[Richard Wallace]

I voted Hexagon Havoc for sentimental reasons. That was the game my rookie year. It was an important year for several reasons:

1) Although my first team (the Arch Rivals) only lasted through 1997, several other 1996 rookies have gone on to become FIRST legends. One of my favorite '96 rookies was the Baxter Bomb Squad. Their pit was right next to ours, out in that sweltering hot tent in the Epcot parking lot. Another favorite '96 rookie was the Beatty Beast -- they got off to a fast start in FIRST by seeding #1 in their rookie year, and of course the rest is history.

2) As mentioned earlier, the human players made their debut in 1996.

3) Alliance-forming, although not officially sanctioned, first appeared in 1996 as an attempt to stop powerful robots. It was neither universally applauded nor reviled, and the differing viewpoints persist to this day.

4) Capping also made its first appearance. There was no bonus for capping the goal with one of the 30 inch balls, but capping effectively closed the goal to further scoring and was widely applauded as a crowd-pleasing cool play.

5) There weren't as many rules, and this left the door open to some creative play tactics -- as described in the earlier post. My own team's creative tactic was to deposit a part of our robot in the lower section of the goal, thereby making some goal space inaccessible to other teams. We had a special ball depositing mechanism that allowed us to access the blocked area.