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[translation mine] A US company wants to compete with the giant robot of a Japanese competitor. However, they're apparently lacking the money to complete their own battle machine. Now they're turning to patriots for help.
For the representatives of the company MegaBots, there is nothing more beautiful than robots that tear each other to pieces. "Your childhood dreams have come - can you hear them knocking?", asks the speaker in a video on Kickstarter. As though it were unthinkable, that someone could find a duel of nations in highly stylized robot battle dubious or completely superfluous. A battle advertised with slogans like "Together we can conquer Japan!"
In practice it's not about real declarations of war, but a robot duel between the US company MegaBots and the Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industry. At the end of July, MegaBots challenged its competitor from the Far East to pit their model named Kurata against MegaBots' Mk.II in the summer of 2016.
MegaBots is hoping to raise $500,000 on Kickstarter to fund their robot. Are they hoping for a Reality TV show?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:09AM
The market for robot on robot combat is small. TV shows are notorious for small budgets. I hope enthusiasts will sponsor a team on the revival of the TV show Battlebots, instead of putting money into Megabots.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 21 2015, @04:00PM
Don't worry, it would take a TV genius to make more than one episode of "big slow robot lines up and uses cannon on other big slow robot/ High-speed cam declares the US winner by 0.003 s"
There's a reason NO military uses giant robots.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Friday August 21 2015, @11:03PM
As I understand the dialog between the two companies involved the Japanese company essentially saying, "you need to use something besides big guns in the battle." As I understand Japanese law firearms of any sort are inaccessible to the public.
The exact wording was: “Just building something huge and sticking guns on it. It’s… super American.” and "Make it cooler."
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/07/07/japanese-company-accepts-robot-duel-challenge-from-u-s/ [wsj.com]