Robot Wars

[Onyx2]

Robot Wars celebrated the best of British nerdism, that hobbyist shed tinkerer that would think nothing of spending every Sunday for 18 months in his (of course) smelly shed assembling parts from Tandy only to be shredded in eight seconds by Sir Killalot.

 

Get nostalgic:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7USYfgvIkU

 

 

Let's assume Craig Charles and Phillipa Forrester don't present. Who do you bring in as main anchor and sympathetic interviewer? I'd have David Tennant and Margaret Mountford.

[Tommy!]

This news has me spaffing my pants in anticipation.

 

I fucking loved Robot Was, still enjoy catching it on challenge. I shouldn't have enjoyed it, it was an awful show but all the rubbish worked together and it was just great fun.

 

Sir Kill-a-lot can get fucked though, no sport in it and so no fun.

[patiirc]

I had just about everything Robot Wars related you could get. Every time a new robot toy came out. I'd have it ASAP. It was the main thing for me at school. My Dad even took me to the local Science Festival one year where they actually had a few robots from the show in a tent where they drove them round and showed off what they could do. Chaos 2 was there which was so cool. Felt pretty starstruck meeting George Francis (the driver. I had the pullback and everything. Who on here heard him talking wondering if he was a woman?) It was pretty incredible seeing it because you never get the sense of scale and power they have in the flesh than watching it on TV. I also went to a local library to see Pussycat because they were from Gloucester. Alan Gribble (who sadly is no longer with us) let me drive the featherweight version Kitty that appeared in a couple of side competitions which was fun.

 

I've been to the live shows they do that come to Gloucester every year and always go. This lot had an agreement to run shows under the name for a few years and it's great fun and they are always packed which is amazing to see. Especially full of kids who weren't even born when the series was on. Here's their website. Seriously check it out if it's coming near you

 

http://www.robotwars.tv

 

I was back home around 3 years ago and they had Killalot Matilda and someone else in the Eastgate Shopping Centre. Matilda was never the same after changing her tail weapon.

 

Whoever mentioned Mortis, loved the tracked idea, but the weapons were fucking useless crap flipper and shocking axe weapon. They spent a fortune on it each time and it was largely pants.

[Nexus]

One of my favourite ever things about Robot Wars was when Tornado and Razer were in some grand final or another. Now, Razer used to annoy me because I didn't like the guys who ran it, and thought it was a rubbish robot because of its reliability - the claw was cool but so, so shit when it failed. Anyway, Tornado decided to add a fucking massive frame to their robot so they couldn't get grabbed - Tornado won, and Razer were super pissed about it.

 

I know it wasn't particularly sportsmanlike by Tornado, but if they were allowed to do it, then good on them! 

[Surf Digby]

Razr was a thing of beauty from a design point of view though.

 

I was very surprised Tornado's frame didn't take it over the weight limit. Not only was it unsportsmanlike, it also made it a shit match. It was like when Ali took on that karate guy, and he just sat on his arse and kicked Ali in the shins whenever he came near.

[Nexus]

This was one of my most played games for a while. The mayhem mode was brilliant - it was like doing the Royal Rumble, but with robots.

 

The controls were a bit ropey but I loved playing it. 

[Daaaaaad!]

Razr was a thing of beauty from a design point of view though.

 

I was very surprised Tornado's frame didn't take it over the weight limit. Not only was it unsportsmanlike, it also made it a shit match. It was like when Ali took on that karate guy, and he just sat on his arse and kicked Ali in the shins whenever he came near.

 

"Karate guy"... you mean professional wrestling legend Antonio Inoki?

 

Have to agree though, that match was bullshit. I was fuming at Tornado for that - in fact, as I recall Razer changed tact and went to dump it in the pit near the end, only to discover that in fact Tornado didn't fit.

 

Loved Robot Wars. I never actually had the PS2 game but I had the GBA one and that was pretty good. I might even have had the toys. I know I wanted to get one of the remote control robots but my mum wouldn't get 'em for me. Stoked that it's coming back, though, and with the various advances that surely must've taken place in robotics since it was last on I bet it could make for even more interesting viewing.

 

Oh, and fuck Chaos 2. Lobbing people out of the arena was awesome but them just paggering everyone wasn't. I was fond of Panic Attack, personally.

[ninevisions]

I tried to get into series 5 and beyond, but I felt it to be 'too spiced' at that point. I always enjoyed watching the trials in series 1 and 2, loved series 3 with the full on combat concept, and series 4 was lots of fun.

 

Stinger was my absolute favorite, It could take a beating and come back for more may times over, loved watching the heats and the semi finals form series 4.

 

But the best thing about Robot Wars, was the countless hours I spent as a child designing all kinds of robots on paper, and showing them all to my classmates.

[The British Bushwacker]

I loved psychosprout, eubank the mouse, the elvis type one & yes they were all absolutely awful.

 

George Francis was a very strange lad, the love child of Jim Davidson & Jeanette Cranky with Graham Kelly's voice

[Gus Mears]

Was it just me and my mates that loathed Mortis?

 

 

Mortis was gash, but didn't have a patch on this total knobber. The Refbot.

 

 

I'd managed to get a hot scoop from the Real Robot magazine (one of those 400 part DeAgostini nightmares where the second issue costs £1000 more than the first) that Robot Wars were going to introduce some new house robots. I told all of the other lads on the playground about this, which made me the Fonz at my school for about three weeks. Then fucking Refbot debuted and Lewis Frank called me 'Sir Gayalot' for the rest of the year.

[W35ty]

I loved this show. The early series were great.

Was watching some of Series 2 on H2 at the weekend and all they did realy was crash into each other. Weapons were mostly rubbish.

Be intersting to see how advance the robots are over a decade gap.

[Keith Houchen]

Sir Gayalot, that whole post tickled me. You might have a name change coming your way, Gus.

[Glenryck Pilchards]

How about Richard Ayoade as presenter and Suzi Perry as the interviewer?

[WyattSheepMask]

Dara O Briain is to host the new series of Robot Wars alongside Irish broadcaster Angela Scanlon.

The pair will be at the helm when the show returns to BBC Two after an absence of more than 10 years.

The series will be filmed at a purpose-built fighting arena in Glasgow.

Mock the Week presenter and comedian O Briain said he was "thrilled", while Scanlon said she could not wait to "see the robots in all their metallic glory playfully destroying each other".

'Squeal with joy'

The six-part series will be shown on BBC Two with Jonathan Pearce commentating - as he did on the original series, fronted initially by Jeremy Clarkson and then Craig Charles.

O Briain said: "For too long, the schedules have cried out for a show in which dedicated amateurs, toiling day and night, handcraft sophisticated automatons built on the delicate interplay of hand-wired servo motors with custom-built circuit boards and fingertip motion control, just to see them get smashed to pieces by a dustbin carrying a massive hammer.

"It's war, and how I love it so."

The new Robot Wars will see inventors pitting their robots against each other, as well as having to avoid the more powerful house robots.

It promises technological advances from the original series, which ran on the BBC from 1998 to 2002, as well as state-of-the-art cameras showing the fights in detail.

Scanlon, who has worked for Irish broadcaster RTE, said: "I'm so excited to be joining such a legendary show that, after all this time, still manages to make people squeal with joy.

Pearce, a commentator on Match of the Day, said he was "delighted to be involved and back among the cut and thrust of the robot battles".

BBC Two channel editor Adam Barker said the presenters were "the perfect team to bring to life all the excitement and drama from the arena".

The series was last broadcast from 2003 to 2004, on Channel 5.

[PunkStep]

I like Dara, so that's good. Had to Google Angela Scanlon- definitely not complaining. Hopefully she has a nice Irish accent, rather than a Becky Lynch one.