- Joined
- Jul 30, 2021
We don't have a general thread for robot combat stuff so I'm just going to bump this thread since it's close enough.
Robogames 2024
Robogames is happening this weekend at the San Jose Convention Center in California. I am surprised the event is continuing after last year's event showcased a considerable amount of lack of safety protocols. In case you missed it there were two arena breaches where shrapnel from one of the robots was ejected through the plexiglass walls and out into where people were standing. Thankfully no one was hurt. There was almost a third breach where an entire robot nearly left the arena via the roof however it didn't quite get high enough to exit and instead just dislodged a ceiling panel. Video of the second breach can be seen at about 49 seconds into this video (you can see an entire panel of the ceiling come falling down into the arena). Secondary to the arena breaches there was an incident where a robot suffered a lithium-polymer battery failure and caught fire filling the arena with toxic smoke. The person from the event (usually a volunteer) responsible for getting the robot out of the arena walked into the box without any PPE or protection gear whatsoever. He was literally just breathing in carcinogenic smoke for several minutes as he threw a fire blanket over the damaged robot and loaded it onto a dolly. People who were watching the official livestream of the event on Twitch were banned when they criticized how the event was handling safety.
Dave Calkins is the person responsible for organizing Robogames and he's something of a "lolcow" among the robot combat community. His reputation is overwhelmingly negative and people seem to just put up with him out of necessity because he runs the only other event in the United States where heavyweight robots are allowed to compete. There was a period where he allegedly fucked off to France and lived in an old castle that he bought until he found out that living in an old castle is a pain in the ass so he moved back to the USA (I don't have concrete proof of this but it's been repeated so many times that it might as well be fact now). He is renown for his hatred of BattleBots despite being a former judge for the show during its run on Comedy Central. His beef with BattleBots is that they are selective about who is allowed to compete on their show whereas he brags about Robogames being open to everyone including the shitty robots that never get picked to participate in BattleBots. This is tangential, but amusing, Dave owns the carcass of former BattleBots champion Vlad The Impaler II and used it as a base to build a robot named Spin Doctor which traveled to China to participate in their bootleg BattleBots competition "King of Bots". (Dave is second from the right in the team photo on this page.)
Anyways, back to 2024. There is no official livestream of Robogames this year. News of this only came a couple of weeks before the event so it was very sudden. Immediately there was a theory that this was an intentional move by Dave to stem the flow of information in the event that there was another arena breach. The actual reason however is because Robogames is taking place at a new venue this year* and it is owned by a union. I do not know which one. Dave apparently did not know this when he signed the agreement. Because of the union ownership the only people authorized to run professional equipment there are union members. Dave refused to pay union rates and did not hire any of these people which means there would not be a livestream. Apparently someone else involved with Robogames this year offered to cover the union costs but Dave told them no and then attempted to ban anyone from the union from showing up at the event. A lot of this information is secondhand from competitors at the event so I don't know how much of this has been warped by way of a game of Telephone. Point is Dave is a retard and fucked up and there's no livestream which probably works to his benefit anyways because less people will see safety fuck-ups as they happen.
*Word around the community is Robogames had to find a new venue this year because during one of the arena breaches from 2023 the piece of shrapnel that left the arena hit the roof of the venue and put a dent in it and this pissed off the owners of the property. This has not been substantiated by anyone but I wanted to at least point it out.
Tranny Shit at NHRL
NHRL (Norwalk Havoc Robotic League) hosted an event yesterday and livestreamed it on their YouTube channel. NHRL has become something of a very large event for compeitors in the lower weight classes and I have no idea why they opted to hold an event the same weekend as Robogames where there is a lot of overlap between builders who compete at both shows. I don't really follow NHRL because I find the people who host the livestreams to be absolutely insufferable and annoying. A lot of the designs that compete in NHRL's weight classes are very samey and otherwise boring. Every event comes with a few robots that try to do something unique but more often than not the designs themselves, while interesting, are just total dog shit and aren't competitive in the slightest. There's a lot of "meme culture" surrounding NHRL and its fanbase is total cancer.
Anyways there was a robot who showed up to the event yesterday named Gigapaws which is a massively scaled up version of another robot named "Pawsitively Hissterical". It's basically a joke robot because it's a shitty walking robot armed with a hammer that does zero damage. It's actually quite heavy compared to other robots in its class because as a walking robot it is given a weight bonus (something that started with BattleBots back in the late 90's and has persisted throughout the sport ever since). NHRL also grants weight bonuses for various other things such as being a "multi bot" (having multiple robots fight as one entry) and other stuff. Gigapaws supposedly takes advantage of a bunch of these weight bonuses and because of this its design is fucking stupid and exists solely to be a joke. That would be fine had it not been for the paint job this robot came out sporting yesterday:
Yeah, just straight up thepedophile tranny flag. This is nothing new however because the original version of the robot was dressed in pervert colors a year ago according to this TikTok on the official NHRL channel. The NHRL hosts just ate this shit up and put Gigapaws into an exhibition fight. Also I want to point out that while I'm not super familiar with NHRL's shows they do not usually give competitiors the full arena entrance treatment. They are specifically putting this groomer shit on a pedestal and giving it extra screen time.
This all just happened yesterday so there isn't much chatter about it in the community that I can find.
Mystrsyko Deleted His Channel
Some time between now and the last time this thread was posted in Mystrsyko deleted his entire YouTube channel. Most people in this thread are familiar with him but in case you aren't he did live commentary and reviews of battles from the recent seasons of BattleBots as well as commentary on virtually every old episode of BattleBots and Robot Wars from the 2000's. I want to say he also did shows like Robotica and Techno Games? Basically if it was a show that had robots on it he made a reaction video to it. His content was pretty low effort as far as things go but he was well liked in the community and before his channel was deleted he had something like 5,000 subscribers. If you search him up now all that comes up are results from other channels where he was a guest on a podcast or someone making YouTube Poops of his reaction videos.
Despite deleting his channel he appears to still be an active competitor in the smaller robot weight classes. His official team page (Heavy Metal Robotics) is still active on Facebook and posts pictures and fight videos. However on March 31, which served double duty as both Easter Sunday and Trans Visibility Day this year, he posted this:
Big ass tranny flag on the wall, smaller flag behind one of the monitors. It looks like there are light up cat ear headphones hanging on a hook on the side of the table and the RBG keyboard is lit up with trans colors. Also what's that say on the visible monitor? Enhance.
It's fuzzy but I swear that says "International Egg Day", egg of course being a groomer term for someone who hasn't realized they are trans yet and they need to have their "shell cracked".
I think Syko used to have a lesbian pride flag hanging up behind him in his videos but there's no sign of it here. Maybe it's on one of the walls not in the photograph. There was chatter earlier in this thread about him trooning out and this is just lending more credence to that thought. TQ+ claims another one.
Robogames 2024
Robogames is happening this weekend at the San Jose Convention Center in California. I am surprised the event is continuing after last year's event showcased a considerable amount of lack of safety protocols. In case you missed it there were two arena breaches where shrapnel from one of the robots was ejected through the plexiglass walls and out into where people were standing. Thankfully no one was hurt. There was almost a third breach where an entire robot nearly left the arena via the roof however it didn't quite get high enough to exit and instead just dislodged a ceiling panel. Video of the second breach can be seen at about 49 seconds into this video (you can see an entire panel of the ceiling come falling down into the arena). Secondary to the arena breaches there was an incident where a robot suffered a lithium-polymer battery failure and caught fire filling the arena with toxic smoke. The person from the event (usually a volunteer) responsible for getting the robot out of the arena walked into the box without any PPE or protection gear whatsoever. He was literally just breathing in carcinogenic smoke for several minutes as he threw a fire blanket over the damaged robot and loaded it onto a dolly. People who were watching the official livestream of the event on Twitch were banned when they criticized how the event was handling safety.
Dave Calkins is the person responsible for organizing Robogames and he's something of a "lolcow" among the robot combat community. His reputation is overwhelmingly negative and people seem to just put up with him out of necessity because he runs the only other event in the United States where heavyweight robots are allowed to compete. There was a period where he allegedly fucked off to France and lived in an old castle that he bought until he found out that living in an old castle is a pain in the ass so he moved back to the USA (I don't have concrete proof of this but it's been repeated so many times that it might as well be fact now). He is renown for his hatred of BattleBots despite being a former judge for the show during its run on Comedy Central. His beef with BattleBots is that they are selective about who is allowed to compete on their show whereas he brags about Robogames being open to everyone including the shitty robots that never get picked to participate in BattleBots. This is tangential, but amusing, Dave owns the carcass of former BattleBots champion Vlad The Impaler II and used it as a base to build a robot named Spin Doctor which traveled to China to participate in their bootleg BattleBots competition "King of Bots". (Dave is second from the right in the team photo on this page.)
Anyways, back to 2024. There is no official livestream of Robogames this year. News of this only came a couple of weeks before the event so it was very sudden. Immediately there was a theory that this was an intentional move by Dave to stem the flow of information in the event that there was another arena breach. The actual reason however is because Robogames is taking place at a new venue this year* and it is owned by a union. I do not know which one. Dave apparently did not know this when he signed the agreement. Because of the union ownership the only people authorized to run professional equipment there are union members. Dave refused to pay union rates and did not hire any of these people which means there would not be a livestream. Apparently someone else involved with Robogames this year offered to cover the union costs but Dave told them no and then attempted to ban anyone from the union from showing up at the event. A lot of this information is secondhand from competitors at the event so I don't know how much of this has been warped by way of a game of Telephone. Point is Dave is a retard and fucked up and there's no livestream which probably works to his benefit anyways because less people will see safety fuck-ups as they happen.
*Word around the community is Robogames had to find a new venue this year because during one of the arena breaches from 2023 the piece of shrapnel that left the arena hit the roof of the venue and put a dent in it and this pissed off the owners of the property. This has not been substantiated by anyone but I wanted to at least point it out.
Tranny Shit at NHRL
NHRL (Norwalk Havoc Robotic League) hosted an event yesterday and livestreamed it on their YouTube channel. NHRL has become something of a very large event for compeitors in the lower weight classes and I have no idea why they opted to hold an event the same weekend as Robogames where there is a lot of overlap between builders who compete at both shows. I don't really follow NHRL because I find the people who host the livestreams to be absolutely insufferable and annoying. A lot of the designs that compete in NHRL's weight classes are very samey and otherwise boring. Every event comes with a few robots that try to do something unique but more often than not the designs themselves, while interesting, are just total dog shit and aren't competitive in the slightest. There's a lot of "meme culture" surrounding NHRL and its fanbase is total cancer.
Anyways there was a robot who showed up to the event yesterday named Gigapaws which is a massively scaled up version of another robot named "Pawsitively Hissterical". It's basically a joke robot because it's a shitty walking robot armed with a hammer that does zero damage. It's actually quite heavy compared to other robots in its class because as a walking robot it is given a weight bonus (something that started with BattleBots back in the late 90's and has persisted throughout the sport ever since). NHRL also grants weight bonuses for various other things such as being a "multi bot" (having multiple robots fight as one entry) and other stuff. Gigapaws supposedly takes advantage of a bunch of these weight bonuses and because of this its design is fucking stupid and exists solely to be a joke. That would be fine had it not been for the paint job this robot came out sporting yesterday:
Yeah, just straight up the
This all just happened yesterday so there isn't much chatter about it in the community that I can find.
Mystrsyko Deleted His Channel
Some time between now and the last time this thread was posted in Mystrsyko deleted his entire YouTube channel. Most people in this thread are familiar with him but in case you aren't he did live commentary and reviews of battles from the recent seasons of BattleBots as well as commentary on virtually every old episode of BattleBots and Robot Wars from the 2000's. I want to say he also did shows like Robotica and Techno Games? Basically if it was a show that had robots on it he made a reaction video to it. His content was pretty low effort as far as things go but he was well liked in the community and before his channel was deleted he had something like 5,000 subscribers. If you search him up now all that comes up are results from other channels where he was a guest on a podcast or someone making YouTube Poops of his reaction videos.
Despite deleting his channel he appears to still be an active competitor in the smaller robot weight classes. His official team page (Heavy Metal Robotics) is still active on Facebook and posts pictures and fight videos. However on March 31, which served double duty as both Easter Sunday and Trans Visibility Day this year, he posted this:
Big ass tranny flag on the wall, smaller flag behind one of the monitors. It looks like there are light up cat ear headphones hanging on a hook on the side of the table and the RBG keyboard is lit up with trans colors. Also what's that say on the visible monitor? Enhance.
It's fuzzy but I swear that says "International Egg Day", egg of course being a groomer term for someone who hasn't realized they are trans yet and they need to have their "shell cracked".
I think Syko used to have a lesbian pride flag hanging up behind him in his videos but there's no sign of it here. Maybe it's on one of the walls not in the photograph. There was chatter earlier in this thread about him trooning out and this is just lending more credence to that thought. TQ+ claims another one.
