How about the new BattleBots show?

Definitely a lot more "Hollywood" has been added. I also see that sponsorship is slowly creeping in, not good.

I don't like the "mini-bots" but allowing fire is kind of cool. With lithium batteries + fire I'm kind of wondering how they get away with that in a enclosed area. Especially in San Francisco.

I haven't seen it yet but I've added the pass to my Tivo. I was a big fan back in the early 2000's. I'm really surprised it's a network TV show now. Considering that it only ran for two years on a cable network, I just figured it wasn't a popular show. Plus, wasn't one bot winning most of the time?

I have a feeling that the fire is mostly for show. It seems like that wouldn't do enough damage before something like a saw blade could take it out. These matches used to be over pretty quickly.

I'm happy to see them back. The first show wasn't boring, as were the last of the original run.

This one was our families favorite in the O'l days:

http://battlebots.wikia.com/wiki/Backlash

My daughter loved it so much we got her a model kit of Backlash for Christmas one year (yep, someone produced and sold models of it) and we both put it together (well mostly me).

While doing amazing damage to one of the opponent's mini-bots (sent it flying against the wall) unfortunately Backlash lost in the first round. And for some reason if did not get one of the MANY "get out of jail free" cards that they pass out and will not be back. I wish they did not do that. If your bot loses you should be gone!

Yea, this thing that appeared in the first round is just freaking awesome....

http://battlebots.com/robot/tombstone/

I don't see how it can lose. In it's second match it basically taunted the other bot before it turned on it's lawnmower blade and chopped it to pieces.