User blog:CrashBash/Crash's Top 5 Most Disappointing Robots Ever

There are many different ways a robot competing in Robot Wars can leave a positive impression, but there are also just as many ways it can leave a negative impression. It can be flat-out awful or it can be stupidly over-rated. I'd make a list for this, but honestly, these have been done to death. However, there is another way a robot can leave a negative vibe and that is for a robot to be "disappointing"...and that's something I don't really feel has been touched on before.

This has been floating around my head for a while, as ideas do, and it's about time I do something about it. The big question here is what actually makes a robot disappointing? Isn't that just the same as bad or overrated? Well, no, not entirely. It's certainly not the same as bad, usually the disappointing robots are actually pretty good in context. As for overrated, well, it's a little more complicated than that. A robot that is disappointing can be seen as overrated, yes, but that's really only because we expected more out of it. It's a hard thing to judge, but whilst many will call at least one or two of these following five robots "overrated", I really think "disappointing" is the more appropriate word here - with the possible exception of one.

NUMBER 5
It's funny how I make a list about Robot Wars after so long, and yet the first thing I really talk about is Battlebots. But it's appropriate I mention it to put the fifth robot on my list into context here. I believe I've stated before that the overall quality between the robots in Robot Wars and the robots in Battlebots is quite substantial...the ones in the former are often built to compete, whilst the ones in the latter are often built to win. You'd think, therefore, that if you put one of the best Battlebots competitors in a heat of Robot Wars, it'd win, easily. Except, that just wasn't the case.

I should start by pointing out that, as a combat robot in general, Killerhurtz is certainly not a disappointing robot, far from it. Its combat record in Battlebots speaks for itself, having been in the Top 8, Top 4 and even the Runner-Up across various points of its career. By the time Season 4 had ended, and Killerhurtz had met a rather messy retirement, it was ranked easily within the top 8 best heavyweights. It was a genuinely good robot. So, the question is, why did it do so poorly on its home turf?

It's hard to say exactly, but forgetting the pit was a thing notwithstanding, the sad part is that Killerhurtz was just too unreliable for Robot Wars. In a way, whilst Battlebots was about smashing robots apart until they were dust particles, I get the feeling that Robot Wars was more a battle of endurance, who could stay together the longest. Killerhurtz was certainly very aggressive in short bursts, but once the fight began to drag on, it never seemed to have much of an answer. I think its battle against Chaos 2 in the First World Championship, where it was winning might I add, is a perfect example.

It's clear the producers knew of Killerhurtz's success overseas and expected similar results - why else would it have been seeded 16th in Series 4? But when your only victory in the UK competition, your home soil, is a judges decision over Destruct-A-Bubble...then something really seems wrong. The worst part is, were it not for its 4th place finish in Series 6, Terrorhurtz would have been equally disappointing. You have to feel for Team Hurtz sometimes.

NUMBER 4
Well, since everyone else is doing it, lets talk about the reboot! Now, aside from a few niggles, I really loved the 2016 series. It was great seeing Robot Wars back on the TV, sure, but more than that, it was great to see some old favourites fighting some live-event regulars and even some fresh new faces. The action was just as good as ever, and Jonathan Pearce is always fun to listen to.

But, like I said, there are a few niggles, and one of them happens to be one of my major issues with the Third Wars. I honestly felt the heat line-ups weren't entirely balanced. Often times I felt like most of the strongest looking robots were placed in one group battle, leaving the other with relatively weaker robots. Take Heat B, for example. The first battle featured four really strong or otherwise potent looking robots. But the second battle, oh geesh - Chimera was a mere leftover from a team who were pretty much the laughing stock of the RW community, Draven, in spite of my soft spot for it, had a terrible history of reliability issues, and Foxic.....well, enough said. The only shining light in this particular clash came in the form of a little robot called M.R. Speed Squared.

And what a light it provided. It was easily the strongest robot in its battle, ripping pieces off of Chimera and Draven, and I was impressed with it the moment I saw the little preview of it. Now, I need to clarify, this does not make it over-rated. The reason I'm saying it was disappointing was because, given the sheer quality of robots in the heat in general, I wasn't expecting it to win. But I was expecting it to at least try.

Sadly, M.R. Speed Squared proved to be a one-battle wonder, which we've seen so many times on Robot Wars that it's never fun. After that battle, its disc just failed to function properly and it struggled through the rest of the heat, never once spinning back up again and merely acting like a mobile hockey puck. I was really expecting a trio of clashes whereupon it maybe only won once, but put up a great fight. Instead, I got two fights which involved its opponents toying with it and then one of THE worst battles in Robot Wars history, whereupon for once I can't actually blame Foxic for. Actually, no, scratch that, I can blame Foxic for not trying! You could have at least put poor M.R. Speed Squared out of its misery. And us.

NUMBER 3
One of the things any long time fan of Robot Wars looks for is innovation - a team who are willing to go the extra mile to create a really special looking robot, something we've never seen before. You ever noticed that, more than half the time, they end up being terrible? Want proof? Just look at every single walking robot that isn't Anarchy, and even then I feel that machine is quite over-rated, as it certainly was not disappointing. The boundary here is quite clear. However, I feel the lines between being over-rated and being a disappointment is a lot more blurred in the case of Gemini.

Yes, I feel its fair to say that Gemini is over-rated by some people, but I don't think that's the majority. Obviously perhaps it was more so in the day, when the idea of two-for-the-price-of-one was extremely novel. Nobody had ever thought it would be possible to have a clusterbot compete, and yet Team Mace, already a twice semi-finalist, proved the world wrong with a stunning creation with a set of powerful weapons - there really is no denying that Gemini is a great robot on paper. And really, it couldn't have asked for a better heat on paper - Berserk 2 had self-righting issues, Inverterbrat hardly had the most effective weapon and it was also against two previous first round fallers and a small red box nobody had heard or even cared about.

Guess who completely stole Gemini's thunder?

It's quite sad when you think about it. Gemini was hyped up throughout its heat and rightfully so, it was extremely capable when working properly. However, despite the hype, in every category it was completely overshadowed by Tornado. Able to take advantage of a clusterbot's two biggest weaknesses, namely that all parts had to be within the weight limit and the robot was counted as out once 50% of the combined units were eliminated, meant there was really nothing Gemini could do. The worst part was that in every other event Gemini thereafter took part in, it fell much earlier than it should have done - the Celebrity Special, the Mayhem, The Fifth Wars and maybe even the All-Stars, it dropped a round too early. That is genuinely very disappointing.

I should stress, however, than even if Gemini had progressed as planned, I doubt it would have won any of the events it took part in. Diotoir and Reactor were one thing, but Pussycat and Firestorm were quite another. And then there's the Annihilator. In an ideal world, Gemini would have qualified, yes...but in an ideal world, so would Tornado. Plus, Atomic and Bulldog Breed wouldn't have needed to drop out. And even beyond all that, there's still the small issue of Disc-O-Inferno. A 30kg 3000rpm spinning disc is not something two middleweights can easily prepare for...

NUMBER 2
On the topic of spinners, we return to the 2016 series and look at a robot I found not only disappointing but ultimately rather frustrating. I suppose in a way I should have seen this coming. Over the past decade or so, nearly every robot was a flipper. There were a few other weapons dotted around the place, but not one of them was a spinner. The UK live arenas weren't anywhere near as secure as the USA ones, I'm sad to say, plus compete vs win. So, either way, once the new series was announced, everyone was off building the biggest, fastest or most destructive spinner they could...forgetting the old classic rule that a weapon is all very well and good but if the robot itself is, well, kinda naff, it's not going to mean a damn thing! That would be the sort of robot that goes from being my number 1 pick for winning its heat to my lowest-place pick for winning the grand final.

By this point, you all know I'm talking about Pulsar, so I'll get to the point.

There's no two ways about it, Pulsar was disappointing. I had high hopes for a 9000rpm spinning drum, especially since I'd already seen Battlebots and what the likes of Minotaur, Hypershock and Poison Arrow could do. And yet, within mere seconds of its first round battle, it had its wheels taken out by Ironside3. Ultimately, it fails to make any contact with any robot except when Chompalot drove into it by mistake, and ultimately lost the judges decision. That's genuinely disappointing.

And then Chompalot bursts into flames during the next round and Pulsar gets given a second chance. That's where it became frustrating!

In a sense, Pulsar reminds me a little too much of Foxic - constant promises that the robots were working fully and then that claim being completely shot down the next moment it entered the arena. The only differences being that Team Ranglebots didn't come across as massive dicks and more importantly, that Pulsar at least managed to win battles - of which only ONE of them was completely legitimate. Yes, technically, its win against Ironside3 was legit too, but everyone seems to ignore the fact that Ironside was stuck on its back for way too long. They instead focus on the fact that Pulsar then just broke down and was eventually pushed into the pit. And then against Gabriel, it was simply stuttering all over the place. It had its moments, but its lack of decent reliability meant it was really difficult to watch.

The worst part of it all was that, when Pulsar did get through to the Grand Final, part of me wanted the team to have finally fixed the drive issue, but the other part of me had just had enough of Pulsar in general. It had been given the benefit of the doubt way too many times and when it became clear it wasn't working properly in said Grand Final, I was just praying for TR2 and Thor to not do anything stupid. You know something's wrong if you're watching a robot and you genuinely want it to lose.

NUMBER 1
Spoiler alert for this final entry - I'm talking about ANOTHER spinner. I honestly had to think very hard for this - I didn't want my list to be ALL spinners, and yet somehow no matter which way I looked, it always felt like robots with spinning weapons tend to underperform or otherwise disappoint. It could just be the overall flashiness of the weapon and when you've got robots like Hypno-Disc or Disc-O-Inferno, who have proved what a good flywheel can do, you do have high standards. So, in order to explain my reasoning, lets flash back in time...

After Hypno-Disc made its debut in Series 3, a few other robots began to explore the spinning flywheel as a weapon in Series 4 - all of which fell flat on their faces. However, with the weight increase after this series, the flywheel really began to take off. They were proving to be very destructive and actually worked...usually. We even got a really strong vertical spinner in the form of S3. Come Series 6, there were quite a few more strong flywheels, mostly horizontal and a few vertical. But there was one who stood out...for the right and wrong reasons.

Show people these days a picture of it, and they might think someone has stuck an old fashioned spinning wheel onto a coffee table. Tell them its name, and they might think it's the punchline of a joke from "The IT Crowd", never mind the fact this was years beforehand. Now tell them that it destroyed three robots in under 30 seconds during its qualifier for the Sixth Wars, and that will catch their attention. And then show them a clip from its first battle, and watch as everyone is spellbound by the destructive power and sheer beauty of 259.

Now show them the rest of its battles and watch as their appreciation crumbles to dust...like mine did!

Seriously, there was no other robot I could have picked. 259 should have been an awesome robot. It really should have. It was massively hyped by nearly everyone. It had a great weapon. It was feared by everyone in its heat, including Wild Thing. This SHOULD have been the perfect heat winner. And it got off to an amazing start. It causes severe damage to Infinity and absolutely wrecks Infernal Contraption. Maybe not the strongest opponents to start with, but that's beside the point - it dominates. That's the important thing. There's absolutely nothing that could go wrong.

...well, except the fact that 259 IS A FRICKIN' GLASS CANNON!!

You know the term - something extremely powerful but pathetically frail at the same time. This is the perfect summary for 259. This is shown immediately in its battle against Wild Thing 2. Whenever it can catch Wild Thing unawares, it throws it around like a ragdoll. But the one moment Wild Thing actually tries to attack 259, the impact on the disc completely dislodges the drive belt. This renders the flywheel completely unusable, and then you realise that without it, 259 is almost completely useless. It can't do anything. It can barely attack, it doesn't look like it's able to push anything, and the worst part is that pieces STILL continue to fall off, including its drive chain which eventually renders it completely immobile, too late to be officially counted out, but late enough for the judges to note it down on some serious points. I would have been willing to forgive it, but then it shows up in the UK vs Germany competition and does even worse! Yes, it beats Judge Shred, but it ends up killing itself whilst doing so. That is NOT what a good flywheel driven robot should be doing...and then it gets completely trashed at the hands of Fluffy.

You remember when I said there was perhaps one robot on this list that I would consider over-rated as well as disappointing? Well, 259 is easily that robot. Its performance was so disappointing, it really should have done so much better and yet what we saw was, in all honesty, a complete travesty. And SOMEHOW, it was still considered the most feared robot out of all of them. There were people saying it could have won the entire series, or even that it could have beaten big name Battlebots like Biohazard....no, it couldn't have! It wouldn't have even got past the semi-finals, as it would have been completely outmanuvered by Razer and wrecked by Dantomkia and 13 Black. And I'll say this much - a robot SO disappointing and SO fragile did NOT deserve to win the Best Design award. People complain about Derek winning Best Engineered...this is just as bad.

And do you know the absolute worst part of all this? It turned out that Adam Clark had been making a new version of 259, with a horizontal disc, for Series 7, but it ultimately didn't get in. Many people have wondered how it would have done...and yet, not once did I feel I was missing anything. Why? I can only assume it was because of how bad of a taste 259 had left me. It had underperformed extremely and was overhyped even in the face of its defeat. There was no way I could ever see it in the same light ever again, and I fear a sequel would have dug it deeper. And that's why, without a doubt, 259 will always be the biggest disappointment to ever come from a Robot Wars competitor.

Still, maybe one day we'll see this horizontal 259 in action. Or maybe not, since Adam Clark always tried to build something new. Maybe my silly comparisons won't be so silly in the future. Maybe the new generation 259 will look like a cross between a refridgerator and a lawn mower. And maybe instead of simply 259, it'll be called 0118 999 881 999 119 725.

3.