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Before Mortal Kombat arrived to satisfy my prepubescent need for button mashing, there was Rock'em Sock'em Robots, the first game I ever played where the objective was decapitation. Here's how it worked: You controlled one of two punching plastic androids—the Red Rocker or the Blue Bomber—by pushing down on two levers as hard as humanly possible. If you managed to knock your opponent's head off, you won. Then you pushed the head back into place and repeated the process again and again and again, until your hands hurt. More »
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We're doing a season-long NFL roundtable with our friends at Slate. Check back here each week as a rotating cast of football watchers discusses the weekend's key plays, coaching decisions, and traumatic brain injuries. More »
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Our French tipster Antoine sent this in with the subject line "ro basketball team training with robots," perhaps because he's aware of our constant fear of the Robot Uprising. But the Futuroscope that helped Poitiers Basket 86 develop their spatial recognition or some such nonsense doesn't inspire the same kind of fear. Certainly the giant claw could pop our skulls like grapes, or hurl us directly into the sun. But there's no uncanny valley; it can't look at us before it ends us. More »
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On to the next war: the coming robot uprising. And — OH SHIT THEY CAN CATCH NOW. More »
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Last night April 19, 2011, at 8:11pm PDT, the Skynet system went online, at least according to the Terminator franchise. Skynet first becomes self-aware tomorrow, April 21, 2011. More »
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No. But if it were, you might not know! At least, that's sort of the premise of this follow-up about an army of sportswriting robots — you know, the ones that may just render sports writing obsolete. Except, they won't. More »
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These sad dancing cyborgs came all the way from the future just to beg on the street for St. Louis Blues tickets. They did successfully predict a rare Blues win, so maybe this time-travel thing is legit? [Riverfront Times] More »
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Japanese nerds have invented baseball-playing robots with talent far exceeding our own Major League all-stars and they don't require Gatorade or HGH. Well, I guess that's it. We had a great ride, humanity, but our time has passed. More »
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I'm not a big fan of discussing physical fitness, mainly because I don't have any. So I'm naturally jealous of any robot that rubs that in by doing pushups all up in my face an' shit. Especially when the robot's face is a big as this guy's. But then in the middle of his demo, his arm falls off. And you would think the robot would start bragging to his friends about it or maybe grab a beer or something, but no. More »
]]> http://deadspin.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5133792&view=rss&microfeed=true OK, this is pretty awesome. From our friends at The Griddle comes this video of the world's first baseball playing robot. When they all unite and take over the earth, we will remember this as the first warning sign. Like you wouldn't take him over Tony Womack. More »
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