I thought this was a great read. I was always a bit curious as to what became of Marc Thorpe because I, like many, assumed he'd have been really into BattleBots. Contracts are terrible things in most cases. Poor guy.
It's also sad to see the competitors themselves saying that by
2002 designs were becoming
too streamlined. Jesus, I look back at the fifth season of BattleBots and pine for the days when robots weren't made out of a solid piece of machined aluminum and the antweight class wasn't just 48 versions of VDD.
Wow, so contestants really DO/DID get paid, I had been wondering about this for years.
When I was a competitor at the Southwestern Alliance of Robot Combat from 2003 - 2004 I met up with the guys who built Steel Reign and they had a copy of their royalty check in their little scrapbook of photos and stuff. It was really neat, and they were paid quite a bit for the brief period of time they were on television (like $5,000 if I remember right). Derek Young (Pressure Drop, Complete Control) is/was a goon on Something Awful; he mentioned royalties (and he had toys and stuff made out of his robots) but declined to give a figure publicly. People were reimbursed pretty well and if you made it onto television you pretty much got your robot paid for in most cases. :)
Huh. That explains why we don't see Dan Danknick on Team Delta in Battlebots anymore.
LOL They hated Carmen Electra too.
Good to see the creators hated her presence too. I've been crying foul for a goddamned decade and people always go "that's just because you're gay".
