Although the competition today is a shell of its former glory, at one point in time BattleBots was sitting pretty as one of the highest rated series on television and touted a five-season show, seven officially sanctioned events in the span of 4 years, two video games (that were terrible), and an entire line of merchandising ranging from wind-up toys to keychains to radio controlled replicas of popular contenders. BattleBots was IT. It was the “in thing” to do, and it honestly was something that was only possible at the turn of the millennium; it was the pinnacle of technological and mechanical advancement and entertainment, the first completely contained (sort of) bloodsport. Megarace envisioned.
Spoiler: The one flying through the air lost.
In the five seasons of BattleBots aired on Comedy Central there were a number of fights showcased that were laughably and ridiculously in favor of one of the competitors for a myriad of reasons. Maybe their opponent was built out of tin foil. Maybe they were broken from a previous fight. Whatever the reason in between nail-biting back and forth bouts between the series’ heavy-hitters there were always some fights in the mix that stuck out like a sore thumb. These are the seven most one-sided battles in the [televised] history of the sport.
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2011 was a pretty big year for GatorAIDS. First and foremost the site was forced to re-open on June 1 after I was laid off from my job with Miniclip SA. Not long thereafter we were able to bloom into a community that I am pleased to say is still more alive than ever today in this, the final year of the world as we know it. Immediately following the layoff GatorAIDS was needlessly attacked by a handful of retards from Miniclip’s community which caused us to become ineligible to use Google AdSense as well as having false DMCA violation reports to be filed to Jelsoft, who provides our forum software, resulting in our site globally being down for a few days pending an explanation of the misunderstanding.
"From Miniclip with love."
And through all of this we are still alive today as a testament to just how resilient a group of old friends can be when banded together. We came forward and put on a live performance (CFMM: In 3D). We released a book (Nintendon’t). We were featured on industry-leading gaming blogs (Bitmob). I would like to extend a personal “fuck you” to each and every person who attempted to put us down and assume that we would stay there like beaten dogs. We are more than that, and despite adverse launch conditions we laughed with one another and produced dozens of memorable articles to share with the world. We are GatorAIDS, and we are here to stay.
We’re looking forward to 2012 with open minds and eager hearts. We’ve had six months to get our things together and we’re ready to go balls-out this year. In the meantime, here’s the best of what we produced in 2011. If you’re new to GatorAIDS or looking to share our site with your friends & family this update is the place to start!
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A long time ago, on an RFSHQ.com far far away, we had this thing we did where we’d release an archived episode of the old Comedy Central show BattleBots and on the following day post an article that made fun of the robots, drivers, and content of the show. The column, inspired by Driving The Death Car, was called BattleBots Update and it was the very last column I routinely managed on RFSHQ until my departure in 2008. BattleBots Update ended the day I resigned from RFSHQ, though in recent years there was talk of a special three-episode 6th season of the show set to premiere on CBS College Sports; in the end, though, the show did not air apparently because nobody wanted to buy advertising slots on a channel nobody ever watches during a show that had been cancelled for almost a decade prior. It seemed that robot combat was thoroughly dead and that BattleBots Update would remain where it was, an abandoned and unmanaged column on a website that no longer had a writing staff.
Until recently.
The first spin-off after LITERALLY a decade of cancellation.
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If you’re anything like me and someone tells you “hey there’s this new show coming to Discovery Channel that’s like BattleBots meets Twisted Metal” your response will either be “holy shit tell me more” or an uncomfortable erection (or both). A show of this caliber once existed… sort of… and it was called Weaponizers. Discovery Channel isn’t shy about the shows they produce because when they have an idea they will throw money at it until it rips apart at the seams even if it turns out to be total crap (see also: The Colony). Weaponizers was a show based around the idea that building gun-toting fighting machines is something that registers on the Scale of Badassery somewhere between “Dinosaurs With Jetpacks” and “Chuck Norris Jokes Circa 2001″ and for all inclusive purposes, it does. If the reasoning behind the show sounds so awesome, then why am I bothering to write an article about it?
Because Weaponizers was a show that missed its mark so spectacularly its flaming descent from the heavens was a spectacle to behold by all.
A logo made of auto parts, blades, and broken dreams.
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