Slashdot Mirror
Syfy Reality Show Will Feature Giant Boxing Robots
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the next generation of 'Battle Bots' is here: 'Syfy has greenlit and shot the first season of a new show where eight-foot-tall state-of-the-art humanoid robots will rock 'em and sock 'em in a boxing cage until one is defeated. The future-shock new series is called Robot Combat League and the project has been kept under wraps until today. The action resembles a real-life version of last year's hit movie Real Steel, with large menacing robots pounding away at each other in a satisfying shower of sparks and gushing hydraulic fluid.' Pictures are included with the story."
Syfy? What's that? Sisyphus? Syphilis? Almost sounds like it could be referring to science fiction, like that old Sci-fi channel, but it's spelled much more like that newer wrestling, horror and infomercial channel.
Oh - that's it, isn't it? It's that horrible cable channel that metastasized from the ruin of a science fiction channel. Well, nice to know they're still busy poisoning the very concept of imagination and entertainment in the name of ambiguous shareholder value.
The best part of Robot Wars/BattleBots was the fact that the teams designed and built their own robots. It was a competition of ingenuity as well as skill. If the competitors don't get to design their robots, this is nothing more than a gimmick, and will probably (hopefully) flop.
Heh. More like they'll turn it into a reality show where there's 38 minutes of annoying hosts, watching the teams struggle with the design and construction of their bots, yelling at each other, making the token girl on the team cry, trash-talking about their opponents, and fighting at the last minute with control system problems, followed by about three minutes of actual robots in the ring, one minute of actual robot-on-robot attack.
Oh, and nineteen minutes of commercials.
So, in other words, that motorcycle-building show with some intentional, rather than all accidental, occasional mechanical carnage.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I had mod points so I stepped in to see if there were any corporate shills I could mod down, but as it should be SyFy is still a laughingstock and generally regarded as one of the dumbest channels on pay tv.
It's also the channel that got me to cut the cord.
Piss off and die SyFy. the nitwits that went for reality TV and wrestling to make more cash should be put up against a wall, shot, Duct Taped back on the wall, shot again and finally be staked in effigy to warn off others from being total douche-bags and emulating the way you destroyed a perfectly good SCI-FI channel.
If that isn't clear enough - SyFy Sucks!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
You beat me to it.
An RC car with a demo saw mounted on top is still a fucking RC car.
Robot = autonomous.
Anybody who thinks Battle Bots involved "robots" is a tool.
Those would not be robots. They would be mechanical exoskeletons.
They would also be really, REALLY cool.
But they would not be "robots".
Now go to the office and turn in your geek card.