'Pimp' my robot
New game offers custom-made 'bot-killing machines
By Sid Lipsey
CNN Headline News
(CNN) -- From "The Terminator" and "Lost In Space" to "Voltron" and "BattleBots," countless movies, TV shows and video games have relied on one piece of conventional narrative wisdom: Robots are really, really cool.
And it goes without saying that robots are even cooler when you can load them up with ultra-destructive weaponry that you choose yourself, step into a virtual arena, and administer a merciless beat-down on an unsuspecting foe.
Such is the appeal of "Custom Robo," Nintendo's newest game for its GameCube system. "Custom Robo" titles have been available in Japan for five years, but the new version is the first made specifically for U.S. gamers. With the popularity of Japanese animation and the enduring demand for fast-paced action games, "The current market here in the United States was ripe for a game like this," says Tim O'Leary, a member of the Nintendo "localization" group that translated "Custom Robo" for the United States.
Think of "Custom Robo" as "Transformers" meets MTV's "Pimp My Ride," the cable TV show that transforms "busted, poor excuses for transportation ... into profilin' works of customized art," according to MTV's Web site.
"Custom Robo" is set in a semi-futuristic world in which conflicts are settled on virtual battlefields called "holosseums" and the combatants are heavily armed and highly maneuverable robots. Before each battle, you have the option of tricking out your robot with your choice of up to 200 body styles and high-tech weapons -- each with colorful names such as Wyvern Guns, Burrow Bombs and Metal Grapplers.
The game offers both a single-player mode -- where you're a young "robo commander" trying to bring down a crime syndicate -- and a multiplayer mode in which you and up to three buddies can engage in one-on-one or two-on-two fights, tag-team combat or an all-out, every-man-for-himself battle royal with each player sporting his own personalized robot-killing machine.
The creators of "Custom Robo" believe the ability to customize a robot, and the simplicity with which a player can do so, are the game's chief selling points. Although "Custom Robo" offers a vast smorgasbord of parts and options, Rich Amtower -- another member of the Nintendo localization team -- notes that it's still possible to just "pick up [your weapons], throw them on the robot and jump into battle."
 "Custom Robo" lets gamers take on up to three friends in a robotic smackdown. |  |
And that ease-of-use might just help a player find foes to vanquish. "[Custom Robo] is easy to pick up," says Nintendo's O'Leary. "You can grab three friends on the fly and have a quick and dirty four-player melee and beat the crap out of each other."
It may very well be that this game's appeal lies beyond the promise of whippin' up on your buddies or the age-old "robots-are-cool" axiom. O'Leary thinks it goes to nothing less than the human psyche, which finds a special allure in the ability to do things that we puny humans can't normally do.
"If I can leap a tall building in a single bound, that's cool," O'Leary says.
"But," he adds wistfully, "If I can do that inside a 300-pound steel chassis, that's even better."
