Mr. Robot Universe 2008: Video Game Edition

Robots are as much a part of gaming as growth-inducing mushrooms and seemingly endless collectibles. In a wide variety of genres, gamers are given the opportunity to engage in cybernetic shenanigans, whether it’s building, destroying, riding, or flat-out being a robot. At first, I thought it’d be a good idea to try and rank some of gaming’s greatest robots; after all, gamers love their ordered lists. Try as I might, however, I just couldn’t bring myself to rank them. Instead, avoiding the whole apples vs. oranges argument altogether, I thought I would share with you some of my favorite robots from my personal gaming experiences in a list with only a slightly particular order.

• Bomberman. You know, in hindsight, a robot who generates bombs in his hands sounds a lot more violent than the game actually is. The Bomberman games have spanned decades and are a sure-fire party pleaser. Nothing brings people together and then blows them apart (in a string of expletives) like an endless supply of explosives.



• Dog. Simply appearing in one of my favorite games of all time is certainly a good start, but Half-Life 2’s Dog does a great job of eliciting emotion from the player. Whether he’s bashing down doors or flinging a car (with you inside it, mind you) across a chasm, Alyx’s pet robot brings a ton of personality to Gordan Freeman’s universe. (Notice the painstaking avoidance of the awful “man’s best friend” pun.)



• Mortal Kombat Robots. If you grew up with MK the way I did, you remember a simpler time when every new character addition was something to get excited about. Cyrax and Sektor (affectionately known as “the yellow one” and “the red one,” respectively) debuted in MK3 and were an immediate hit… with no less than 2 of the 3 friends I had at the time. I’m pretty sure they even made their way into the cinematic abomination that was the second Mortal Kombat movie. Tell me that’s not worth a shout-out.



• HK-47. Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic was a shining beacon admist a sea of subpar Star Wars games. The engaging, massive story and diverse settings made KOTOR one of the most well-received games of all time. One of the highlights for me was HK-47, the murderous albeit eloquent assassin droid that joins your crew. For those of you unfamiliar with HK, you really only need to know two things: 1) He refers to all humans as “meatbags.” 2) He spends the majority of the game saying things like, “detail your involvement or the master will splatter your organs all over the floor.” Oh yeah, he went there.



• Robo. Now things are getting good. In all honesty, I get a little emotional just thinking about this guy. Chrono Trigger for the SNES is, for my money, maybe the best RPG of all time. While I could easily take up the rest of this website waxing poetic about this game, if you’re really unfamiliar with it, it’s coming out on the DS this month. Buy it. Play it. Love it. For those of you who already know about Robo, you know how lovable this guy is. If you didn’t get a little choked up when his “brothers” smashed him up or when he volunteered to spend 400 years restoring a destroyed forest, then you clearly don’t have a heart. Maybe that qualifies you for my robot list.
• Mega Man. Okay, so I lied a little. I said I wasn’t going to rank them. But I saved Mega Man for last, and he’s last for a reason: he is the quintessential video game robot. The Blue Bomber has been busting bad bots for 21 years now, and I’ve been there every step of the way. The recent release of Mega Man 9 hearkens back to those early days and warms this gamer’s heart. If you’ve never experienced a real Mega Man game, you owe it to yourself to download 9 and give it, and this guy, a shot.

There are probably dozens more I could’ve added to this list. Share some of your own choices.