Of all the games I have played so far, Rise of the Robots has the worst reputation. Or at least the bad reputation most extensively documented online, which is not the same thing. The failures of the ‘80s don’t live on in infamy to the same extent, or at least not if they aren’t on an E.T. the Extra Terrestrial scale. Also, games which are failures on many levels come out all the time, and just don’t get that much attention. What seems to have made the difference for Rise of the Robots and cursed it to live on in negative memory is the unique pain of dashed hopes.
Best as I can tell, people had high hopes for Rise of the Robots because it looked great. I can still see that, in a technical wow-check-out-these-screenshots-and-what-they’re-achieving way which stands up to the passing of a quarter of a century remarkably well. It’s a simple single-screen fighting game from a fixed perspective that takes as its selling point that its fighters are 3D robots, and the shiny gleam of their metal is a pretty cool effect which lends them a certain sense of presence. In 1994, it may well have looked amazing. To a point, that impressive look is a success of setting tight boundaries and doing a lot within those limitations.
I’m not going to differ too far from the consensus on Rise of the Robots, though, and one of the big reasons is that it takes those tight boundaries way too far. Mortal Kombat II had just upped the ante on what fighting games could do in terms of numbers of stages, fighters, and moves, and far from meeting that challenge, Rise of the Robots took things backwards. It offers few, lifeless stages and only seven characters in the whole game, all with limited and uninspired movesets. Worst of all, its single player mode traps you as one character. It’s a rather pathetic offering, however good it looks, and the fighting is dull and clunky.
I say however good it looks, but there is an even bigger catch there. Rise of the Robots looks technically good, but in any other sense it looks awful. The enemy robots – Loader, Builder, and other inspiring names – look like Transformers caught mid-transformation at the least interesting possible moment. They don’t look like humans (or like anything else much) but still fight in an essentially human style, which is a gigantic waste of potential. Given the chance to do anything, to bend the possibilities of technology and fiction to their will, Mirage turned out an ill-fitting imitation of what countless others had already done.
The character you get to control, though, is even worse. Cyborg, a musclebound blue humanoid, looks like the kind of generic figure you might have to fight a hundred of as an enemy in a scrolling beat-em-up. He gleams even shinier than the others, but gleam is no substitute for personality, including when it comes to visual design. Technical, robotic perfection isn’t very exciting or very beautiful. I’m not sure how that ever came as a surprise.
Gallup Compact Disc chart, Computer Trade Weekly, 9 January 1995 (chart for week to 24 December 1994 showing Rise of the Robots as previous #1)