Please ignore the "walked 7 miles to school uphill both ways" nature of my post, but Richard brought up a few factors above that help support my theory that 2004 was one of FIRST's best games from both a participant and spectator's point of view:
- Projectiles are always super fun! Great for spectators and the element of unpredictability is exciting.
- Ending hanging points, and subsequent defense of the hanging bar, caused some of the most intense match endings I've ever personally witnessed.
- Autonomous mode was still somewhat in its infancy, but the great drop of kickballs was exciting (especially for teams that built giant funnels).
- The raise in platforms was a distinct design challenge for many teams.
- The high goals and low goals, and the 2x doubler ball, gave an opportunity to teams of all levels to build a robot that could contribute on the field.
...and finally, my favorite aspect:
- A really wide range of designs could effectively play the game. Funnels, hangers from the floor, defensive hangers (these were awesome), 2x ball manipulators, quick driving defensive bots with last-second hangs, and even a few robots that could do almost all of the tasks.
Having been on a GDC, designing games is hard. SO hard. Designing a game with a lot of the above points without it being too "busy", or having too many tasks for one team to complete, is harder. Designing a game where all levels of team experience can contribute to the gameplay is harder still. And on it goes. My hat remains off to all GDC members across all competitions, because it is truly a tough job to get just right.
tl;dr: 2004 remains my personal perfect mix of excited spectators, a unique spread of robots, excellent visual gameplay, good scoring spread among tasks, and being an interesting engineering challenge. YMMV. If you aren't familiar or haven't watched videos, you should check it out.