According to Stone, a small group of
mechanical engineers known as the
Denver Mad Scientist Club envisioned
the event after viewing videos from
the robotic performance art group
known as the Survival Research
Laboratory and learning of a
competition at MIT that required
homemade robots to compete in
mechanical tasks like collecting ping
pong balls. By coupling these influences
with the already existing Critter Crawl
at the MileHiCon — which a recent
Wired article about the event
describes as a “sort of beauty pageant
for windup toys and remote-control
gizmos” — the group created a
robot combat event like no other.
It was part eccentric
spectacle, part brutal fight to
the death, and all fun. This
formula has carried through
the sport to this day; I
personally recall a bot in my
robot combat league named
“Cousin It” that used a
cheap plastic hat as its armor
which would invariably be
ripped to shreds by the end
of the competitions. Unlike
the behemoth bots featured
on BattleBots, these bots
could be no bigger than one
cubic foot; although, once the
match started they could be
expanded with appendages.
The bots could weigh no
more than 20 pounds. The
matches were fought on a
folding table, and with
spectators only a few feet
away from the bots, the weapons
had to be kept relatively tame. That
did not, however, stop some weapons
like a flamethrower or pneumatic
ram from occasionally sneaking in.
Since its start in 1989, the
Critter Crunch is an ongoing event
at the MileHiCon that continues to
appeal to eccentric, destruction-loving, creative types like those who
first envisioned it.
Courtesy of Marc Thorpe.com; Copyright Marc Gabbana.
Meanwhile ...
Eventually, word of the Critter
Crunch began to spread and other
conventions around the country
began hosting robot combat events
as well, most notably
at DragonCon in
Atlanta. While these
non-commercial
events thrived in the
convention world,
another man was
independently
developing a bigger
picture view of robot
combat.
Marc Thorpe
was a San Francisco
based animatronic
designer who
1995 Robot Wars San Francisco. Courtesy of Marc Thorpe.com.
created special effects for the last
two movies in the Star Wars trilogy
for LucasFilm, which in itself is
enough to inspire awe in even the
most casual nerd. According to his
own website Marc Thorpe.com —
while independently working on a
remote control vacuum cleaner in
1992 — Thorpe looked at the device
and realized its sinister potential to
be transformed into a metal-crunching death machine. Using this
idea and the entrepreneurial spirit
he had gained from working at
Lucas Toys, Thorpe realized the
money-making potential behind a
remote-controlled robot combat
tournament and immediately began
this new business venture.
After a few unsuccessful
attempts to get the event going —
which he had named Robot Wars —
a feature in a 1994 issue of Wired
Magazine finally gave Thorpe the
monetary support he needed to put
on the competition. This event was
markedly different from the Critter
Crunch.
For one thing, it was
independent and was not confined
to the hotel ballrooms of science
fiction conventions; as a result, the
robots could be much larger and
more dangerous. The Robot Wars
brand was continually apparent
through specialized posters, t-shirts,
and trophies. Some notable
competitors at the first event were
Caleb Cheung, inventor of the wildly
popular Furby toys, and Will Wright,
the creator of the Sims video games.
Following the massive success of the
first competition, the events
continued until 1997; each larger
and more exciting than the last.
Robot Wars Expands
onto Television
The business partnership
between Thorpe and Profile Records
began to sour as Profile Records
pursued the creation of a Robot
Wars television show in the U.K.
Despite legal battles surrounding
ownership of the brand, the series
36 SERVO 01.2012
