A whole 20 years since the game was in development – and ultimately cancelled – footage of the long lost BattleBots video game has surfaced online.
The game, which was in development for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 back in the early 2000s, was being created by UK-based studio Warthog Games. Featuring several different modes where players could fight robots, the title was based on Comedy Central's TV show of the same name (an adaptation of the British show, Robot Wars).
Unfortunately, with Comedy Central's show being discontinued after its fifth season, the BattleBots game was shelved before development came to an end. The only footage of the game that was made public was a grainy trailer, but a YouTube user has now managed to get their hands on a fully working prototype of the game, sharing more than two and a half hours of footage online.
You can see it for yourself in the video below (be warned that it contains some strong language), with the gameplay starting at the 4:14 mark. It contains footage of the game's tournament mode, arcade mode, bot building, and plenty of fights.
Thanks to Matt for the tip!
[source youtube.com]
Comments 12
The Robot Wars game on PS2 isn’t great but I still enjoy it a lot. I would love to play this one!
even outside of the prototype nature there's some part of this that feels unfinished, especially the models, somehow reminds me of charmingly half-baked ps2/ps1 games visually
Whoooaaah! I would've been all over this 20 years ago. Nice work guys, shame it didn't happen.
looks like it never came out for a reason
Good timing with this article, since the new season of BattleBots starts airing today!
It looks like it could've been fun. I enjoyed the UK's Robot Wars, especially the legendary Hypno-Disc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3qr88dM8TE
That's funny as I read this article my son just turned on the TV to find something to watch and when he did Battlebots was on lol.
There are two GBA Battlebots games that...aren't great but are interesting.
They're very similar, and Wikipedia says that the 2nd game is identical to the 1st, just with bug fixes.
It’s robot fighting time!
> '(an adaptation of the British show, Robot Wars)'
Actually, the truth is a lot more juicy...
Robot Wars started out as an untelevised event in America, created by a space-wizard special effects artist dude called Marc Thorpe and funded via a partnership with a record label called Profile Records.
Then Profile Records did Marc dirty and sold the rights to the UK; resulting in a big ugly legal battle. We got an amazing TV show out of it on our side of the pond, but it basically killed off Robot Wars events in the US.
To fill the void, some US bot builders founded Battlebots in the states. Profile tried to sue Battlebots to prevent it getting off the ground; they failed.
So you could say , rather than an adaptation, Battlebots is actually a screw-you to Robot Wars...
Definitely not something i would be interested in. Looks pretty bad, IMHO.
I think this could have been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's rough looking. But it's hard to say how much would have changed had it been finished.
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