There is perhaps no greater disappointment than being promised an epic robot fight, and ending up with the equivalent of a microwave falling on a toaster.
For years, the creators of Megabots have been promising a robot duel where hulking mechas piloted by humans—a la Pacific Rim—duke it out with steel fists and chainsaws. Well, it finally happened last night (Oct. 17), and the result was monumentally unexciting.
The main fight consisted of two robots—the United States’ Eagle Prime and Japan’s Kuratas—slowly rolling into each other as undoubtedly well-compensated announcers shrieked in excitement. Large, ungainly arms sluggishly hit steel chassis while the robots’ pilots sat inside, surrounded by buttons and devoid of emotion. Eagle Prime wielded what appeared to be the world’s largest yet somehow least interesting chainsaw, which caused Kuratas minimal damage. The blessed end came only after an “official” squeezed some kind of strange detonator.
There have been much more interesting robot fights, chief among them BattleBots, an early-2000s TV show in which custom-built robots the size of household pets zipped around and torched each other with flamethrowers. Watch that instead; MegaBots is like if BattleBots if took an Ambien.