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Rowdy Rob
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Joined: 09/04/2006
Why Robotron is important (well, from a gaming perspective)

I think what Matt and CkRtech are not getting about Robotron speaks more about what kind of persons they are than the qualities of Robotron itself. Matt and CkRtech may very well be primarily CEREBRAL-based people, and Robotron doesn't really have much to offer for the cerebrum portion of the brain.

Robotron may very well be the pinnacle of the arcade "twitch game." (In my opinion, it is!) It is all about instinctual motor-skill reactions, and nothing else. Yes, there was a backstory to the game, but it really didn't matter; it was all about the player reacting on pure instinct. Most arcade games of the time offered this to a large degree, but Robotron was an all-out assault on the cerebellum; only the most "lizard-brained" among us would go very far! In my opinion, there's never been another game like it on the "twitch" level, saving the "clones" such as CkRtech's fave "Smash TV."

If you like a game where you can sit back, sip a cup of coffee (or adult beverage), and play a game, Robotron isn't for you. It is possibly the most fast-paced game ever created (while still humanly playable), and required not only your full attention, but also for you to shut down just about every portion of your brain except the pure instinctual portion.

There's nothing like Robotron in modern games. Robotron comes at you full force, and you have to react to the game on the microsecond level. There's so much information to process that you cannot really think about what you're doing, you just have to "let go" and let your instincts do their thing. And by "letting go," there was a definite sense of exhilaration, almost an adrenaline-fueled "high." Most arcade games were going for this "high," but Robotron was aiming right for the adrenal gland!

It doesn't come across today with "emulators" and such, but back then, when you had MONEY at stake, there was a sheer pulse-pounding adrenaline that fueled the terror of being assaulted from all sides, every enemy visible to you on the screen at once. In fact, the 2D, everything-on-one-screen simplicity was what made the game more powerful, and cannot really be improved upon with modern scrolling, 3D first-person gameplay. It is a game that really cannot be improved upon, save for perhaps crisper graphics(?).

As I've said, Robotron is arguably the pinnacle of the "twitch" game, a relic of a lost game era where the goal wasn't so much to immerse you in an alternate reality so much as pump you up with an adrenaline high. There's no modern game that I can think of that is so fast-paced and keeps your adrenaline pumping for such sustained periods. As such, I consider it a classic (even though it was actually too much for my cerebral-handicapped brain), and I feel may warrant attention in your book.

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