Holy crap, yesterday I saw the best show ever, and that show was Robo One! Do you remember when Battlebots first came out and you thought it would be so cool, but when you saw it you were disappointed because it was basically remote control cars with buzzsaws attached to it and not Rock em’ Sock em’ Robots style robots? Oh that was just me….
Robo One in full effect!
Anyhow Robo One is an ultimate fighting league where human shaped robots have a battle to the death…or until the mechanism that makes the robot stand up ceases functioning.
Now I’m not one hundred percent sure on the rules since most of the time I was laughing extremely loudly (since foot high robots attempting to kill each other is wicked funny), but I think they go something like this:
Two robots square off over a three round match. The robot scores points if he is able to knock the other robot to the ground. If the robot is unable to get up during a 10 count he is KO’d. I’m not sure what being KO’d does since in one match a robot got KO’d in the second round and returned for the third round.
But what makes this show the best ever? What doesn’t! First off you have tiny robots attempting to knock each other over. Most of the time the robot on the attack would fall over without toppling his opponent (which looked wicked funny), but when they were successful there would be slow motion replays of a robot getting tackled by another robot…which is extremely funny.
Another thing that was a sign of how totally awesome this show was, was their ref. The ref, for some reason was wearing rubber gloves, like it was an actual boxing match where bodily fluids would be shed. Now I don’t know a lot about robotics so perhaps human contact would mess up the robots…but now that I think of it, the kids manning the robots didn’t wear rubber gloves during the 1 minute rest periods between rounds. I guess the ref just didn’t want to risk catching robot AIDS.
And the other thing that was great was the fact that they had announcers calling all the action…and they were totally into it, and totally serious. If memory serves me correctly there was a certain level of irony with tounge firmly implanted in cheek in regards to Battlebots, but not here. The announcers were so into the battle.
“OH! Nice move from Ggumjjang!!!” (that was the other thing that ruled; they called the action while totally ignoring the human element…it was Ggumjjang the robot who was delivering a nice move, not Hong Gildong, the pasty faced college kid with the remote control).
Anyhow if you are in Korea and have the MBC Game channel on your cable system, check out Robo One on Saturday afternoons…and while looking for some pictures I learned of Robo One leagues in Japan and the US….so perhaps you too can see shuffling robots attempting to knock each other over. Check your local listing for time and avalibilty.
