Favorite FIRST Game

[GoSparx]

Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII

What has been your favorite FIRST game?
Which game did you think was...

>Most fun to watch
>Most fun to play/operate
>Had the best autonomous mode
>Sufficiently challenging (not unfair to rookie teams)
>Had the best challenge (pushing boxes, shooting balls)
>Generated a wide variety of diverse designs

I don't want to know what game your team did best at, I'm just curious to know which game was everyones favorite.


I've seen four years of FIRST games (Stack Attack, Raising the Bar, Triple Play, Aim High), all of which were good, but some were definitely better than others. My personal favorites have been Stack Attack and Aim High, both of which were exiting to watch and offered large open playing fields, allowing robots to zoom about unobstructed.

Also, what made that game great? Why did you like it.

By far, FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar was the best. You got to see totally different robots and the best part is, you got to see totally different robots that could all win. Usually this year, if you couldnt score the the center goal, you werent going to win. In Raising the Bar, you saw tons of different robots. Ball herders, ball dumpers, climbers, hangers of all different sorts, moveable goal grabbers etc. It was a great and fun game to watch.

[Jon K.]

My favorites are 2000 Co-Opertition FIRST (I wasn't on a team, and I was amazed by the robots, I was a dissalusioned 7th grader going to my first FIRST competition and fell in love.)

2002, it was a fun game, a lot of great robots were involved in the game that year, and traction was crazy. Plus it was one of the easier games to explain...

2005, it was just a unique challenge

2006, Again another unique challenge and it put most teams on a semi level playing field making for an interesting year.

[George A.]

I love the 2002 game...it was simplicity and complicated all at the same time. Easy to tell who was winning.

2001 was neat because I love seeing a high score...and an allaince getting a score of 700 something was pretty much as high as you can get w/o it being a glitch.

2003 & 2004 hold a special place in my heart because in 2003 I had the same design as 111 (who won the CHampionships...great minds think alike) and in 2004 my team won our first regional.

But overall I have to say 2002...HP could score balls, robots could score balls...tethers into end zone (Go Mini-MORT) and then you have the tug of wars for the goals....so exciting to watch.

[spears312]

I think Raising the Bar was probably the best game I have seen first hand. That was my freshmen year and the high level of diversity in the robots that year due to all the different ways to score has really been unparalleled the last two years.

[Bongle]

It may just be because I've seen 3 competitions worth and really gotten familiar with the game, but Aim High is pretty awesome. The real time scoring was really only screwed up in about 3% of matches that I saw.

Could anyone that remembers games earlier than 2003 please create wikipedia pages about them? I've been trying to get all the old games into wikipedia, but since I've only been around since 2003, I don't know tactics for any game earlier than that. I also don't have pictures for them.

Edit: If you don't want to update wikipedia, please email me some pictures of games in progress at artartartartort@hotmail.com

[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.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Philmont629

I like the theory behind Stack Attack, competitive box stacking that seemed fun. But sadly at GLR and WMR not much of that happened . It seemed to me that this was the ultimate "box on wheels" game (not to insult anyones design) but most of the game time seemed to be focused on pushing boxes out of the scoring zones.

Our robot was the ultimate "box on wheels". We never won any regionals but we won 3 out 4 mini-competitions we went to, including Battlecry, the IRI of New England. That's why Stack Attack was one of my favorites out of the games from 2002 on. However, since watching a video of Stack Attack recently, I realized that it was kind of a boring game. Autonomous was the most interesting part. What's cooler than a robot flying up a ramp at full speed into a wall of boxes?

I didn't like Raising the Bar because there wasn't much strategy involved. Usually the strategy was... hang. Throw your 6 balls into the goals, cap it and hang.

Triple Play is my favorite. I really like the games that took a bit of extra thinking. Aim High is one of those. Triple Play took a lot of thinking on your toes and it was very back-and-forth with rows and such. I liked the idea of extra points scored based on your strategy. Also, if you are behind, you can come back with a row. Aim High, you can't really do that. Also, our robot performed well... and stuff, but that's another story.

Aim High is wicked cool. Nothing is cooler than something shooting another something. It has to be the most impressive game thus far. What's more impressive than arbitrarily moving your robot, pushing a button, and having your camera re-aim your shooter dead on? So that the next person who came along and pulls that trigger will score. It's a really fun game to watch, but the design phase was painful. At least it was for us.

[Nuttyman54]

I'd have to say either FIRST Frenzy or Diabolical Dynamics. Both games had many ways to play and so many different robots. Aim High would be next, just from the sheer awsomeness of shooting balls and multiple periods. Also, making autonomous really count was a GREAT addition.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Also, making autonomous really count was a GREAT addition.

I agree. After all, robots are supposed to be autonomous. I hope they make autonomous mode important again next year.

[Ryan Dognaux]

FIRST Frenzy was my favorite game. It just seemed like it was a culmination of elements from many previous years games - like the best part of each game combined into one mega game. It was great.

But coming close was Stack Attack. What could be better than seeing robots autonomously (a first that year) racing up the ramp and driving through a huge wall of containers.

Triple Play was good too, but my least favorite of the games I've been involved with is Zone Zeal (2002). By the end of the year, it seemed like it was just a huge pushing match.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Stack attack was my favorite. I really enjoyed seeing our robot open up wide and knock 4-5 stacks down at one time

After that, its Aim High....who doesent like being able to shoot things

[UCGL_Guy]

For me 05's triple play provided the most enjoyment.
good interaction and back and forth on the scores. Only real downside was the penalties were a little out of line.
A close second was our rookie year of 2000 - I can still recall 25 controlling the bar at nationals and being impressed they could do that with only 120 pounds - AAAhhh the bewilderment of being a rookie.
Third would be 01 - I actually liked the strategy involved with getting four teams to work together.
4th probably 06 with Aim High - had good viewer appeal
5th let's see o4's game - lot's of fun and interaction - at times too much.
6th would have to be Stack attack it was cool to see those containers go flying.
Aah yes and then Zone Zeal - very complex weird game did not like at all.

I really like the sounds of the Hockey Puck game. Maybe it could be resurrected in some format or another.

[Jake177]

Originally Posted by Bongle

Could anyone that remembers games earlier than 2003 please create wikipedia pages about them? I've been trying to get all the old games into wikipedia, but since I've only been around since 2003, I don't know tactics for any game earlier than that. I also don't have pictures for them.

My old high school's team has pretty good summaries of all the games up to 2005
http://www.swindsor.k12.ct.us/Highsc.../history.shtml

My favorite game was 2004, with 2001 in a close second. I may be a little biased because my high school team did very well in both of these games. I really enjoyed the diverse robot designs that they yielded. With the diversity of designs came a diversity of strategies, which made every match different and exciting.

[Elyse Holguin]

oh phoo. i voted zone zeal (which is still #2 for me) but then decided raising the bar was way more fun to watch. and build for.

[NoodleKnight]

I had 4 favorites, actually. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006. 2002, I only watched this through videos, but it had a lot of robotic tug-of-war/pushing, which spawned a lot of interesting drivetrain designs. 2003, just like 2002, it called for a lot of pushing, my first year on my team, overall fun experience. 2004, the game had a lot of objectives, and to watch a robot that could complete all of them (like 254) was really exciting. 2006, it had an open field and you had to shoot balls, lots of robot pushing/shoving mixed in with flying balls (it's always humorous to see the balls get miss-fired into the crowd or elsewhere), always fun to watch/compete -- so Aim High gets my vote.