Years ago I attended the last two BattleBots tapings on Treasure Island. Words fail me when I try to describe how much fun it is to watch BattleBots live. I ha

Years ago I attended the last two BattleBots tapings on Treasure Island. Words fail me when I try to describe how much fun it is to watch BattleBots live. I had never seen the TV show when I bought my first BattleBots tickets (while randomly browsing Craigslist). After getting home from the live version, I tried to watch the show a little. I can't stand the TV version. It bore the same relationship to the actual event that a QVC infomercial about Matchbox cars does to a real Corvette. The one drawback of BattleBots (specifically) is that it appears to threaten to consume all of the builders' money and then come back for more. After a while, watching high-performance motor controllers get bounced off the Plexiglas, one after another, can start to make you wince. It might be cheaper to just buy a lawnmower and push it back and forth over a big stack of $5 bills. If I were actually going to build a bot I might choose to enter a competition where more of the pieces make it back home intact. UPDATE: On the other hand, it's undeniable that watching things catch fire, get mangled, or be sacrificed in bold gambits is part of the fun.