Robot Wars Magazine

During the course of the show's run, a Robot Wars Magazine was published to follow the series and give behind the scenes information about the show and the future series. There were two seperate magazines, each published on a monthly basis. The first edition covered Series 4 and also had previews of Series 5 and Extreme Series 1. It ran for 20 editions before it was cancelled. The second edition covered Series 6 and was due to cover Extreme 2, but it was cancelled after only 7 editions, despite having notably more information than its predecessor.

First Edition
The first version of the Robot Wars Magazine was primarily dedicated to covering the Fourth Series of Robot Wars. The editions would provide detailed profiles of the House Robots and some of the most notable contestant robots, and would later feature brief reports for the various heats, including trivia about some of the robots. After Series 4 had ended, it began with posting previews of Series 5, with a look at some of the newest competitor robots, as well as providing a wallchart with the line-up for that year.

Robot Wars Club
Members of the official Robot Wars Club would receive a free subscription to the Robot Wars Magazine. In the magazine, there was always a page featuring various updates, including notable contestant websites and news about new Robot Wars pullbacks and minibots.

Comics
The first magazine contained several comic strips, as was common in many magazines. The first few comics were "back storys" for the House Robots, showing their "origins". The comics often had a very sci-fi feel to them, portraying the House Robots as having very exaggerated beginnings, such as a weapon for world war and so on.

Later editions featured "Fantasy Fights" between two or three robots from Series 4. The battles usually had a theme (for example, one fight features Firestorm 2, Bolt From The Blue and Tornado fighting each other in a "weather" themed battle and, like the House Robot origin comics, tended to be rather exaggerated in terms of damage, with panels often flying off with little more than a ram. The fights also frequently featured several errors to the robots designs or weapons.

"Thank goodness it's fantasy, I doubt a fight against Firestorm would be too easy for us. Especially with a pneumatic spike that appears to be jammed in the out position! But that's not the worst of it - Firestorm appear to be sporting their front edge cover and carrying cradle in the arena!"

- Team Tornado on the aforementioned Fantasy Fight

The Red Baron
In the 8th edition, a fictional House Robot called The Red Baron was created. It was designed to incorporate all of the "best bits" of the original five House Robots into a single machine, and it featured Dead Metal's saw, Shunt's bulldozer, Matilda's chainsaw, Sgt Bash's flamethrower and Sir Killalot's claw and lance. It ran on Sir Killalot's tracks, whilst its body was the same design as Sgt Bash's, except it was red instead of green.

The Red Baron also made an appearance in the last edition of the magazine, where it fought Chaos 2, Pussycat and Razer in one of the Fantasy Fights. However, it lost after its hydraulic cables were severed by Pussycat's blade, whereupon it literally exploded.

Notable Moments
During the run, the magazine generated several notable moments that were carried over to the show and its various merchandise, and even a minor incident that was the basis for a Vengeance battle in the first series of Extreme.


 * A competition was held in one edition of the magazine to join the Panic Attack team in Series 4. The competition was ultimately won by Christian Bridge, who joined the team not only in Series 4, but also during Extreme 1.
 * 3 Stegs to Heaven received its name from a competition held by the Steg team, who "didn't just want to call it Steg 3".
 * Another contest held was to design a robot for the then-upcoming Robot Wars: Arenas of Destruction. The winning design, Thor, was included in the game as part of the prize.
 * A notable incident occured in the magazine, where Diotoir team member Dr Zulu made a rude comment about the Firestorm team in response to a question asked by a reader. A Vengeance battle was staged between Diotoir and Firestorm during Extreme Series 1, whereby Dr Zulu would be forced to write an apology if Firestorm won the battle. Unfortunately, although Firestorm did win, the magazine was cancelled before the apology could be written.