The History of BattleBots

For years BattleBots has been known as one of the greatest forms of robot fighting. It has helped to get various different leagues and competitions for robot fighting off the ground as well. However, the history of BattleBots is not one that has been perfect, primarily because of its television contracts. Regardless of this, BattleBots is still a form of robot combat that is popular and indeed one of the most successful in history.

BattleBots first got off the ground in the United Kingdom. Marc Thorpe, a toy designer for Lucasfilm, started up a series of competitions involving people building robots to compete with one another. The program was called Robot Wars and aired on BBC2 with a short lived American version on Spike TV. A recording company in New York gave strong financial support to the series, but in 1997 the partnership between Thorpe and that company broke up. The recording company, Profile Records, licensed Robot Wars to the BBC and other robot builders who were abandoned from this started their own league.

In 1999 BattleBots was formed in San Francisco from these builders. The builders would work on creating their own remote controlled robots for use in competitions with other builders. These people would eventually create their own rules, including details on how a battle arena will be made and how obstacles and hazards would be used and weight classes for the robots.

In the same year the first BattleBots competition was held in Long Beach. The ZDTV online network broadcast the meet, and later that year a pay per view event was held in Las Vegas. After this a series of semiannual tournaments would be held.

However, the history of BattleBots took a major hit when in 2000 BattleBots got an agreement with Viacom to air BattleBots meets. While this was a great idea at first, the matches would be held on Viacom' s Comedy Central network. The show started airing on the network in 2000. Fans of robot fighting were upset over this decision because of the station' s emphasis on making humor of the event and of the teams involved and not enough of the actual fighting. Also, the personalities were criticized for not being serious and trying to make fun of the whole competition. Among them included hosts Bil Dwyer and Tim Green and various “analysts,” including models Carmen Electra and Donna D' Errico and comedians like Bill Nye and the Sklar Brothers.

Throughout the years BattleBots has continued to perform despite having no television contracts after its contract with Comedy Central expired in 2002. Also, many other robot fighting competitions have come around as a result of BattleBots, including RoboGames, which used to be RobOlympics and assorted competitions in high schools and colleges among technology fans.

The history of BattleBots, as it can be seen here, has been one that is great in that it has evolved to where robot fighting has become popular in many groups. The tough start from an abandoned deal with Profile Records and a Comedy Central networking agreement hasn' t hurt BattleBots though. However, as long as BattleBots is around there will be plenty of great competitions and events in robot fighting history to come.