 3 years. AFAIK, Survivor is more recent than that.
But you're right, knock-offs kill all the interesting programs. There's a program over here on the BBC called "Airport" - It shows the behind-the-scenes working at London's Heathrow airport. Massive hit when it started (about 8 years ago, if memory serves), and it deserved to be. Some of the staff they followed on a regular basis have become "stars" in their own right. Unfortunately, the other networks saw the ratings and said "Me too!". Suddenly there's "Hollywood's Airport" (about LAX, lasted about four episodes), "Lagos Airport" (about guess where, lasted about 6 episodes), "Airline" (about EasyJest - a budget airline over here, still running, though God know's why)... None of which compared to the original. Then there's the reality shows, the "soap operas" who steal plotlines from each other, the game shows, the "gritty police dramas"... Bah!
And it extends to the big screen as well. How many times have we seen a bunch of "killer asteroid" or "suddenly-active volcano" films all released at once?
Maran
Come on, BattleBots? Gimme a break....good riddance...CC should just replace it with more SNL re-runs!
Thank god this stupid show is cancelled.
A test pattern would be more interesting than this piece of crap. And furthermore, what the hell is it doing on *COMEDY* Central. Put something FUNNY in its place (and while you are at it, get rid of Crank Yankers and any other show that has the completely horrendous hack known as Jimmy Kimmel).
-Michael (Aristotle@Threshold RPG)
http://www.threshold-rpg.com
Never could figure out what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like these things were *programmed* or anything like that (then I would be impressed). Effectively playing bumper-cars with glorified RC racers doesn't impress me.
"Battle Bots" is outrageously lame.
Robots fit a couple of genres
-Cool looking contraptions -- these are always too hard to control and lose.
-Doorjams with wheels. Always win
-Spinning discs
The easiest to evaluate a "sport" is to think "Could you gamble on this". Battlebots is too predictable to be called anything like a sport.
The real "geek" sport on TV is "Junkyard Wars". That is far more of an intellectual and competitive exercise than putting wheels on a metal box.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Actually Big Brother started off in the Netherlands. It was then licensed to other countries, first in Europe, then the US, too.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
invunerable robots
Uh... when was the last time you actually watched BattleBots?
Sure, the wedges are hardpressed to actually hurt another bot, but wedges rarely go the distance. Spinners and bladebots destroy them. Hell, just watch any match that involves Hazard, Son of Wyachi, or Warhead and you'll get to watch the other bot running around desperately trying to keep some of its parts together.
Robots Wars is horrible. It isn't a sport, not when the "loser" is subjected to destruction by the House Bots. No real reason to that other than entertaining the crowd.
If I had build a bot, I wouldn't mind my opponent ripping it to shreds, that's what it's there for. But to have the House Bots shred my work just for ratings, that's just silly and a waste of my money.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Aside from Hazard, which ones are invulnerable? Vlad the Impaler? Biohazard? Ziggo? Toro? Minion? Backlash? All of these have both won a championship and been knocked out by an opponent, usually with lots of damage. Lots of others have been reduced to scrap (well, except for the Scrap Daddy bots, those started as junk) by their opponents. None of the other shows can match the destruction in Battlebots because of ineffective weapons and poor durability. They need house robots and pits and stuff because the contestant robots can't do the job themselves.
They never show the little guys running around trying not to catch on fire.
Maybe not, but the last episode did have a big guy sitting in a broken heap catching fire. It's much more impressive to set your opponent on fire when you don't have a flamethrower.
...to a worn out idea that was neither "comedy" nor "robotic" -- correct me if I'm wrong but isn't autonomy prerequisite to be classed a "robot?" Nothing there but souped-up r/c. Never saw the appeal. $0.02
From the creators of Junkyard Wars, and with Cathy Rogers (and Henry Rollins) as presenters, it's like BattleBots but with full size cars. Coming to TLC in October.
Website
The problem with Battle bots is they aren't "bots". They are remote control cars with a sledgehammer attached. Granted making this a requirement would change the participants abit (for the better if you ask me). Why don't they just televise the MIT robot wars every year?
Plus the hosts were frickin annoying...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
They need to allow flame throwers, machine guns, grenaides, etc .. Have it all remotely controlled from a seperate room.. This constant bumping around till someone flips over was totally lame. Thats not battle, thats just DUMB.
It's pretty clear that all the studio shots are produced after the fact. They have the two guys interviewing the builders after each match. They have a few shots of Carmen Electra in front of the stands saying inane things that could be used next to just about any match. She probably cruised in, taped 20 minutes worth of gratuitous cleavage shots and breezed out.
Heck, even Mark Biro is computer generated. How else could he survive in the battlebox. THink about it.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
As a long time BB watcher I can only laugh when I read people saying they were bored after one episode. These must be the same people who have to download donkey pr0n because regular old sex just doesn't do it for them anymore.
/. was a neat place where people of like minds could share information. Now I see its really just a place to bitch about anything you think is below you. If you can't equate hacking a linux kernel with turning wrenches on a titanium bot (for those of us non coders) then I don't think there is any hope for you to remove that melon sized brain box from your anus.
BB was, for the average 9-5er, a chance to dream and scheme about building the ultimate fighting machine. Sure I didn't have the cash, time, or tools but those guys on TV did, and I love to watch mechinized destruction.
To all those who have said (in the same breath mind you) "I didn't watch the show...then later...it just never evolved..." Can you tell me how you can make such a judgment after not watching the show? Sure it evolved, in the first few seasons you had all kinds a wacky bots with different types of construction. Of course now people realize that there are really certain requirements to even enter the ring. Therefore a lot of the bots do infact look the same (the wedge bot being the most common it seems).
Now your going to tell me "oh see thats when it got boring cuz they are all the same" WRONG again. Now all the bots in competition have to look for new ways to destroy the undestroyable bot. The way I see it BB is just getting good. Designers have worked out the bugs and are producing more proactive bots.
While its nice to see everyones opinion on the matter, if you didn't watch the show don't bad mouth it. I used to think
I guess now I'll just have to wait for the state fair to roll around next year, all the tech schools do their own competition every year.
For the record: Carmen Electra pissed the regular watchers off, we'd much rather have Bill Nigh(sp?) back. Most of the time she looks so bored to be there it hurts to watch her.
--Should work--
In the words of Cartman:
"Ahh, son of a bitch!"
Seriously though, Comedy Central has a lot of cool shows and this was one of them. Ah well, such is life and stupid TV execs...
Carmen Electra is a horrible choice for the job; she shows no interest. Her body language is saying "I'd rather not be here, but it pays the bills". It's not her type of environment and it's painfull to watch her.
As said above Cathy Rodgers from Junkyard Wars -- or just about anyone who is truely interested -- would be a much better choice.
Magius_AR
Suggestion to Battlebots fans...
:-) So anyway, if you love Battlebots, why not try organizing something similar? Just a thought... :-)
Follow the "Save Farscape" model. Farscape fans from around the world are protesting by writing letters, emails, faxes, and are even (right now) picketing outside USA Networks in NY (no kidding). Scifi's IRC server always has about 300 people logged into the Farscape chatroom and it peaks at abotu 600+ -- whatever the max is set to -- whenever Farscape actors or writers come in to update us. It's nuts... Mob mentality, I figure. But a lot of fun for us nerds with free time (God, I love being a "professional" musician). Word has it, people are taking notice. Heck, CNN Headline News even ran several segments about the campaign last night on TV! I guess it remains to be seen whether or not a fifth season comes out of it, but the show's creators love our effort for trying.
Visit http://www.savefarscape.com for more info if you want to see everything people are doing.
Shit, these guys need to take this show to vegas. If ever there were a match made in heaven its that.
Robotica is its name. It's not quite the same -- it's more than just robots bashing each-other -- it has an obstacle course and other neat things.
[insert witty comment here]
I think Mick Foley had pretty big breasts.
The Whole thing is fake... staged, BUT, as in the movies (Well, the creation of them) things can sometimes go wrong, THAT'S where the real injuries take place. that's where the deaths from falls happen, etc. the WRONG hold on someone in a pile-drive can really do true hurt, if not death... but done "properly" the wrestler can fake the amount of pain and injury they desire, or should I say, as the ppl who cut their paychecks say for them to have.
Can you even imagine baseball or football without prime time coverage?