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I remember asking my parents to get me this game for my birthday as a kid, and I’m really really glad I got clothes instead.

I still love that Edge cover with Rise of the Robots stating "Who needs gameplay with graphics this good?" Turns out everyone needed decent gameplay!

The studio that made the game maybe should've started this as an action figute line, these robots look sick.(Godamn automatic corrector)

Fun story, I played Rise of the Robots 2 to get into top 8 of UFGT9's mystery game tournament and I thought that it was the worst fighting game I ever played. Then I played Bikini Karate Babes 2 in winners top 8 and I was quickly corrected in my opinion. I'm still waiting for a young Man McMuscles to do an episode on either bikini Karate Babes games

I rather like how, just like with the Street Fighter The Movie: The Game episode of TWFG, this episode is essentially a follow up to the ROTR What Happened episode from a couple of years ago, giving people the chance to see how the game's development made it the disasterpiece we know today in one video and learning Matt's personal thoughts on several different versions of the game in another video. And it makes me glad to see that my wish to see ROTR get IN THE RING and having the game being placed in the proverbial scrap heap (just like the actual ROTR robots were presumably sent to an actual scrap heap after Rise 1 and 2 failed so miserably) has come true! =)

If games were only judged based on their graphics, this would be a winner!

15:30 "spill your pneumatic fluids"? So, she's going to spill your air? I think the word you're searching for is "hydraulic", robot lady. Supervisor indeed!

The only thing I genuinely like about this game was its Continue Screen in the Arcade version where if you let the time go to zero, Prime-8 gives you the bird with the game saying "Forget You" in the background. It was kinda amusing, not gonna lie.

I like how for like 50% of the video you were using music from the 90s robot fighting game that's actually good.

Damn. I didn't know how lucky i was for growing up with nothing but Capcom and SNK fighting games. Somehow my dad had a good eye for video games despite never playing them.

*Remembers Maximilian Dood's review of the game.* At least Max won't be alone when it came to playing this game. Rise of the Robots Club: Max and Matt. We need more members. Edit: Would like to see you review the sequel as well.

I used to not really get fighting games and I think it's because I kept renting ones like Rise of the Robots, Brutal Paws of Fury, and Pit Fighter. Didn't really get the ball rolling with friends until Guilty Gear X2 came out on PS2. After that we went back to all sorts of games.

Imagine someone took the DOS version of Rise of the Robots, reverse engineered or clean decompiled it, and modernized it to play decently.

Nice job putting One Must Fall 2097 music behind this. The superior 90s robot fighting game :D

I thought this game was a fever dream I had. I remembered playing a robot fighting game as a child where one of the characters looked like a tiny forklift.

5% in Amiga Power. Lol. I remember when that issue came out - "Don't Buy a Turkey This Christmas!"

I had this game growing up, and back then if you owned a game you did any measure of mental gymnastics required to enjoy a game. So I thought it was BAAAADASSSS and I just wasn't able to beat it as easy as other fighters because I was "too young" so needless to say I grinded it out and beat it and thought bit was a low key cool game no one had heard of

This makes me miss Max's all too short-lived Fighting History series. I'm glad Matt picked up that particular torch and ran with it. I'd still be hyped if Max brought it back so we could have both

Every time I see 'Rise of the Robots' I think 'Are they talking about One Must Fall? No, wait, that's a different game...'

It should be a rule, if you're covering Rise of the Robots you must always use the opening song from One Must Fall. Stellar work from Mr McMuscles per usual always great content. 👍

Ah memories... I picked ROTOR up for about £3 a few months after release (once I got over the disappointment of reading all of the awful reviews) and ended up formatting the 5 intro disks (of 13...!?) from the Amiga AGA version, to use for other things. Cheaper than buying blank disks in those days. I probably should have just formatted all of them :D

You're just gonna skip over the surprisingly dark game over screen with Cyborg falling lifeless to the ground revealing his eye, or even worse getting his head crushed in the arcade version.

Always had a twisted love for the Rise games. I think I'm one of only 2 collectors in the world actively hunting for Rise related items and merch. I was a teenager at the time Rise was announced and it blew me away. I had a Mega Drive at the time so when the game finally hit that system I ran (awkwardly) to the nearest Blockbuster to grab my very own copy. It is the only console game (that worked) I've ever returned to the shop I bought it from within the hour. We exchanged it for MKII and good times were had by all... :) However in the last 15 years my interest was re-piqued, mainly by the rich history behind the game's development. All of the devs of the various versions seem to be genuinely nice guys as well so I was able to grab a lot of great info (and sometimes unusual items...). Not a great fighting game at all, but one made in England by a team who I genuinely believe wanted to create an amazing beatemup with Robots but bit off a little more than they could chew when the project ballooned due to multiple versions and a huge marketing campaign. Oh, but I do actually love some Rise 2...the PC version at least ;)

The One Must Fall: 2097 music just hits different. Might be the best menu music ever done.

This and Primal Rage were the first fighting games I ever played as a kid. Guess which one I remember fondly.

Man, I so dearly wanted this game to be good back when I rented it. Fighting robots just feels like such a winning concept.

You have a calm, exuberant yet welcoming voice. I haven't heard your videos in almost a year but I didn't have to second guess when this auto selected this video randomly "oh its the unique happy guy!' It's like Christopher Walker or Tommy Wasoise where only one guy could ever trademark that voice.

Somehow this game was released and Lobo for SNES and Genesis didn't.

Great game! My favourite scene was then the protagonist shouted "It's risin' time!" and started rising his robots all over the screen.

to me this has always felt like a fighting game developed by a team of people that don't/didn't like fighting games.

I had a 3do version when I was a kid, I learned to adapt the crap factor and found enjoyment out it a little bit. Lol The 3do uses shoulder button to shift punches to kicks not start button. You can do even do combos by follow light, medium then heavy attack, left enemies to briefly stunning so you step back to avoid counter attack. There’s a weird mechanic that if you spam the same move, the enemies will turn invincible.

I was a fighting game fiend as a kid, I even liked the horrible fighting games that my friends hated including Shaq-Fu, but I can still remember renting this for SNES as a kid and for the first time in my life I turned off a fighting game in less than 10 minutes. 😂

Props for using the title music for OMF 2097, which conversely is an excellent robot fighting game that is also one of my favourites.

Love the One Must Fall music in the background. Ah the irony of using music from a good fighting game about robots.

What i love in this video, is that half of the time the background music is from the Great OMF One Must Fall 2097 PC Game, a fantastic Robot Fighting game, that Rise of the Robots tried to copy in just the worst way possible. Well Done Matt

I love that you used music from the GOOD... uh... 2-D '90s robot fighting game in this vid! ...It's *One Must Fall 2097* for anyone keeping track.

I knew this game would be eventually covered. Pretty solid breakdown of why the game is so bad. I definitely look forward to the day that Expect No Mercy, Ultraman for the SNES, and Dangerous Streets are covered

Loving the use of One Must Fall music in this video.

How could you say this about Kenny's favourite fighting game?

You brought up Dural and it made me think of Virtua Fighter 2...on the Genesis. There's little chance it goes right to the top of the poop pile, but I always wondered what was up with that game, and this is a good place to cover bad games.

That soundtrack is awesome tho. I listen to “The Loader” at the gym.

My dad's Karate group went to one of their houses in the mid 90s and all us kids were dragged along and stayed the night one one room. I remember playing this and the 1v1 multiplayer kept us amused for a while! I kinda think it would be fun to make a game with the artwork and better mechanics

"I'm gonna spill your pneumatic fluids" - lol pneumatic is gas driven. They confused pneumatic and hydraulic.

It's a shame that the arcade version never made it to market, if only because of the gorilla robot that does jerk-off motions over his fallen foe post-fatality and flips you off if you lose to him on the game over screen. He's the VIP of the whole ROTR universe just for that.

Now "DANGEROUS STREETS", there is a lot of material

I owned this gem as a kid. I played the hell out of it because back then i didn't have a lot of options. I made the most out of it but, yeah, it was bad. the worst part was the control, very stiff. I did like the graphics though and the concept of fighting robots in general.

This review is so hilarious because if the game was just SLIGHTLY worse in any aspect I think it could've derailed Criticom. Photo finish.

Never seen this game in action, but I remember it being advertised everywhere.

I had ROTR on PC, there are a few things you might not know. There was a soundtrack. This required 2 things, that you own the game(and have the CD in the drive) and that you have the little cable between the CD-Rom drive and your soundcard hooked up because the soundtrack was actually tracks on the CD. Secondly, the game ran super fast if you had the right hardware. There was 3dfx acceleration and it fully supported the GUS. The game was free with one of those but I don't remember which. I used to play it on a voodoo graphics card with the ultrasound and it was both higher resolution and faster. That being said, getting the GUS to play nice with it was a pain, that was back in the time of DIP switches and cursing. Once it worked, it was awesome compared to other games of the time.

Back when this came out I got a free copy for the MSDOS version of this came through my dad's work. I remember thinking the game looked so cool and wanted to play it so badly. However, the requirements to run the game were incompatible with our PC at the time and I never got to play it or let alone even open the box. I am positive that somewhere at my parent's house there is still a factory sealed copy of this game that hasn't been touched in about 25 years. Hadn't heard anything about this game since then until I stumbled upon this video.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaany years ago my father went to the.... local game supplier??? and some bastard sold this thing to him, maybe he said something like "i want a good fighting game for my son" .... i just couldn't tell him this game was wrong in so many ways, but yeah, he knew basically nothing about games and just wanted to make me happy, so i smiled and said "thanks dad, this game looks awesome".... what a scam dude.

Oh lord the hype for this was immense, I remember this being plastered all over the gaming mags to the point it was being shoved down our throats and a UK video game TV show changed it's intro to accommodate it. Then it got released, ooohhhh boy.

I remember picking this game out as a kid in the bargain bin. I was so disappointed, the wording on the back of the box hyped this game up so much. Lol

In a UK there was a magazine called Viz, and I remember they had an advert for Rise of the Robots that was simply a logo, the picture of the protagonist and the caption "I may have a gob, but I'll bite your effin head off." It was amusing enough, but it didn't make me want to buy the game though.

I loved playing Resurrection Rise 2 on Saturn growing up, and was hyped to see you cover RotR in Wha Happun, and was extra hyped to wake up today to see it return today :D the Novel was... not the most well written, but I had a good time with it. sadly Rise 2 retcons the last 20 or so pages of the novel, which is a shame because it left off on quite the cliffhanger lmao. I wonder what a sequel to the novel would have been... also, I loved your pun on RotR being the 2D Queen haha

7:45 Well, isn't it ironic that a game all about machines didn't take mechanics into consideration?

I loved this game when I was a kid, but then again I had very limited funds and I kinda forced myself to love it cause that was my allowance

Robots that are awesome: R2-D2, HK-47, The Terminator Robots that suck: The Robots from this game!

1:13 That's "music by the newly-knighted Sir Brian May of Queen fame!" (I believe 2 tracks that were on his album "Back To The Light"....and also "Cyborg" from his "Another World" album was used for ROTR II)

In every mode, player 1 is locked to the cyborg. This means that they didn't need to create anything to connect the others bots to the player 1 at all. No need for palette swaps for any of the bots, no need to map the inputs for the special moves for any on the other characters, or anything like that. They didn't even need to build an AI for the Cyborg at all, or for any of the other bots fighting the other bots. Hell, any of the programming they would have needed to build to have the other bots fight each other didn't have to get made. Even with the tiny roster, that would be exponentially more work.

The fact this vid opens up with Kenny Chou's music from One Must Fall 2097 makes for such a stark contrast of good game, bad game. And then pushing more wonderful OMF 2097 music along the way. Damn, makes me nostalgic for that title. Man, the 3D sequel OMF Battlegrounds was terrible. Probably not Worst Fighting Game terrible, mind.

the Supervisor’s weird pointy stretching makes my teeth itch. It’s like Voldo and Jivatma had a weird time-warp robot baby.

The ai reads your input but falls apart to basic spamming.

12:44 Oh shiet soooon, you brought so many memories. Loved Urban Champion when I was a Kid. I never played 'Rise of the Robots' but I remember reading about it in magazines and I always thought "wooow this looks so cool!" I was so stupid. On the subject of games I remember fondly but probably weren't good: I recommend you 'FX Fighter' for PC.

The red robot looks like a stripped down, knockoff version of the Sazabi from 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack'.

Hey, does anyone here remember that robot deathmatch game most of us probably only played the demo for on PC, late 90s, early 00s, I wanna say? In the demo, I think there were only two robots to choose from...they were all jagged and pointy? And there was like an electric barrier on either side of the screen, and if you touched it, you got zapped. My friends and I loved it as kids, don’t know if it would actually hold up. Anybody???

Credit to Matt for using Fulgore's original music for the end credits. I still have that Killer Cuts soundtrack.

I remember my dad really wanting me to buy this game. We would see it on the shelf at one computer store we used to frequent, and he, a non-gamer, was convinced that it was going to be great because the box art reminded him of the T-1000. I saved up my allowance to buy a game, but opted instead to get a recently-released title I'd never heard of called Unreal.

I remember this game, little young me had some money left over from my summer holiday budget that would have needed to be exchanged if I wanted to use it when I got home the next day. I thought it looked so cool, I loved the robots, so I got it and eagerly popped it in when I did arrive home. The fact that I could remember most of the bulletpoints you set out in this video from having only played it for a little bit really does underpin how impressively bad it was. It forever stuck with me as a prime example of bad game design as well as a regretful purchase I could ever get a refund on.

You should do resident evil survivor next on what happened

This was the first game I was aware of to become one of those every 2nd hand store had several copies available of at any time.

I was waiting for you to review this one Matt.

This video triggered a childhood memory of owning the *novelisation* of this game. I swear it's a thing, and from what I recall the last few chapters were the most obvious "we're approaching release and you're out of time" rush jobs I've ever read 10/10 - would read terrible novelisation of terrible fighting game again

I remember when my neighbor was giving me shit for only having a PC while he got the SNES for christmas. And then he bragged about having his first game for it: Rise of the Robots. While at the same time I got One Must Fall as a christmas present. Guess who got the last laugh on that one. 🤣

1:32 As former world record speedrun holder, I agree

Oh no, there was a sequel? I remember playing this with a friend back then. He basically just used the red robot, because it had a spammable attack that spanned the entire screen was was pretty much guaranteed to hit.

7:47 One must fall theme ! I loved playing as Electra !

I wonder if One Must Fall is ever going to be on this show with as much music as I hear from it.

You mentioned a lot of consoles this was ported to, but missed the Sega Saturn version which is the one I played. Oh wait, Rise 2? I'm amazed they made a sequel to this. But that must have been the one I played. It was so long ago and never a fun game. It also seemed to have a bugged character selection menu where we always had to wait for the selection timer to run out instead of being able to just press a button over who we wanted. Kinda sad that is the only part the game that I can recall easily.

I remember renting this and my disappointment was immeasurable. I wasn't a hard kid to please with anything on the SNES either.

All the One Must Fall 2097 music reminds me that I would love to see a What Happened on the making of One Must Fall: Battlegrounds one day!

DUUUUUDE!!! I remember being SO excited for the Game Gear "Rise of the Robots." It was an ad on the back of an instruction manual to Sonic 2 I think. I was seven years old and I thought it looked awesome! I was flatlined when I learned you couldn't change your character, WTF? A tournament fighter with one character that's a replica of a human even, so fuck pretending to be a robot....I spent all of my birthday money on it, so there was an extra sting....

Max's son's favorite game! Being able to beat it without opposable thumbs must count for...something, I guess.

Two surprises today: this TIED with Criticom, and there was a SEQUEL TO THIS?!

About the arcade version: I was lead to believe that the 18 characters present are not meant as placeholders at all but what the actual released machine would have had. I've seen a copy of the ops manual and it refers to these different versions of the same character as 'replicants'. How cute is that? Also every er replicant does in fact have a different set of special moves which they start the game with. I have a full list of these moves and can dig it out if anyone is interested? In single player, you would earn an extra special similar to a game like Gowcaizer after beating 6 opponents, for a maximum of four. For some reason all three Crusher variants seem to only have access to 2 specials, maybe for 'balance'??? There are two versions of the arcade game out there and both have some differences including the order of the specials given. Also because there is no progression in 2 player mode, each 'bot is stuck with the 2 specials that variant starts with (some Crushers only have 1). Good luck to the guy playing as the blue Prime-8, his vertical butt bomb move must be the only fighting game special in history that deliberately TRIES to miss...

This is what happens when you bank entirely on graphics, leaving yourself with no time or resources left for anything else.

I hope one day we'll get to see "One Must Fall: Battlegrounds" on this show! If it even works...

I was pumped when I got this on SNES. I had actually seen it about a year before it came out at Comdex in Las Vegas. My young brain saw robots and that's about all it took to get me on board.

Ah, Rise of the Robots...the game that almost led to my early retirement of fighting games...good trauma, good trauma...

Fun fact: in the UK during the 90s, a kids' TV show about games called Bad Influence decided to pay Mirage to make videos of the cast of Rise of the Robots posing as it was thought this was what "the kidz" wanted.

I remember playing the MD version of this game at a friend's place and being blown away with how impressive it looked. My 11 year old self was unimpressed with the gameplay though - I could see younger kids being fooled with the visuals and forcing their parents to buy this for them.

I appreciate the One Must Fall music in the back!

I almost kinda like the cheat code idea during matches as absurd as it is, it might have been fun if it was used more as a game mechanic, and treated as “hacking your opponent” or something!

I'm assuming the OMF 2097 soundtrack in the background was ironically used.

"The Plucky Chad Gamegear vs. The Lowly Virgin Phillips CD-i"

I remember renting this from blockbuster for the SNES and man after about 2 hrs it sat the entire weekend. Back when video game magazines hyped games based on graphics

Pneumatic fluids by definition isn't even a thing (pneumatic is air, hydraulic is liquid)... ROTR Arcade can't even get trash talking right.

Love your videos dude (thanks to OSW) but when did the word cinema come to mean a cinematic in gaming rather than what us Brits call a movie theatre?

I'm embarrassed to admit this was the game that got me to learn inputs Edit: I'm realising I was thinking of Rise 2