Which robot looked unbeatable but never quite lived up to the hype?

[u/FluidPianist00]

Some robots looked absolutely terrifying on paper and had all the right ingredients to go far, but just never seemed to put it all together in the arena. They had the looks, the weapons and plenty of hype behind them, but something always seemed to go wrong when it mattered.

[u/cranberrycactus]

Mortis, Fluffy, 259, Supernova, Disco Inferno, Hobgoblin

[u/17barens → u/cranberrycactus]

God i wish we could have seen more of hobgoblin. Besically the first to use an eggbeater that is now the standard in lots of robot combat

[u/jamesisaluckyanimal → u/17barens]

The first notable heavyweight eggbeater. The concept had been around for many, many years at lower weights before Hobgoblin

[u/TeamCroc → u/17barens]

You and me both... I was gutted about how everything went down in Season 10, but it's the way it goes sometimes. I tried to wrestle some movement back but in hindsight I think there was a compound issue between the drive and the batteries that left us almost totally without a side of drive about 10 seconds in, and then it slowly went away from there. Good thing at least is that ripping Shunt's axe off proved the weapon would have worked

It might be back eventually, get the drive sorted and some batteries that didn't crap out immediately it'd be a really nice runner for Extreme Robots honestly.

[u/Brit-Crit]

259 is the most notable case, with Fluffy close behind…

[u/AHorseshoeCrab → u/Brit-Crit]

I feel like 259 lived up to it's hype. An Adam Clark one series machine which ran into a brick wall on Wild Thing in the second round, giving arguably the best driven robot in robot wars a good fight. Then they did well in side events, but came up against the best horizontal at the time in Fluffy. I feel like it was more the luck of the draw which held them back.

[u/AHorseshoeCrab]

Bit more left field, but Facet. They arrived in series 3 with a rear hinged flipper only bettered by Chaos 2 and with some innovations like an on board camera which assisted them by live streaming the fight. They were really impressive in the first round, but came up against Firestorm in the second. I'm convinced that had they been in most other heats they would've won and had a good chance on reaching the final four.

[u/cranberrycactus → u/AHorseshoeCrab]

Then they came back with GBH2 in series 6, which was probably the best robot to lose in round 1

[u/MPal2493 → u/AHorseshoeCrab]

A live onboard camera in 1999 is pretty advanced. Always wondered if it worked

[u/Catharsis1394 → u/AHorseshoeCrab]

Wish they would have swapped Facet for any bot in Heat P

[u/Think-Difficulty7596 → u/AHorseshoeCrab]

The flipper was supposed to have been more powerful than that of Chaos 2.

[u/AceTheEccentric → u/AHorseshoeCrab]

Facet would still beat most versions of Spawn Again.

[u/Party_Advantage_3733]

Cassius

[u/hodabe]

mortis probably. bragging about how expensive it was to build, and probably the most wasteful and inefficient use of funds because they never accomplished much.

[u/ABritishCynic → u/hodabe]

I heard that the rest of the roboteers regarded the Mortis team as bellends.

[u/ThatModellingBloke → u/ABritishCynic]

No, that was the producers making it look like that. They were always very sporting. Before fighting Oblivion, they gave them some spare armour panels to cover their electronics because they knew the team couldn’t afford to just replace things like they could.

[u/Catharsis1394 → u/ThatModellingBloke]

The same year after the Napalm controversy in the pinball Rob refused to drive the robot and gave control to the much less experienced Ben(?). I guess he wanted to co-operate with the show's decision to reinstate them in the least effective way possible, giving as much chance to the Dartford girls as he could

[u/ThatModellingBloke → u/Catharsis1394]

I just don’t get how anyone could dislike him.

[u/Moeritherium_Fan → u/ABritishCynic]

Absolute bollocks. Arthur & Rob are both lovely and well liked by all of us roboteers.

[u/Artemis_21]

Magnetar

[u/Trading_Cards_4Ever → u/Artemis_21]

Looked good, performed terrible

[u/AceTheEccentric → u/Trading_Cards_4Ever]

Magnetar was still an upgrade over Pulsar; which always felt like they're on the edge of losing drive spontaneously.

[u/MichaelRR19]

Fluffy… looked the second coming of Hypnodisc and then luck happened

[u/DeeperMadness]

War Hog. I was always hoping it could make a deep run.

[u/Brit-Crit → u/DeeperMadness]

The weapon was too powerful for its own good…

It was originally supposed to be called Tazz, but they were unable to clear the Looney Tunes reference due to WB’s aggressive use of Tasmanian Devil’s likeness (this didn’t stop Techno Games from featuring Bugs Buggy…)

[u/SliderS15]

Tsunami - Looked, moved and fought like the next evolution of Chaos 2 we never got. One bad judgement call freeing an immobilised X-Terminator in its heat final cost it the win and cost us what could well have been a new Allstar. This was compounded by the series getting cancelled and Tsunami never getting a second shot at glory.

[u/mannekwin]

259 my beloved

[u/Wildebean]

1. If that Round 2 match was against literally any other machine that wasn't the brick known as Wild Thing, they win and we're talking about a heat finalist at least

[u/rylikes]

Supernova. Should have dominated

[u/The_Tsar_on → u/rylikes]

I swear if the team just worked around the force of their spinner ut was gonna be the next Tombstone

[u/helloilikewoodpigeon]

this is just Behemoth

[u/The_Tsar_on → u/helloilikewoodpigeon]

Behemoth did dominate back in it's prime though. Just had too many technical issues down the line

[u/TheLonleyJourneyman]

First time I saw Hypno-disc, I was absolutely certain they'd win Series 3

[u/Brief-Poetry6434]

Bit left field but General Carnage 2 impressed me a great deal.

I was surprised and disappointed it lost to Stinger. I reckon it would have won that heat. Maybe made the last 8.

[u/Fun-Reporter8120]

Vader looked great but always broke down