Robot Arena is a computer game made by Infogrames

Infogrames

Infogrames Entertainment SA was an international French holding company headquartered in Paris, France. It was the owner of Atari, Inc., headquartered in New York City, U.S. and Atari Europe. It was founded in 1983 by Bruno Bonnell and Christophe Sapet using the proceeds from an introductory...

. It features robotic combat similar to that of Battlebots

BattleBots

BattleBots is an American company that hosts robot competitions. BattleBots is also the name of the television show created from the competition footage. BattleBots Inc...

, Robotica

Robotica

Robotica is a robot combat show produced for the American television cable channel TLC, a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel. Three seasons of Robotica were produced. The shows first aired in April 2001, with the final season beginning in late 2002. Show hosts for the first season were Ahmet...

, and Robot Wars

Robot Wars (TV series)

Robot Wars is a British game show modelled on a US-based competition of the same name. It was broadcast on BBC Two from 1998 until 2003, with its final series broadcast on Five in 2003 and 2004. Additional series were filmed for specific sectors of the global market, including two series of Robot...

. There are a number of different chassis, and on top of that there are numerous attachments. Weapons, accessories, tires and other forms of mobility, batteries, and air tanks are among the customization choices. A sequel, called Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy is a computer game developed by Gabriel Entertainment. It is the sequel to Robot Arena. Compared to its predecessor, it has many new features, such as the Havok physics engine, fully 3-D environments , and the player's ability to completely design their own robot...

 was made, which allows for total customization of your robot.

Weapons

There is a limited number of weapons in the game, but they cover the basics of robotic combat.

• Hammer
• Two-Sided Axe
• Movable Saw blade
• Saw Blade Rack
• Spikes
• Battering Ram
• Piston
• Spike
• Switchblade (Only accessible via the 'cheatbot' cheat code.)
• Chainsaw (Patch only)
• Armored Forklift (Only if you mod Robot Arena.)

Cheatbot and $

There are two cheat codes for the game, one of which is reused for the sequel

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy

Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy is a computer game developed by Gabriel Entertainment. It is the sequel to Robot Arena. Compared to its predecessor, it has many new features, such as the Havok physics engine, fully 3-D environments , and the player's ability to completely design their own robot...

. Naming your robot 'cheatbot' allows you to use all of the normally inaccessible components, such as switchblades and the 'badass tires' used on the 'Urban Menace' and the Skull used on the 'Zombie'. Also, pressing shift+4 ($) in the bot lab automatically sets your money to $50,000, even if your current amount is higher than that. Cheatbot returned in RA2, this time as cheatbot2, with a similar effect. Also you can mod the to get the Armored Forklift and Wood Armor.

Removed Items

In the folder containing the image files for the game, two items are shown that do not appear in the game: "Wood Armor" and a "Armored Forklift". Additionally, the text file that includes the descriptions for the items mentions these unused items and a "Digital Insignia". It can be assumed that the Forklift was not used in the final game due to the game engine's inability to handle such physics, but why the Wood Armor or Digital Insignia was not used is unknown.

Criticism

Due to the major lack of customization, people were generally turned off by this game. There are a limited amount of chassis designs, and you can not use many of the weapons that you may have wanted. Other complaints include the fact that the game is two-dimensional, and robots can never leave the ground, meaning that popular weapons such as wedges, lifters, and throwers could not be used. The game is also somewhat glitchy, and has a hard time running on most computers, either because they are too slow or too fast. Many robots in the game are unrealistically overpowered (Such as Gammaraze II and Executioner) and would never be possible in real life. All of these problems were addressed in the sequel, making it much more popular.

Robots

There are a number of computer-built robots, listed here are some that were included in the original release

• Wimpy
• Gammaraze
• Aquarius
• The Patriot
• Zombie
• Urban Menace
• Commando
• Red Giant
• Executioner
• Slice 'n' Dice
• Omnivore
• Biclops

Later, a patch released online increased game difficulty, adding a few new robots, but also improving some of the existing ones:

• Executioner
• ScooterPie
• Zombie
• Urban Menace
• Six-Pack
• Commando
• Aquarius
• Pontoon
• Triclops
• The Patriot
• Gammaraze II
• Red Giant
• Topknot