Finally, the most awaited robot battle between the giant robots from the United States and Japan will stream next week. The fans will be able to watch the battle, which has already taken place, on October 17 at 7 p.m. PST on Twitch. Later, the video will also be available on Facebook and YouTube.
It all started in 2015, when the U.S. team of engineers, MegaBots, challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a mega robot battle. The Japanese team accepted the challenge, and said that they will not let any other country win since “Giant robots are Japanese culture.”
Japan is right in claiming that giant robots are their culture! The love for robots dates back to 1970, and since then, the Japanese have made numerous cartoons, comics and games based on these robots. The Robot fever was so much so that for many years giant Gundam Mecha guarded a shopping mall in Tokyo, according to 107.7 The End.
Further, the Japanese team accepted the challenge on one condition that the robot battle will be melee style combat and not a gunfight. “If we’re going to win this, I want to punch them to scrap and knock them down to do it,” Suidobashi told MegaBots.
MegaBots unveiled its mega robot “Eagle Prime” last month. The team received over $500,000 in crowdfunding to update its official entrant. MegaBots’ Eagle Prime, worth $2.5 million, is equipped with two seats and weighs around 24,000 pounds. The 16-foot tall robot sits on a 430 horsepower V8 LS3 engine. On the other hand, Japan’s model, dubbed as “Kuratas,” is a lightweight and single pilot, weighing just around 13,000 pounds.
On their website, MegaBots cleared that it would not be a live event. The team of engineers stated that the fight involves multiple rounds, and robots need repair in-between, so it will take a lot of time and get boring for the viewers, and that is why it “could not be live streamed like a traditional sport.”
Another reason why the fight could not be streamed live is that both the robots stood against each other at a secret location in an abandoned steel mill in Japan. Except for the competing teams and the production staff, there was no live audience at the event. Both the teams agreed to the venue because they wanted the robots to be as destructive as possible without taking the risk of any damage to the traditional venue, as well as, the staff present, notes I4U. The MegaBots team traveled to Japan with disassembled Prime Eagle and tested the robot once it reached the site.
MegaBots does not see it as a one-off event. Rather, they are looking to hold such fights in the future. On their website, the company posted, “The vision of MegaBots is to entertain a growing global audience of science-fiction fans and eSport enthusiasts by turning their dreams about giant robot combat into epic reality.”
Both robots are piloted from inside by the founders of the companies – Matt Oehrlein and Gui Cavalcanti of MegaBots, and Kogoro Kurata of Suidobashi. Commentary is provided by Mike Goldberg of the MMA and robotics expert Saura Naderi.