Mirage Technologies (Multimedia) Ltd.
Rise of the Robots

We all deserve a second chance, right? Well, not exactly. I think that depends on how much you messed up the first time—I mean, no one would bring Hitler back to life and let him rule Germany again, or allow Berlusconi to sit again in the premier’s seat of Italy, right?
Video games are very different from genocidal dictators or philandering politicians, aside from nonsense; if you find yourself with a bad game, such as one deserving negative reviews from critics and thumbs down from gamers, both disgusted by the poor performance, perhaps in the end, replaying it, you might rediscover something interesting that you missed in the past; perhaps what you considered an unplayable junk in your youth could be, although tangled and messed up in any case, still interesting, maybe with nice music, somewhat innovative content, or anything to recommend.
Rise of the Robots is not one of those games.
Not even close.

When I started playing Rise of the Robots again (translatable into Italian as The Birth of the Robots, or The Rise of the Robots), I thought: "Well, it will be easy to describe: everyone remembers RotR, right? It was an infamous video game horror story you could tell your nerd friends at a campsite, or your little children just to scare them, with the same tone with which you tell the story of a psychopathic cannibal. You thought you'd suffered after playing Mario is Missing? Well, I've suffered through Rise of the Robots!" I imagined shivers down everyone's spines, followed by looks of terror from all those who sympathize but are also glad to never have shared your pain.

But then I realized it was no longer the case. If you’ve read the card, RotR is 23 years old now, TWENTY-THREE, just like Mortal Kombat II, Primal Rage, One Must Fall 2097, and other similar blooms. An entire generation of humans has grown up playing video games since then, but even today there are people who have no idea of the most traumatic example of why no one should ever put graphics before gameplay. If you are also among those who don't know this game, then consider this article an educational piece, a warning from the past still relevant today.

RotR is a one-on-one fighter made with the clay of Street Fighter 2, if by "clay of Street Fighter 2" you mean the sticky stuff that surrounds a high school shower. As you surely know, usually, fighting games group human warriors, the strongest gathered from all over the world, like clones of Mister Fantastic or Goku; but Mirage brought us a GREAT dream of every young man: fighting robots. I was born a year after the game's release, in 1995 (and have been playing video games since 2000), so as a kid at the end of elementary school I could download it via the internet (after discovering the Internet and then the download system, mind you); anyway, I too had this dream, having grown up on a diet of Transformers and Bionicle since my childhood, and then later on Real Steel (from 2011) and even One Must Fall. Anyway, as long as they did their job well, as long as they were fighting robots, this game would have made Street Fighter 2 look like the first Mortal Kombat and the first Mortal Kombat like a sort of Ren and Stimpy live-action movie performed by trampolines.

But the prospect of a gladiatorial massacre between robots was just a bonus. The real KO punch of the game, the thing that would secure it a spot in the Video Game Olympus, the thousand-carat diamond in the game’s jewel-filled crown, was the graphics. Because those weren't just ordinary graphics, no. They were graphics so futuristic that Nostradamus, when he saw them in a vision, said: "Damn, no one will ever believe this, better not write it down..."
For those unfamiliar with the first Mortal Kombat, it should be known that the character models (except Goro, the 4-armed guy drawn in computer graphics) were created using human stuntmen who were also martial arts veterans, whose movements were digitized into sprites for use in the game in a stop-motion style. Well, RotR worked similarly, but rather than using human meat sacks, they used completely CGI models of each robot later digitized.

This is, well, three times more futuristic than any other game, right? And to Mirage’s credit, the graphics were very nice. For this article, thanks also to a special emulator, I will review the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) version, the version that (unfortunately) was most familiar to me in my pre-adolescence. The sprites themselves aren’t even that bad, and they seem to have an even better look in the Amiga version. They seem a bit grainy in the screenshots, but when they move, they go as smooth as silk (lubricant or otherwise). They have many animation frames, they’re smooth, they're quick, what more could you want?
But I'll tell you one thing (and it’s a personal opinion on aesthetics, so feel free to disagree with me): the digitized graphics look really terrible, overall. They're always like this, by the way. I don’t know if this is a widely shared opinion or if it's just me, but I can’t stand digitized graphics. So I think that although RotR seems very profound regarding graphics, in my opinion this is a very magnificent comment from someone who French-kissed a wasp nest. But it’s not up to me to judge graphics: tastes, for heaven's sake, I’m not a god.

Unfortunately, the above-average graphics are the only good things contained in such rubbish. Things start to go wrong when the plot makes its appearance.
You see, sirs, there are 3 categories of plot makers: the first, increasingly rare and practically on the verge of extinction, are those who analyze all past stories and do everything to create a completely original story never seen before; the second contains all those who are inspired by original plots in some way, but make it all their own, like parodies; finally, there is the rightfully despicable one, namely those who make the usual clichés since the Paleolithic times. And guess in which category the RotR folks fell?
Exactly, the plot makers of this game were so lazy that they resorted to every possible cliché regarding robots and science fiction, including plot points.
Out-of-control nanomachines? Done!
Artificial Intelligence that reaches a sentient stage and begins Operation Exterminate Humanity? Done!
A computer virus that can reprogram anything relating to a microchip, even tangentially? Done!
The only thing missing is a robot reprogrammed by lightning.
In essence then, Supervisor, who will obviously be the final boss, goes mad. You are a cyborg, indeed, YOU ARE called Cyborg, and you are immune to the virus because you possess a human soft brain encased in a hard steel shell. You defeat Supervisor, save humanity, receive gratitude, cookies, gold, and beautiful women from an eternally grateful population. To save the world, you have to defeat the 6 robots blocking your path. Easy right? I wouldn’t say...

Well... actually, yes.
RotR is a simple game. TOO SIMPLE. This is because the developers saw all that avant-garde brought by Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, The King of Fighters, and company, and they thought "Screw you and your originality! Our gaming soul is too pure and untouchable to be sullied by such filth! WE will make a masterpiece that will make gaming history, thanks also to our divine wisdom!"
The result of this pathetic thought completely alien (indeed, no, beyond alien) from the mouths of these idiotic blowhards, is this: one of the most empty, soulless, money-eating betrayal games I have ever had the dismay to play.
The first red flag comes when you see Cyborg. Try looking at him closely...

I’ll let you in on something: Cyborg is the only playable character in singleplayer. And you’re surely thinking that such a lack of variety in single player will be compensated by the presence of various techniques like Kenshiro’s Hokuto Shinken, or maybe downloading memories from the datalink on the greatest warriors in history, or at least some kind of cyber moves to cyber-shot the cyber enemies.
Nothing!
Absolutely zilch!
Cyborg has nothing of such things. He knows punches, he knows kicks, he knows jumps, he knows ducking, he knows the parry, and that’s it. That’s all. No excuses like particle cannons, plasma swords, or electric fists but only something like the first lesson learned at a kickboxing school. And there’s no chance to unlock new moves or characters for singleplayer. That alone should be enough to turn off the console and rather play a pirated copy of Thrill Kill (seriously, it exists, I swear).
Honestly, there is no proof that Cyborg is indeed a cyborg. To me, it seems more like an android. I mean, the Cyborg character, an original member of DC Comics' Justice League, is the pure demonstration that the name "Cyborg" DOES NOT make you a cyborg, otherwise I would have called myself Jotaro Kujo years ago for all I care. For what we know, he might be a passing member of the Blue Man Group who seems to have lost his clothes somewhere.
Let’s move on because we're not good going backward. Let’s start the Arcade mode, equivalent to Singleplayer, and we meet our first opponent. The robot in question is called Loader, and it is called so because it is meant for loading things. It’s therefore not suitable for fighting. It should be easy.

And it is because the gameplay of RotR is even more broken than everything else in the game put together. You’ll immediately notice that the controls are slow and delayed; and judging by the total time it takes from the button press to the execution of a single hit, Cyborg must have a computational power of a measles-infested hare. Considering all this, whoever is playing would shave faster than finishing a match. There are no special moves, as has been said, and you can do only six moves, in "virtue" of kick, punch, and standing, ducking, and jumping positions, and so you’ll have:
-Normal punch
-Normal kick
-Jumping punch
-Jumping kick
-Ducked punch
-Ducked kick/sweep
And since our opponent won’t be outdone, you’ll soon understand that the backbone of the game consists of deciding which of these attacks to perform continuously on the opponent and then executing the strategy.
You see, my friends, the game’s AI is monumentally stupid. Practically every battle can be won simply by walking toward the opponent and repeatedly pressing any of the attack buttons. And your opponent will rarely block your blows, and even less likely to attack, because the virus that made them eeeevil also deprived them of any conceivable combat technique they ever had.
If this wasn't enough, you'll soon notice that the punch has a much shorter range than the kick, making it completely useless. At this point, you’ll be reduced to only three moves: kick, jumping kick, and sweeping kick (KICK, KICK, KICK... in the balls).

And if the tactic of "continuously kicking the opponent in the gonads" doesn’t work, why not try that of "duck and kick" as I did on the second opponent (Ape)?
It not only keeps the gorilla-shaped Builder (as it is alternately called in the game) at bay, but it gives you the opportunity to admire the noble high-definition derriere of Cyborg (dat ass).

The third robot to face is Crusher, insectoid in shape... although "Pincers" would have been a more suitable name. Or "Snippy Harold." Christ-ian Only, but put something to make this game more interesting no??? ALL characters in the game have the same moves, so you already know what to expect. You’ll be tempted to block occasional attacks, but for some strange reason (surely the mess of the creators’ work) even if the block succeeds, you take so much damage that the block is also rendered completely useless. I vaguely remember reading that the reason for this was that Mirage perhaps thought the AI computer was so incredible that it could block every attack launched against you. The ability to hit the opponent THROUGH (and despite) the block was added to give you, a mere human, a chance of winning.
Or maybe the battle will have an outcome like what happened to me: I hit Crusher twice and then stood still. Crusher also stayed still. We were BOTH still, until the time ran out and I won by virtue of having more health points than him. HOORAY HOORAY THE GRAND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DESIGNED!

Having defeated all the industrial robots we found, we finally face a REAL combat robot, in the form of Military. I have nothing to say about it, really; it looks similar to Cyborg, but it has claws instead of hands. We all know how much the army has tried to come up with the latest delivery of barehanded death, and this robot could just about fit the bill. But personally, if I had to spend hundreds of thousands of euros on an indestructible war machine, I would expect it to be able to eliminate targets from more than two meters away.
Forget about this guy, however: look at what the introduction promised us.

"Music composed and performed by Brian May"...
Brian May is a master guitarist from the legendary Queen and a Doctor of Astrophysics... but then maybe RotR can be saved thanks to the music of this REAL classic rock myth! :D
No.
Of course it can’t, not even a damn bit.
Because despite what the neon honeyed words promise in the introduction, Brian May's music DOES NOT appear in the game.
Sorry, I lied to you, actually there’s a 10-second clip at the beginning of the game featuring Cyborg, with a piece of his music in the background... but the entire remaining soundtrack in the actual game was composed wholly and solely by Mirage. It seems that problems with May's record company indicated that RotR would have had a delay in the timeline if Mirage had waited for May's soundtrack, so Mirage decided to move forward alone without him. Honestly, I think this is what pissed me off the most over everything else, worse than the gameplay designed by a rotten potato and the design conceived by a peanut crushed by an elephant... also because they couldn’t even put the damn soundtrack in the right place! Frankly, I’m amazed the game even starts the right way.

And here is the mid-boss, Sentry, the sentry, who looks like Baymax in armor. Look at him, proudly, trying to impress us with his Tai Chi moves. Kicking his metal-coated ass will be a great pleasure, and maybe it will relieve some frustration about the game soundtrack.

Ah, yes indeed! Sentry is big, burly, and might put me a little on—oh no, I spoke too soon and reduced him to a pile of wreckage in just under 15 seconds.
There you have it.
Goodbye.
Everything is slower than pancake syrup, without any sense of contact. There’s nothing to learn, no skills to master, nothing to train the brain (except thinking about the utility of all this bullshit). I’d rather let a mechanical arm from an auto industry chase me across all of Caserta (at least I’d keep fit, bodybuilders, plz)...

Having disposed of Sentry, it’s finally time for the final showdown with Supervisor. It took me a quarter of an hour to reach him, but it feels like an eternity. Supervisor is a completely shameless copy of Terminator 2’s T-1000, only it is kind of woman-shaped. Not that T-1000 couldn't be a woman, but I think Robert Patrick would have been a better choice. The fact is that one thing Supervisor has, unlike T-1000, is the ability to transform into... an inflatable doll made of mercury.

Terrifying, you’ll agree with me. Kick it in the gums until death and that’s it. There you have it, Rise of the Robots is completed. Finished, end, the ende. Heaven be praised, the mass is concluded, go in peace. Do you get anything from finishing it? Well, the re-watched cutscenes presented as replays, does that count? The answer is no, it doesn't count. It would be better to say that there aren’t even credits at the end. One good thing they did: I wouldn’t want to be associated with such garbage either. Let Mr. May take that disgrace, okay?
In truth, you do get something after all that immense effort. What you actually get during the "epilogue" is a code that allows for a fight against the Supervisor in the two-player mode. Did I tell you there’s a two-player mode? Because there is, and it’s even worse than the single player!

Player 1 is ALWAYS in the shoes of the Cyborg, with no ability to change one's robot, while Player 2 can select his robot but CANNOT choose Cyborg. Question: why? Is there some problem with the game?
It wouldn’t seem so, because according to Mirage this was due to the fact that the collision frames were preloaded all at once and therefore it was perennially impossible for the game to manage encounters of two robots where one of them was not obligatorily the main droid. In other words, this was a fairer toll to pay for all those collisions and graphics.
Alright, we might even give them that, let’s pretend to accept it... but can someone please explain to me why they didn't even try to balance the characters, for goodness and nobility’s sake?! No, because player two can always choose to be Sentry and destroy Cyborg every blessed time, causing inevitable frustrations for the grown-up Smurf.
There are also "special" moves that can be activated in the options menu. They activate by pressing a direction 4 times followed by an attack, granting mind-blowing powers like invisibility, inverted opponent controls, and complete bloody invincibility.
Great.
Sage advice: never ask a friend to play RotR together. One of three results will happen:
1) The friend will kill you in your sleep.
2) The friend will run away as if pursued by the Nemesis and will prefer to dress as a woman, possibly with water balloons used as breasts.
3) The friend will propose a solution infinitely preferable: a double suicide via jump from atop the Empire State Building.

If you paid attention to what I’ve said, you’ll understand that Rise of the Robots is a hopelessly atrocious game. If I had to list all of humanity's palest, most useless, and squalid creations, Rise of the Robots would be (as it is) the perfect example of how you can create the utmost uselessness. You play Rise of the Robots and think it’s all a joke, an ingenious ploy by developers to mock the audience, a big maneuver aimed at laughing (?) and then prepare for the real game, a demo, in short. You really hope it’s like that, that it is a big April Fool joke valid all year long. Nothing! Despite trying to believe it, you realize it’s all real, all true, nothing imaginary, and down with depression relieved by getting drunk at the local bar then heading to the nearest recovery center hoping to forget this dramatic experience. Those big robots you see in the game don’t even turn out to be that "so bad it’s so good" which Shaq-Fu is, also released in the same year. Even Shaq-Fu is an ideal portrait of what a video game should not be, but it contains a substantial difference: practically every thing that title contains is silly to the point of amusing you. RotR, instead, is a video representation to be avoided like the Black Plague, a completely hunch-backed and poorly accomplished loaf dish, supporting the philosophy that when something is announced, even before its release, as the most "everything" of a certain category, you risk 99% ending up with a fist of fried air in hand. An embarrassing product, so flat and anonymous that even a silent sexual education film for children would, in fact, reveal itself to be far more charismatic, entertaining, and even innovative.
But don’t forget that this is the SNES version. It may seem absurd but the SNES version is one of the best. If you’ve read the introduction card, the game was ported to many different consoles, including the 3DO and the Game Gear, and there were substantial differences between them. As I said, the SNES version is one of the best available. If you wonder how it could get worse, hear about the Amiga version.
In the Amiga version, you can literally (and I underline literally) complete the game by keeping the joystick stuck to northeast permanently and holding the attack button, even without looking at the screen. Cyborg will ALWAYS perform flying kicks (like Bruce Lee what the hell are you doing), and the enemies will always stand there missing shots, occasionally squatting.

If that wasn’t enough, in the Amiga version, YOU CAN’T TURN AROUND. Cyborg is forever doomed to fight facing right, and you’ll understand perfectly that finding yourself with the opponent on your left where YOU CANNOT TURN will be an absurd disfavor, and consequently, you can safely give your farewell kiss to your buttocks. The reason for such nonsense has to be due to the Mirage staff's probable assumption of paste-laden mushrooms, that’s for sure. The magazine Amiga Power gave this version a review score of 5%, which frankly shows how Santa Claus can be compared to some sort of Scrooge McDuck in comparison.

But then what went wrong? How did a product so widely horrendous and abominable get a complete release on as many as ten equivalent consoles, while One Must Fall 2097, a small masterpiece among fighting games for PC released the same year, 1994, has been recorded as one of the biggest commercial flops of the '90s and consequently made free to download? The answer apparently lies in money. Too much money was spent on graphics, BUT you have to be careful because when I say "too much" I never say "everything": that’s right because the other thing RotR had on its side was a gargantuan marketing campaign that stalked every gamer like a yandere stalker from everywhere (see Yandere Simulator) starting about a year before the release. A YEAR! There were magazine ads, TV ads, newspaper ads, cinema trailers, a constant stream of information from Mirage trying hard to annoy the marbles. And for the Gods of Olympus, there was even a novel!!! If that novel contained anything from the game, it would be yes or no six pages covered in baboon testicle ink stains.
And guess what the hype promised by the trailers and the ads? The premises for a great headline were all there: jaw-dropping rendered-style graphics (at least according to the preview fixed images released), the execution of many special moves, soundtrack collaboration with His Majesty Brian May, the promise of a title so future-oriented it made every competitor look "ten years old" (according to the developers’ grandiose statements), not to mention the well-32-megabyte cartridge declared for the SNES version. All true? Nothing further from the truth! This title was (and still is) an incredible, exaggerated, and nonsensical bile overflow in actual fact, so clumsy and ridiculous but equally pathetically pretentious, and even filled with bugs to the bone, only able to make even those boring afternoons fun when, as good grandchildren, we helped grandma weave the knitting.
So, between graphics (back when CGI was the most luxurious thing on Earth) and ads (which you didn't know if there were more of them or Genghis Khan’s Mongols), there was nothing left. The graphics must have taken up too much space on the cartridge or disks (and by the way, I remember the Amiga version came with 13 CDs! O_O) that everything else went to hell; you know, things like options, modes, and fun.
Abominable gameplay, horrible lack of imagination, the same clichés recycled over and over, the music not belonging to Brian May... all mixes to something surprisingly bad. "I mean, guys, it's like Killer Instinct from Rare now with graphics so but with big robots and like, meh BRIAN MAY IS MAKING THE MUSIC COOL" and then with the only playable character from the box giving single blows to child-drawn robots, like a digger and a monkey, that come with "impressive" cutscenes spamming the same jump kick to the end.
1994 was the debut year of a masterpiece like Tekken and the triumph year of His Majesty Street Fighter, but also the birth of Mortal Kombat II, Primal Rage, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, the Aladdin game, the very first The King of Fighters '94, Samurai Shodown II, World Heroes 2 Jet and One Must Fall 2097. Why ever release such crap? Perhaps purely for a miserable, pathetic operation in "grab the money and run" style?
If at one time there was fear that machines could replace us in the male realm of blows ... well ... now there are completely different fields in which we risk ending up on the bench. From "the blows to the buffoons".
The lesson learned from all this? Never, ever, and then NEVER put more emphasis on graphics than everything else ... unless you want to create some sort of artistic gallery simulator.
As I reiterate from the beginning of this article, some games deserve a second chance, yes, but not Rise of the Robots. It is truly as ugly as everyone says. The game’s authors don't even know what "combo" means. Or "hitbox." Or "special." Or *insert other term of the kind*. Indeed, they don't even know what "fighting game" means. No, I rectify again: they don't even know what "video game" means. Illegal just. Fortunately, they also believed in themselves; otherwise, they would never have published it, let alone called people like Brian May (what the hell are you doing in this abortion).
Rise of the Robots, more like Descent of the Testicles.
I could admit, I add as a final conclusion, that maybe some of you will still have a crazy desire to try it, just for a laugh but I continue to say it might not be a good idea at all since you might experience some trauma that will mark you for life, incur a liver cirrhosis attack due to the abundant boredom resulting from this thing, lose friends that were essential to you until now, and even have an innate desire for suicide. Life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni also says so, don’t waste it like this.

And do you want to know what is the worst thing? It sold enough to receive a sequel. Think about it while lying on your bed, meditating on the unthinking nature of the chaotic universe we all inhabit. Think about it because there is never an end to the worst.