even though i haven't been around long. I'd have to say that 99' was the best year. And i think 2v2 is always going to be the best format of play

The year with the game "Double Trouble" (1999, I believe).

I will never forget that match at Rumble at the Rock when we were paired with Lebanon, and we, as an alliance, swept house (literally) in a match (the one where Lebanon showed their awesome lifting skills).

I'm going to play devils advocate and say that I liked 2001 best. Now before you shout and say what is he a wacko look at the evidence. Now I was on Team 151 in 2000 and agree it was a thrilling year. Watching everyone try to hang was great, and there were some cool defensive strategies like 25, and 131. However most of the bots were very similar. They either had Roller systems or arms and that was pretty much the extent of the Creativity.

Now look at 2001, first I agree that the lack of an opponents made the game tuff to understand, and the fact that some teams never got to do what they wanted because of bad alliances. However look at the differences in bots that were created. Look at the differences in strategies. You had Low riding goal balancers 151, 266, You had high riding goal balancers 33, 95. You had low riding Big ball scorers 177, 125; Tall big ball scorers 131, 190. You had small ball scorers 124, 42. Then you had more creative people Ramp bots like 111,69 or people who tried balancing goals from off the bridge 166, 308, 71. Or teams like 97 that had a good idea of tipping the goal on top of them.

Now some people say the game wasn't exciting, At UTC when the 126,177,69,501,175 alliance got 510 the whole crowd went nuts.
At Nats the tents were so loud most people only stayed in there when their team was competing. The crowd went nuts when the alliance of 254,33,111 and the RoboHamas came really close to topping Beatty…the whole crowd moaned when the bridge didn’t’ balance. The crowd cheered as 71,365,125, Tech Fusion, Beach city Robitcs, won…..

But I think the best proof this years comp was exciting was RiverRage. There were only 15 teams there. Most hadn't won anything yet that year, yet the crowd treated the final matches like they were the nationals people who didn't know the game just fed off the excitement.

Sorry for the length of the post. Just look back at your 2001 experience I bet you had fun…and that’s what its all about. And I’ll bet you’ll have fun next year.

Chris
Team 151: The Wildcards
http://team151.tripod.com

I liked this years game a lot. one reason is because we had a very successful year. but i like 99 the best because the game just seamed like a lot more fun. it also may have been because it wass my first year

2001 was easy on robots
 

While, in general I was not too crazy about the 2001 game, there was one thing I did like about it. The lack of direct interaction between the robots resulted in few broken machines. That allowed us to "take it easy," relatively speaking, between matches since we didn't have to fix our machines.

The other neat thing about the 2001 game is that it provided an application for the gyro, providing some fun work for our software guys.

I really liked Ramp N' Roll in '95, but thats partially because its the first time I ever saw a robot in action and I thought it was really cool. But besides that my favorite year was '99 I loved the floppies, the puck and the game in general! That was such a sweet game, defense and offense and strategy , and those floppies make sweet pillows :) .

Either 99 or 00 are my 2 favorite. I guess i just like the battles over getting on somthing. I really like watching 4 robots pile up on the ramp in 00 specially when you had one hanging and 3 all squished under it. 99 was kool when you had 4 robots fighting over the movealbe puck, then seeing all of thoes big lifts go up at the end, very kool.



Andrew

Well, out of my years (though not many) in FIRST, I think I would have to say my favorite year was my first, '99. I like the whole 2 vs 2 thing, and I guess it didn't help that my team sucked in 200. :)

~Christina

I've been doing this since '97 and don't know much about the earlier games, but I do know that '99 was my favorite. When I evaluate a certain year's game, I look at two different factors, how fun it was to design and build the robots, and how fun it was to watch.

In '97 there was one goal, to place inner tubes on a goal. Inner tubes had never been used before, so this was a small "problem" when designing the robot, but other then that, there was one task and the best robots all did exactly the same thing. To me, this makes both building and watching fairly boring.

In '98, the goal was to place very large balls either in a large tube, or horizontally. The biggest design decision was whether to use rollers or grabbers, and IIRC, the technokats (national champions) used a pretty cool combination of both. Watching the matches was a little more interesting, but there still was basically one task.

In '99, the goal was to raise floppies into the air. The floppies were totally unlike any other object used before and posed quite a design challenge to both to pick up and keep from fouling drive trains. The other goal was to get on the puck. Both of these were completely different and either required two different manipulators or a manipulator and a complicated drive train. When watching the matches there was enough to keep all 4 teams busy for most of the time, and there was always the last minute rush for supremecy of the puck.

In 2000, it was back to balls to manipulate. This time the goals were to place the balls in the goal and hang. In this respect it was similar to '99, except it didn't have the added design challenge of the floppies.

2001 had the most design challenges of all. The limboing, ballancing, big balls ... In this way, 2001 was easily the most interesting competition to design for and I can easily see why it was some people's favorite. On the other hand, the gameplay was the worst yet and I can easily why it was many people's least favorite.

In my opinion, 1999 had the right combination of gameplay and design challenges and was my favorite.