I'm going to stretch back as far as I can, at the risk of making some subjective judgments. It was a long time ago and I was young (in elementary school), so maybe some older folks with a better memory can fill in the gaps.
In 1994, the game involved collecting soccer balls and placing them up in a tower goal in the center of the field. One team stuffed all their balls into a box, and then dropped the entire box onto the goal, which effectively prevented any other teams from scoring.
I felt that the 1995 game was "broken", in that the dominant strategy employed by many teams was probably not what the game designers had in mind. The manual reads, "Points are scored for balls which are thrown, tossed, pushed, passed, etc." through a football goalpost at the top of a ramp. My guess is that the intent was for balls to be primarily thrown and tossed, but teams realized they could hold on to the ball and pull it back and forth through the goal to rack up lots of points. There was only one goal, so whoever got into the scoring position first was almost guaranteed to win the match unless others could quickly dislodge them.
I've heard that team 121's 1997 robot was designed to intentionally tip other robots over, which was explicitly allowed at the time:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by 1997 Rulebook, T5
Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, or entanglement of opponents' robots are not in the spirit of The Competition and will not be allowed. Turning over an opponent's robot is not robot is not considered damaging and will be allowed.
|
They didn't win, but we did get a new rule in the rulebook next year:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by 1998 Rulebook, V5
Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over or entanglement of opponents' robots are not in the spirit of The Competition and will not be allowed.
|
Ah, the old days.
