what was your favorite first compition
 

I bet most of you will think my favorite comp. is 2000 but that is not true my favorite was 98. I think first had it more together back then.

Re: what was your favorite first compition
 

year 2000 without a doubt was the best year.

I may be biased!!
 

My favorite FIRST competition was 1998, because we won. What made it especially good was that our two previous years were, putting it mildly, not very good.

98 was most definitely the most exciting year. Oddly enough it was the last year of 1 vs 1 vs 1....... maybe they should bring this back?????

:)

2000, of course
 

Considering that 2000 was my first year, I would have to choose it as my best year overall. Also, I wasn't too thrilled about last years game as it did not involve any direct competition at all. This coupled with how well RAGE did during the 2000 season solidifies in my view on this -- 2000, 2000, 2000. This might not be the best view, however, as my field of view is limited to the games from the past two years.

Well seeing as last year was our rookie year and we beat a load of veteran teams I must say 2001 by far was our team's favorite season

1998 Competition
 

I think 1998 competition was wicked awesome. I really miss the 1v1v1 style, and I also think that human players had it much better. The game depended on the robot and strategy, but the human player could feed balls into the robot (with some restrictions) but they also could make or break the score . . . Just my opinions. . Have an awesome and safe Thanksgiving
-Katie Atiyeh

2000, hands down.

Almost every single match was exciting, simply because a major aspect of scoring involved cramming 4 robots onto a small platform at the end of the match. The defensive maneuvers were varied and interesting as well.

Those that enjoyed 1v1v1 must not be remembering it well.

I was on team #13 in 1998, the BioBeast. We had a fairly strong machine, I guess we were strong enough to get noticed. We were involved with quite a few matches where our 2 opponents conspired against us. It wasn't just us either, that's for sure. In the tournament at Nationals, I believe every one of the top 10 seeds was sent to the losers bracket by round 2. The finals were between two teams seeded in the 50's. It was sad to see the Bomb Squad and Motorola not end up there. Their machines were fantastic. It was enough of an issue that it was the last year of 1v1v1.

I'd have to say my favorite year was '99. We went down to Florida as a rookie team, with only 1 or 2 wins in our regional, and we went undefeated in nationals (I think there was only 1 or 2 other teams that managed to do that). That was great for me since I was the driver :-) The only letdown was that we didn't get selected for the finals, but oh well, it was fun.

2003 Competition, All the Way
 

I'd have to say that my favorite competition will be the 2003 comp, because that's when FIRST gets its show (Allegedly).

1997........yet to be matched
 

I noticed that a lot of people in this thread weren't around for 1997, so I thought I'd start with that. The thing that made it so good was the use of innertubes. It was a dynamic game and a sophmore year for many of the best teams in the country, including but not limited to beatty, the chief, 3dimensional services, and wildstang......although they kind of competed in the first competition.
Anyway. The robots were incredible(you all should of seen baxcat, a.k.a. heatwave.......that was when they used to be purple and black.......I've yet to see too many robots that matched that machine in pure beauty.)
I'll through a special nod to wildstang for 1997......they broke out that year with their nested telescoping lift. It's been copied but never replicated, at least not by anyone but wildstang. You can see it in the FIRST Place!
Beatty 3was in top form that year also.....winning their first National Championship.
I guess I really loved it so much because it's old school. The competition was small and the robots were amazing. Hopefully we can continue to recapture that spirit in the years to come.

Anthony Lapp
Team 221
MI Roboworks

I remember Windstang's '97 machine with the four stage lift made with their usual beautifully fabricated 1/32 inch (?) aluminum. As I remember, the lift was powered by four seat motors in tandem.

1999
 

'99 was definitely the best year in my book. it was the first year of alliances and it was a cool game, i thought..

next after that would definitely be '97... 1v1v1 and innertubes rocked..

my LEAST favorite ironically seems to be a favorite among many: 1998. I didn't like the game.. or that you started w/ points and your robot could never move and you had potential to win a match!! (situation: two robots are battling for the win.. knocking balls off, etc, blocking each other from scoring.. other robot never moves but their HP throws in all 3 balls and their 1pt ball stays on the rail... easy win for a broken 'bot ...eeeeek!)

that's it. :)

2000
 

I think that 2000 was the best year....mainly because it was my first year and we did pretty well.....

:)

I have to agree with Clark, 2000 was cool, the game was competitive, we were winners and runners up of the regionals we went to and we finished top 16 at nationals...

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.