Reddit reviews BattleBots: The Official Guide

Story time! There are several specific robots that played a large role in getting me to learn how to build them, and into engineering in general. In a weird way, Stewbot is one of them.

I did not have cable growing up. I was instantly hooked, and tried to get my hands on anything I could, but my exposure to actually watching combat robotics when I was little during the original era was limited to once-in-a-blue-moon airings of Robot Wars reruns on PBS, dedicating hours of dial-up internet towards watching crappy quicktime clips of Battlebots, and listening in as all the kids at school who could watch discussed that week's fights intently. Oh, and spending every moment I could pouring over the official guidebook, which will become highly relevant in a moment.

I wanted so, so badly to build a robot -- I think in my mind, it was the only way I'd get to actually see an event properly, and learning tons of engineering somehow seemed more feasible than convincing my parents to spring for cable. My family didn't think too much of it when it was putting super-fast spinning gears on the front of my LEGO Mindstorms robots, or duct taping cardboard boxes with wedges to RC cars. But when I moved onto hacksawing apart old bicycles for parts, gutting an old computer and calling its case my frame, and asking for this thing called a "Vantec" for Christmas, they started to get understandably concerned that 11 year old personizzle was in way over their head, and expecting too much out of the whole thing. This manifested through a combination of reminders of how much education and experience all the engineers making the bots had, and just refusing to take the thing with any degree of seriousness...I was just a kid, playing with a computer case. And that got plenty discouraging, especially as I learned more about how little I knew, and how shitty a robot built from a scrap computer case/bike parts on zero budget by somebody with zero experience and zero power tools would inevitably be. As I got more involved in my first attempt at a full scale bot build, thumbing through that official guidebook made everything feel more and more out of reach.

Except there was this one page in there, which featured a collage of unnamed robots not featured elsewhere in the guide. In one corner, was Stewbot. Now, remember, I had never actually seen the show. I was completely unfamiliar with the strong sense of parody that came with Comedy Central's coverage -- all I knew was bits of Robot Wars, and in my 11 year old mind, combat robots was serious business! I had no idea that Stewbot was a tongue-and-cheek entry, built for the single purpose of getting destroyed in the most hilarious means imaginable. I thought it was just some guy's robot. When I'd get down about my own progress and comparisons to other bots, I'd find the Stewbot picture, and think "At least I can do better than that. RCX-combat robots were ages ago for me, I'm doing real metal stuff now!" And I'd continue working.

Thanks, Stewbot. Your utter shittyness made my efforts feel less shitty by comparison when I was going through this phase, and kept me going until I became kinda alright at engineering.