We. Are. Doomed. While Japanese robots divert our attention with cute faces and coffee-making, the real work is being done at places like Rutgers University, where a robot has learned how to play Pitfall.

Yup. Pitfall. First step, Atari games, next step, the enslavement of humanity. Or our eradication. Whichever our robot overlords feel up to once they assume control.

This clip shows off the university’s Object-Oriented Markov Decision Processes, which is a fancy way of saying the AI tries, tries then tries again until it knows how to do something. And while the clip is jarring, it’s worth watching to the end. Where the robot gets to the end, and does a happy dance.

Machine Plays Pitfall, Dances [GameSetWatch]

Well that all depends on who you ask. As we mentioned yesterday, we’re doing this three ways. The actual outcomes have been determined by random number tumbling, with you, the readers, placing your predictions up against Crecente’s automated R2-D2, which is using the randomly running over scraps of paper method of prediction. In the end, we’ll not only know who is the top video game robot, but also a heartwarming tale of man’s triumph over machine, or vice versa.

Let’s take a look at the results of round 1!

How You Voted
First, we’ll run down how you folks voted as of the writing of this post.

Optimus Prime VS. Dog
Optimus Prime: 64% (2917 votes)
Dog: 36% (1651 votes)
Winner: Optimus Prime

Mega Man VS. HK-47
Mega Man: 60% (2676 votes)
HK-47: 40% (1798 votes)
Winner: Mega Man

Portal Turrets VS. Kos-Mos
Portal Turrets: 50% (2219 votes)
Kos-Mos: 50% (2256 votes)
Winner: Kos-Mos by the skin of her teeth

Robo VS. Fruit Fucker 2000
Robo: 42% (1865 votes)
Fruit Fucker 2000: 58% (2527 votes)
Winner: Fruit Fucker 2000

How R2-D2 Voted

Using its powerful randomly running around ability, Crecente’s R2-D2 robot picked Optimus Prime, Kos-Mos, Mega Man, and Fruit Fucker 2000. So both the robot team and the human team had the same picks.

And they were both half-right.

The Official, Randomised Results

In Los Angeles, Kos-Mos senses the dangerous Portal Turrets before they sense her, blasting them into bits and taking a good-sized chunk of the Los Angeles Convention centre with them in the process. Optimus Prime and Half-Life 2’s Dog smash through downtown New York City, leveling buildings left and right until Optimus gently puts Dog down with a laser sword to the head. In San Francisco, Mega Man’s buster proves an insufficient weapon against Knights of the Old Republic’s resident homicidal droid, with HK-47 stopping at a junkyard to sell the blue bomber’s parts for scrap, killing the junkyard owner and several curious dogs in the process. Finally, in scenic Raleigh, North Carolina, Chrono Trigger’s Robo patiently waits for the Fruit Fucker to stop trying to have sex with him, eventually losing patience and crushing him like a can of vending machine fruit juice.

The remaining robots sense that the key to returning to their own realities lies in the transponders high atop Kotaku Towers. Unfortunately their battles have taken out the towers in New York, San Francisco, Colorado, Los Angeles, and Raleigh (that one was made of sticks), so they now turn their attentions to the other side of the globe…

Results So Far

With both human and robot predictions being exactly the same, the human race and machines are now tied at 50% accuracy each. Perhaps round 2 will change things up a bit.

Round 2, Fight!
OPTIMUS PRIME VS. HK-47
Feeling a deep ancestral pull to the land of the rising sun, Optimus Prime makes his way across the ocean, making a beeline for the Japanese branch of Kotaku Tower. Unbeknownst to him, HK-47 bought a plane ticket with the money he made scrapping Mega Man and is on his way to the tower himself, after stopping by a store for some gashapon.

KOS-MOS VS. ROBO
Wary of the reception that a blue-haired, scantily clad anime girl would receive in Japan, Kos-Mos instead makes a pilgrimage to the Canberra, Australia branch of Kotaku Tower, somehow missing the giant Chrono Trigger robot plodding along behind her.

Not counting his first Japan-only forays on the Famicom and Superfamicom, Astro Boy has only appeared in one PlayStation 2 game and one GameBoy Advance game. The year was 2004 and both Sonic Team and Treasure Inc. (partnered with Hitmaker) developed games based on the 2003 anime remake of the original 1960s Astro Boy cartoon. Sonic Team’s PS2 game, Astro Boy, was pretty lousy while Hitmaker/Treasure’s GBA Astro Boy: Omega Factor was one of the best things to happen to handhelds that year. Since then, we’ve got nothing but a quietly-announced, never-demoed tie-in game to the upcoming CGI Astro Boy film directed by David Bowers.

Astro Boy’s absence from video games could be due to many reasons – licensing, marketing, etc. – but two big ticket items ultimately tank any hopes of a serious Astro Boy gaming franchise: demand and need.

There’s not enough demand for Astro Boy video games in the United States because we don’t love him the way they do in Japan. The 1960s cartoon didn’t even complete its full 193-episode run in the States when it originally aired in 1963; and it took decades before Dark Horse Comics to translate and publish the manga. Poor Astro Boy just wasn’t on the radar as America’s resident robot hero.

Back in 1960s Japan, when Astro Boy was first created, there was a desperate need for heroes. World War II had been over for more than a decade, but there was a loss of hope in the country and a profound fear of technology and nuclear weapons*. Anime and manga icons like Astro Boy and Ashita no Joe restored to Japan a sense of purpose and youthful optimism they’d lost in the war. Also, science-y things like Astro Boy put a friendly, rosy-cheeked face on technology, which helped the country cope with the devastating fear inspired by the A-bomb attacks.

In short, Japan needed Astro Boy and America didn’t. Without the need for the robot boy hero, America never established a connection to Astro Boy that would inspire parents to make their children watch the 1960s cartoon. Later when the 2003 reboot of the anime series reached America, the show still couldn’t find its audience and was canceled after spawning the hideous PS2 game and the wonderful GBA game.

That’s not to say America can live without robot heroes.

We have one, in fact, and his name is Mega Man. Mega Man does most of the same stuff as Astro Boy – he even has the beam cannon on his arm – and he beat Tezuka’s beloved boy robot to the US gaming scene by a good decade or more. He may not be as fleshed-out a character as Astro Boy, because Mega Man didn’t start out with a manga or cartoon series to establish his back story. But he did have the whole filial piety thing going on with his creator, Dr. Light, which was similar to the connection Astro Boy had for his adoptive father figure, Dr. O’Shay (a.k.a. Dr. Ochanomizu, Dr. Packadermus Elefun, Professor Peabody, Jimmy Durante’s nose-twin). So what if Mega Man wasn’t about childlike wonder or youthful optimism; so what if he never did anything serious like address racism against robots. Mega Man was about kicking robot arse and Americans can totally get in on that.

So, alas, Astro Boy. We loved you in Omega Factor and we respect you as a cultural icon worthy of Mickey Mouse’s company – which is why you’re in the Robot Hall of Fame. But Mickey doesn’t have a great gaming franchise and so far, you don’t either. Maybe your upcoming tie-in movie game on PS2, Wii, PSP and DS will be good. Heck, maybe the film itself will be awesome. But in the meantime, we’ll be sticking with Mega Man 9.

*The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Donald Richie

Capcom isn’t completely sure and that’s why they’re asking their blog readers to go support their iconic blue-clad hero by voting for him on the Robot Hall of Fame’s official site. The French robot, Maillardet’s Automaton is currently ahead of Mega Man by 8% — but I’d say Dr. Wily’s foe has much stiffer competition from Futurama’s Bender and Invader Zim’s Gir.

It may be that Mega Man still has a chance, even if the Automaton tops him in the voting pool; the Robot Hall of Fame has two categories to honour robots. One is for real-life robots like Honda’s ASIMO and the other honors robots from science fiction where robots “have achieved worldwide fame as fictional characters and have helped form our opinions about the functions and values of real robots.”

Hm. Maybe Bender and Gir’s chances aren’t so good, then. Also Will Wright is on the jury, so that may be Mega Man’s ace in the hole.

Get Mega Man into Robot Hall of Fame [Capcom]

Maybe the website for Will Wright’s entertainment think tank is just a website. But given that it has three games of sorts hidden on it, I’d like to think there’s more to it than that.

I’ve been messing around with all three for a bit now and am most intrigued by the one you can access by clicking on the black hole where a rectangle should be on the front page. Maybe Wright is just messing with us, but I’d like to think that if we get the order “right” it might reveal something.

Of course the website was created back in 2002, so maybe it’s just a bunch of silliness. Afterall, he did have a hand in making this M.Y. Robot video.

Stupid Fun Club

Last June, Sony Computer Entertainment filed a patent application for a real robot that interacts with video games. Think of it as Sony’s take on R.O.B.

The patent shows a robot outfitted with a camera that enables the bot to decipher the surrounding environment. There’s a microphone that makes it possible for the robot to react to sound. A detection sensor is planned as well. There’s a display that can show images.

The patent gives no details about how the robot will be used during gameplay, though the robot’s processing power lets the robot respond to commands even though the robot’s and the player’s point of views will obliviously be different.

But with Sony freezing company wages in an effort to help cut company loses, we don’t expect to see anything like this from Sony until the economy climbs out of the toilet.

Sony Computer Entertainment Making… A Robot Accessory? [Siliconera]

NCsoft’s doomed massively-multiplayer online science fiction game Tabula Rasa may only have weeks to live, but the developers are making those weeks count, with giant player-controlled mechs storming the title’s final moments.

Role-playing pioneer Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa might be dead come February 28th, but the team behind the title continue to show their dedication to the game’s dwindling fanbase by patching in the promised player-controlled mech robots at the last moment, perhaps delivering a taste of what might have been had the game not tanked so horribly.

Five new mechs have been added to the Edmund Range Training Grounds zone in the game, which has been newly enlarged in order to accommodate some heavy metal combat. While four of the mechs are class-themed, any class can take them for a spin, provided they have the Logos symbols necessary to activate the suits’ special abilities.

With the addition of the new mech suits, now would be the perfect time to login to the now free-to-play Tabula Rasa and give them a go. Well, I suppose now would be the only time to do so.

Deployment 16.4 – Patch Notes and Known Issues [Tabula Rasa via Eurogamer]

Beatnik Games has officially launched the Open Beta for Plain Sight, the multiplayer online PC game that pits bouncing robot against bouncing robot in a sword-swinging fight to the finish.

The subtitle for Plain Sight is “Kill Yourself”, and there’s a good reason. You are a robot, killing other robots for points. The more points you get, the bigger and brighter you become. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, yes? Here’s the twist – you only get to bank points if you kill yourself before the others kill you. Not only do you have to be good at robot killing, you also have to know when to throw in the towel, which adds a nifty little element of strategy / gambling to the game.

To participate in the open beta, hit up the link below and download the game. That’s it, no account needed – just download the 128 MB file and go. Happy hunting. Make sure you kill yourself in a timely fashion.

Download Plain Sight Now [Beatnik Games]

CNN has just run an interesting segment on military robots coming in the near future that will be controlled using the Nintendo Wii remote, looking at the pros and cons of Wii-bots.

The main benefit of using a Wii remote to control military robots is the ease of use, especially compared to today’s control panels, which feature more than 40 buttons that a soldier must keep on top of during sensitive procedures. On the other hand, developers have to overcome sensitivity concerns to make sure a twitching soldier doesn’t accidentally set off a bomb or alert enemies to the robot’s presence, while also making sure the signal cannot be hacked. The last thing we need is for the enemy to pull out their own Wii remotes, as hilarious as the mental picture that brings to mind may be.

How long until we start getting photos of remotes stuck in jeep windshields?