Robot Battle

Robot Battle is a video game in the action genre and published by SoftSide Magazine originally released in 1982. It is currently playable on Atari 8-bit.

Atari's 1982 arcade game Robot Battle served as a quintessential blast-from-the-past for anyone who ever had a love for robots, circuitry and video games all rolled into one. For the time, Robot Battle was a revolutionary twist on the famous Pac-Man maze concept, and it was embraced by the gaming community with tremendous excitement.

Robot Battle pitted two robotic avatars called CyberBots against each other in a head-to-head duel for supremacy of a grid-like maze. In the beginning, the two robots are evenly dispersed across the 8x8 board, and must use a combination of strategy and brute force to consolidate their array of tiles while cornering and confining its opponent. The CyberBots can perpetually travel and never lose their energy, but can only make an offensive move on the target when two or more of their tiles are adjacent - a move that will systematically expend half of all the captured tiles of the victim robot. The bots can only be controlled via a joystick, leaving strategic play as the only viable tactic to outgame the opponent.

This back-and-forth of controlling the battlefield can go on indefinitely until one of the robots completely monopolizes the board, sometimes requiring a series of several moves. However, the game’s difficulty level can be adjusted, so that the novice or advanced user alike can enjoy the challenge of Robot Battle. As a bonus, if the two robots are evenly matched in their battle, a bonus CyberBot is spawned, and the last man standing will earn bragging rights over the other.

The audiovisual elements are designed to please, and are fairly sophisticated for its time. The 8-bit graphics are blocky, but iconic, and players will find the audio track to be addictive and unique. At the start of every board, a captivating song plays out that is supposed to emulate the sound of a robot army winding up to battle.

Robot Battle was an absolute must have for any fan of Atari when it was first released in 1982, and thanks to the internet, fans of today can still take pleasure in its retro-style hijinks all over again. All in all, Robot Battle is a must-play experience that is sure to satisfy every gaming enthusiast.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.