Robot Arena

Robot Arena and its sequel Robot Arena 2 are games for the PC where you design a robot and have it fight against other robots. It is very similar to the TV shows and real-life tournaments Battlebots and Robot Wars.

The first game was widely panned for a lack of customization, very few chassis' and weapons, and the game was two dimensional meaning that wedges and flippers were not able to be used. The sequel improved on everything, allowing you to build the chassis on a grid, and allowing you to choose from a lot of different weapons and parts. The game also has a small but very dedicated fanbase.

This game provides examples of:
 * Arch Enemy: Popups against Horizontal Spinners
 * Confusion Fu: As with the Glass Cannon example above, Berzerker is also quite unpredictable for a spinner. Tornado, another spinner, also has some of this...
 * Everything's Worse With Bears: The Good 'ol Boys' heavyweight robot, Bear.
 * Fragile Speedster: The Steelyard Dog's lightweight bot is a VERY fast pusher, that is also just as fragile. Snow Job, a powerful pusher, is another one of these.
 * Game Mod: The DSL total conversion.
 * Genre Busting: All you do is build robots and fight them. The closest you can get to the style of play is with an RTS, and even that isn't as customizable...
 * Glass Cannon: Team Z's lightweight horizontal spinner Berserker is one of these.
 * Gravity Sucks: Robot Arena 2's has a glitch with the Havok Physics engine that causes robots to fly around the arena sometimes after a non-static part is knocked off. These are called Havok Explosions online.
 * Mighty Glacier: Raptor, a heavyweight hammer robot, is quite durable and can hand out quite a beating compared with other AI heavyweights.
 * Obvious Beta: The double strength armour, hidden components, robots that look like they do one thing but don't and unused AI didn't tip you off before?
 * Stone Wall: EMERGENCY.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: All of the AI bots have armor that is twice as strong as the armor that the player can select in the Armor tab - although the player himself can gain the upper hand by never even touching the armor tab when building. On the other hand, some of the Middleweight bots that the AI use are actually heavyweights...