More than just a battle between fictional robots, the Kotaku Robot Wars has been a battle between human intuition and robot computational power, with both sides attempting to predict the randomly generated outcome of the tournament. So far the humans have come out on top, but it's still anyone's game. Will humanity hold onto its lead, or will cold mechanical logic battle us to a standstill?

Time for the grand finale!

Your Predictions
The closest battle yet, with only a handful of votes separating the winner from the loser!

Kos-Mos VS. HK-47
Kos-Mos:50% (998 votes)
HK-47: 50% (981 votes)
The Fan-Picked Winner: Kos-Mos

R2-D2's Prediction
Even tiny, bulbous robots can't resist the draw of female blue-haired anime robots. It's a plague.

The Official Randomly Generated Results

The final two robots circle each other warily outside of Kotaku Tower Atlanta, optical sensors constantly shifting between the blinking transponder at the apex that represents their only way home and their opponent. Kos-Mos materializes twin chain guns which begin to whir as they spin. HK-47's finger tightens slightly against the trigger of his laser rifle. Suddenly, Michael Fahey bursts from within the tower, waving his arms and shouting, "Stop!"

Both robots turn and fire, executing Fahey for the crime of basically writing himself into a work of fan fiction, turning attention back towards each other without a second thought on the matter. The chain guns burst to life, filling the air around HK-47 with dust and shrapnel, his own laser rifle issuing the appropriate response, only to find empty space where the female robot once stood.

Kos-Mos kicks off the ground and launches high into the sky, travelling in a long, graceful arc, blue hair growing ethereally in the bright sunlight. Wasn't it night time a moment ago? And is that triumphant theme music playing in the background? Where the hell is that coming from?

Perhaps HK-47's circuits are deceiving him, but it doesn't matter. The blue-haired fembot lands behind and opens fire with everything she has, and several things she didn't have a few seconds ago.

"Disappointed exclamation: Oh shit." And then HK-47 disperses into a cloud of dust.

As Fahey's cats begin chewing on his remains, Kos-Mos ascends the last remaining Kotaku Tower, activating the transponder at the top and disappearing back into her own reality.

The Final Results

With humanity and R2-D2 both accurately predicting a win for Kos-Mos, that leaves us with 4 out of 7 correct for us fleshies and 3 out of 7 for the 'bots. With 57% accuracy to their 43%, humanity wins! Find a fellow human and give them a big hug, and feel free to punch any robots you might have running about to remind them of their place in the grand scheme of things.

Anyone who's played through a game like Microsoft's Fable II (who can forget your virtual dog?), BioWare's Mass Effect (with its robust roster of non-playable characters) or seen Sony's upcoming Heavy Rain (whose developer, Quantic Dream, promises a new type of relationship between player and character) may have wondered to themselves whether gaming, which is still in its infancy as an art form, is heading towards its inevitable Citizen Kane threshold. More than the graphics or surround sound, the latest game consoles' processing power are bringing to life AI-controlled characters unlike anything experienced before.

But what are these sentient beings that help or hinder gamers as they explore vast virtual worlds? Are the Locust Horde who hide behind blockades and orchestrate flanking attacks in Gears of War 2 the first step in some type of real-world AI nightmare like the apocalyptic future displayed in Warner Bros. Pictures' Terminator: Salvation? Will Steven Spielberg's next original game for Electronic Arts, which remains untitled, deliver on its promise of making a gamer connect with a female avatar emotionally?

Rather than go to the usual suspects of talented videogame developers, Kotaku set out to ask experts in the fields of Hollywood movie magic, theme park creators, robotics experts and AI specialists to answer the question: Do the AI-controlled characters in games qualify as robots or some other form of artificial life. Are those creatures who are at the player's mercy in Lionhead Studio's Black & White games truly virtual beings?

Akhil Madhani, technical staff director, Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development said that the term "robot" is used to describe a physical system, usually with the ability to respond to a changing or unstructured environment.

"As such, I don't think that most people would consider a videogame/virtual character to be a robot," said Madhani. "Nonetheless, algorithms used to program the behavior of a virtual character (not knowing the algorithms used in this case) may have application for a (physically embodied) robot."

Futurist Thomas Frey, executive director of the DaVinci Institute, has a much more sci-fi vision of gaming and the future.

"In short, our games have indeed evolved into crude life forms," said Frey. "Innovations in the digital world are happening exponentially faster than in the material world, so the digital beings in games will soon become far more lifelike, and will eventually step out of the screens and exist as 3D avatars, interacting with us, much like other people."

Frey believes the not-so-distant future will be inhabited by 3D avatars that will act like digital clones, sitting in for us at meetings and other types of gatherings, and learning from each interaction.

Others have a more realistic vision of the games of tomorrow.

Chris Darken, conference chair for Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment and an associate professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School, said that while game AIs have become more and more lifelike as a general trend and game characters are getting more information about their environment, and are processing it in more realistic ways; game AI is about creating a user experience, and game programmers are right to use whatever shortcuts and engineering tricks they can muster to produce the best possible experience given the budget of their project.

"Most game related AI today falls into the field of expert systems," explained Michael Schmidt, a Ph.D. student at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab. "In other words, they attempt to mimic and reproduce certain behaviors that we might expect a human to do; like path planning, avoiding obstacles, reacting to the user, etc."

"This is indeed very similar to some research that is going on in robotics," added Schmidt. "However, new research is beginning on to how robotics and AI systems can learn and understand their self and environment on their own, such that their behavior is self-emergent. Ultimately, we will have robotic and AI systems that won't need to be reprogrammed and redesigned for every task, but instead emerge naturally on their own".

Over the past four decades, videogames have evolved from the black-and-white graphics of Pong and Asteroids to lush 3D worlds that are actually now playable in full 3D thanks to new stereoscopic technology. Game AI has progressed from Super Mario Bros.' Goombas to Sega's Seaman to the aforementioned "best friend" in Fable.

"AI in games has come a long way, from simple look-up tables, to scripted interactions, and even some machine learning," said Schmidt. "However, it has only begun to scratch the surface of artificial life. The artificial life field is concerned with understanding and reproducing several essential functions in biology, such as evolutionary pressures and dynamics and self-reproduction."

Schmidt believes future videogame AI will likely move from expert systems, such as scripted behavior, toward more and more evolved and self-emergent behavior.

"Ultimately, everything from an AI creature's morphology and appearance to its behavior and interaction with the user could arise naturally from the environment and simulator itself," said Schmidt.

Like videogames, Hollywood technology is evolving at a record pace. Bret Nelson, producer, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, said that if you need an operator, it's not a robot. If it can perform its functions without intervention, it could be called a robot depending on what those functions are.

"I'd say that the game character is a robot if it would normally (or historically) be dependent on player input to perform its functions," said Bret Nelson, producer, Jim Henson's Creature Shop. "In that case, the AI would be serving a robotic function."

"I have to believe that the future of the game industry belongs to game makers whose characters delight their audience by displaying realism and intelligence in new and unexpected ways," said Darken.

At the end of the day, it's still the gameplay that matters. But improved AI does offer more challenges to gamers and helps immerse the player more fully in these worlds.

Dog is the sort of robot that can appeal to both men and women. He's loveable, fiercely loyal, and downright cute at times, but he's also capable of tearing open a Strider and ripping out its brains with his bare hands. He's an amazing mix of cuddly puppy and unstoppable destructive force that just speaks to something inside all of us.

If dogs are man's best friend, then Dog is his best friend with benefits.

Wait...

Terminator Salvation for the iPhone is another video game spin-off of the fourth Terminator movie, released earlier this month as another option for those look for an interactive expansion of the McG-directed Christian Bale-starring action flick. You could go with the console version of the game blasted through in three hours by Kotaku's Brian Crecente or this game, also a third-person shooter, which I wrapped up in 90 minutes. Both tell side-stories to the movie, this one alternating player control from John Connor to Marcus Wright, the heroes of the film.

The iPhone edition, developed by Gameloft and credited by the company as its 12th movie game, is comprised of eight levels of mostly on-foot cover combat with a couple of vehicle-based shooting missions thrown in. Several tilt-the-iPhone circuit-board hacking segments are sprinkled in as well. There was effort applied here, a reason enough for gamers to hope and part with five bucks?

Loved
The Movie Game Solution? Consider the variations of the simplistic, licensed movie game that gets gifted to movie fans. In the old days, there were lots of side-scrolling beat-em-ups on, say, the Genesis. These games were full price, but barely resembled the movies they were based on. They've mainly had some successors, including cheaper but still crude cell-phone movie games and expensive but much more graphically and aurally cinematic movie games for higher-end consoles. That latter group includes the recent console version of Terminator Salvation and typically costs consumers more than their gameplay quality warrants. Their value is in the you-are-in-the-movie virtual-acting experience they provide. You are John Connor up against Terminators while the signature soundtrack clangs. The fourth way? An iPhone/iPod-Touch game like this one that can look good enough and sound epic enough to put you in a movie experience, but will only run you five dollars. In terms of balancing blockbuster-cinematic-appeal, game-design-quality and wallet-expense, this may be the perfect scenario to amuse players without burning them. Apple's platform to the rescue?

Hated
Clumsy: While our future fight against murderous machines will not be an easy one, let's hope it's not this awkward. Gameloft's approach with third-person games like this on the iPod/iPhone is to imitate dual-analog controls via a virtual thumbstick on the left and a drag-your-right-thumb-to-aim mechanic on the right. The firing button is in the screen's lower right corner. The scheme works fine in straight-on firefights, and the snap-cover system works fine also when approached in a straight line, but at angles or in the heat of battle there is much stumbling, much getting caught on scenery and a very slow turning radius. Humanity can't win this way.

That Other Marcus: One assumes the game's designers have played Gears of War. Hence the cover system. Hence the curb-stomps. Hence the button-mash melee moments. Hence the vehicle missions. Where's Dom's wife? The problem here is that Gears controlled well. This barely gets by.

What you've got in Terminator Salvation is what one's lowest expectation of movie games should get you: something basic but enriched by the style of the movie. There's little the designers can probably do with the thin source material — after all, what is the essence of Terminator fiction that can be ported to a video game in any more complex way than skinning the enemies to look like killer robots? Little opportunity was squandered, because it's hard to see what opportunity there was.

Movie critics have already declared that the Terminator Salvation movie is like a video game. Doubtless they didn't have a game like Ico, Tetris or Portal in mind when they made that comparison, but might they have been comparing it to a game like iPhone Terminator Salvation? They might as well have been.

Terminator Salvation was developed by Gameloft for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Retails for $4.99 USD. Played through easy mode in 86 minutes, found 71 item drops to unlock concept art, started Extreme difficulty which swaps the lead character for a Terminator.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

But do you love her? Rally the troops, tally the troops! KOS-MOS has made it to the final round. She's up against robot assassin HK-47. Stiff competition. He's a drone, she's got nano-machines and pretty hair. You obviously love her, but why? Convince the naysayers!

Here's how this is going to work. We have two XL Stan Bush t-shirts and five signed copies of Stan's CD In This Life, which of course contains "The Touch". In order to win, you'll have to answer a series of five questions involving the original 1986 Transformers animated movie which the song first appeared in. The first three folks who deliver all five correct answers to KotakuContest[AT]gmail[DOT] com will be taking home a signed CD, while the first two who go the extra mile and provide the answer I am looking for to question five get a shirt as well.

And now, the questions!

1. In what year does Transformers the Movie take place?
2. In the original movie script, how was Ultra Magnus destroyed on the planet Junkion?
3. What is the Universal greeting?
4. Oooo, someone said a bad word. Who was it, and what was the word? No, dammit doesn't count.
5. Who killed Optimus Prime? There are two acceptable answers to this question, one more acceptable than the other.

Please note that the contest is only open to Kotaku readers in North America. Anyone giving away answers in the comments section will be banned and possibly set on fire.

UPDATE: All winners have been notified! Check your emails to see if you are getting a little somethin' somethin'.

For the record, the answers were:

1. 2005, or four years ago.
2. In the original script, as well as in the comic book adaptation, the Sweeps wrapped energy ropes around his arms and legs and torn him apart. In the movie, they cut that part, simply blasting him to pieces. We accepted torn limb from limb, but not simply "killed by".
3. Bah Weep Grahna Weep Ninny Bong, or some spelling of that.
4. Spike, not Bumblebee, shouted "Oh shit!" While early VHS versions of the movie cut this scene out, later added it back, with the 25th Anniversary edition actually having a chapter named after the line.
5. Megatron may have killed him damage-wise, but everybody knows that little jerkoff Hot Rod was the only reason Megs got the upper hand.

Once more we pit the power of human intuition against the mechanical will of Crecente's R2-D2 robot to try and predict the outcome of the Kotaku Robot Wars. At last count the humans and the robot were tied, both correctly predicting the outcome of two battles - Optimus Prime VS. Dog and Kos-Mos VS. Portal Turrets - while fan favorites Mega Man and the Fruit Fucker 2000 fell in combat against HK-47 and Chrono Trigger's Robo.

The results for round 2 are in, and they aren't looking good.

Your Predictions
Representing human intuition, you folks voted for who you thought would win the battles of round 2. Here are the results.

Optimus Prime VS. HK-47
Optimus Prime: 66% (1755 votes)
HK-47: HK-47 34% (923 votes)
The Fan-Picked Winner: Optimus Prime

Robo VS. Kos-Mos
Robo: Robo 42% (1095 votes)
Kos-Mos: 58% (1521 votes)
The Fan-Picked Winner: Kos-Mos

R2-D2's Predictions
Once again Crecente fired up his autonomous R2-D2 droid, setting it wandering free amidst scraps of paper with names written on them. In the end, R2 found the scraps containing the names Optimus Prime and Robo to be the most attractive.

Which group predicted most accurately?

The Official Randomized Results
Osaka Japan is in ruins, terrified citizens fleeing with whatever possessions they can as the ground rocks with the sounds of gunfire, explosions, and large metal footsteps. Optimus Prime grows increasingly more frustrated as the smaller, more agile HK-47 slinks in and out of buildings, seemingly firing from all angles at once. Staggering backwards, Optimus falls against the local Kotaku Tower, causing it to tumble to the ground. With a look of grin determination in his eyes he wills his chest plate open, reaching for the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. "Now light our darkest...wha?"

HK-47 rounds the corner, wearing the Matrix as a hat. "Oh, does the over-sized droid require this?" he asks, taking the Matrix off and tossing it into Optimus' eager hands, turning to walk away as the explosive filled artifact detonates.

Meanwhile, in Canberra, Robo fires a barrage of lasers at Kos-Mos, who barely manages to dodge the onslaught. She sustains little damage, but her clothing is torn to shreds. Robo's sensors overload, and he explodes, taking the last remaining Kotaku Tower with him.

Results So Far

While humanity has only accurately predicted 3 out of 6 battles, R2-D2 came up empty this round, so the humans are now leading 50% to 33%. All that remains now is...

The Final Round

HK-47 VS. KOS-MOS
But wait...in Atlanta Georgia, one last Kotaku Tower springs to life, having been powered off accidentally due to a cat chewing on the power cables. As soon as the power is restored a brilliant flash of light erupts from the tower's apex, and both remaining combatants appear. The transponder atop the tower holds the one remaining pathway back to their respective universes, and all that is standing in their way is each other.

Tune in tomorrow for the epic conclusion of the Kotaku Robot Wars!

For those who don't know what those are, know that sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov established three basic laws governing the programming of robots for his works, which later became almost canonical amongst other sci-fi writers, and which remain popular to this day.

Those three laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Simple. It's a paper/rock/scissors sequence of programming that allows a robot to look after itself without ever inflicting harm upon a human — which will be good to know in the dark, distant future when there are robots advanced enough to require such programming!

For now, though, the closest things we have in the real world to the classic idea of a "robot" are automatic vacuum cleaners, giant arms that work on factory floors and bipedal toys wheeled out at Japanese robotics shows.

But what about video game characters? They're governed by AI. And, in many cases, incredibly complex AI, to the point where non-playable characters can behave more naturally than the robots in Asimov's works. So this being robot week and all, we decided to ask a few game developers what their versions of Asimov's three laws were when coming up with gaming AI.

Jonny Ebbert, Relic, lead designer on Dawn of War 2:

1) Fun before difficulty. Always try to level the challenge appropriately at each level so that players feel good about playing. So make your Easy A.I easy, and your Normal A.I. kind of easy. Leave the sadism for Hard and Expert.

2) Add frailty but avoid stupidity. A.I.s need to make mistakes for the player to exploit from time to time but they shouldn't look dumb doing it. A.I's aren't fun to play if they always trigger their abilities perfectly when they have the chance (anyone old school enough to remember trying to Death and Decay a peon line against a Human AI), and they shouldn't always retreat at the perfect health level. But they need to stay in the range of competency when they do make "mistakes." It's a fine line to walk, but an important line.

3) Be a good teammate. Try to support your teammate's army when possible. Help out your opponent's base when it's under serious attack. Players love it when they see an A.I. that cares about how they're doing. They feel like they're cooperating rather than playing next to something.

4) Cheat wherever you can. A.I.s are handicapped. They need to cheat from time to time if they're going to close the gap.

5) Never get caught cheating. Nothing ruins the illusion of a good A.I. like seeing how they're cheating.

Matt Tonks, Epic, gameplay programmer on Gears of War 2:

Simplest answer:

1. Act smart until the player kills you.

Or, to be a bit more specific:

1. An AI must value its own life; take cover against threatening enemies, and avoid life-threatening situations.

2. An AI should attack the most threatening enemy, unless we are threatened… in which case, see rule #1.

The friendly AI has a couple rules added to the top:

1. A friendly AI should never get in the player's way. If you're in the player's way, get out of the way.

2. A friendly AI should stay near its assigned squad leader (usually the player).

And then the other rules:

3. An AI must value its own life; take cover against threatening enemies, and avoid life-threatening situations.

4. An AI should attack the most threatening enemy, unless we are threatened… in which case, see rule #3.

Todd Howard, Bethesda, executive producer on Fallout 3:

"I'll give you one from the old Terminator games, since the new movie is coming out. The Terminator cannot be reasoned with, can't be bargained with, and cannot be stopped. Unless of course he hits a chair, and since he can't path around it, we have him just start shooting."

Pin*Bot originates from the 1986 Williams pinball table of the same name. As you attempt to advance your silver ball from Pluto to the Sun, Pin-Bot is always watching you, even before you fire a couple of pinballs into his empty eye sockets, causing him to intone "Now I see you." He is an iconic figure in pinball history, spawning two sequels - The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot and Jack*Bot - along with a video game version for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Pin*Bot is a genuine gaming robot pioneer, with a hot wife to boot.

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The third-person shooter has gamers taking on Skynet and its army of robots as they fight to save a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines.

The Terminator and its red eyes has already spawned nearly two dozen Terminator themed video games. Can Terminator Salvation set itself apart... in a good way?

Loved
Cover Yourself: Terminator Salvation has a fairly robust cover system. That's because they expect you to use it in most encounters with the different bots you'll be going up against. You press a button to stick to cover and then push the thumbstick in a direction to see if you can move to nearby cover. While other games have done this before, I've never seen a game that allows you to move around an entire map almost entirely in cover.

Vehicular Homicide: The most enjoyable moments in the game are when you're not walking, but riding in the back of a truck or buggy or piloting an over-sized robot. These moments are few and far between and relatively short, but fun when they happen.

Hated
No Diversity: There seem to be less than half a dozen guns in this game. You also get grenades and pipe bombs. And that's it. But that's OK, because you're really only facing four types of enemies. Sure you'll see a few others and there are a couple of boss battles, but this is one sparse, unimaginative war going on.

Objective Confusion: The minimalist heads-up-display does little to help this game. Since you have no radar and no objective indicator you have to make sure to follow your teammates, teammates who either constantly run well ahead of you or stick so far behind they don't seem to like your company. Even more frustrating are the moments—the many moments—when you're getting peppered with enemy fire but you can't figure out where the gray enemies, which often blend into the rubble of the landscape, are.

Voice Acting and Plot: The voice acting in Terminator Salvation is just horrendous. It sounds like the lines were read, not acted, and recorded. It's the first time I've played a video game and really noticed the disconnect between the dialog and the avatars that are supposed to be speaking it. The plot, as short as it is, is completely free of twists, turns or nuance. You need to save a bunch of guys, killing robots on the way to your goal. End of story.

Cut Scenes: Created with the game engine, the cut-scenes at times look better and at other times worse than the gameplay itself. The scenes are often blurry, murky affairs with distractingly bad lip-syncing and no real emotion.

Short, Not Sweet: It took me just under three hours to blast my way through the game on the easy setting. That included getting lost and confused about my objectives a few times. I went back and played a few levels on the hardest setting and the only difference seemed to be the number of shots required to put a bot down.

Bad AI: One of the big points of this game is that you have to work in concert with your teammates to take down many of the enemies. That entails laying down cover fire into the front of a terminator while someone sneaks around behind it to blast its weak spots. Neat idea, and when it works it's sort of fun. But when the friendly AI just refuses to help you out it becomes an exercise in tedium.

Narrow Paths: It doesn't take long to realize that much of that vast landscape of destruction is off limits to you. The game piles up cars, rubble and buildings to make sure you can't stray very far from the beaten path. There are entire levels that look more like mazes than cityscape because the path is so narrow.

Terminator isn't a horrible game, but it is a bland one. The third-person shooter does little to set itself apart from other shooters or other Terminator games. The encounters with robots are so expected, so similar to one another that the game feels more like a job than a diversion.

Terminator Salvation was developed by GRIN and published by Equity Games and Evolved Games for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Released on May 19th. Retails for $59.99. Played Xbox 360 version. Completed story mode on easy difficulty, replayed through multiple levels on hard difficulty.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

"All of us are gamers, we all play video games all of the time," said Davin Sufer, chief technology officer of WowWee. "It's definitely a big part of our culture."

WowWee was formed in 1982 by brothers Richard and Peter Yanofsky, but it wasn't until 2004 that the company become known for their robot toys.

With more than 5 million units sold worldwide, Robosapian, released in 2004, was the first commercially-available biomorphic robot. In 2005, WowWee released their second version of the remote-controlled robot. In 2006, WowWee added a robotic reptile to their toys.

The company currently has a full line of robots, robocreatures and bugbots. Many of those creations, Sufer said, were conceived while playing games.

"All of our favorite video games have something in them that sparks an idea," he said.

The flying drones found in a lot of video games led WowWee to develop a line of flying toys, including the Bladestar. The helicopter-like Bladestar is an indoor flying machine that can dogfight by blasting infrared signals out of the remote. If the signal hits the toy it drops to the ground.

"We like that sort of gameplay," Sufer said.

WowWee is working on other toys that may make use of similar ideas, like shooting at one another. One, which Sufer couldn't go into much detail about yet, would be a ground toy that could fire off shots.

"We have some products inspired by fast-moving vehicles (that we are working on)," he said. "Grand Theft Auto-style, fast moving vehicles that will interact with each other."

The controls for WowWee robots also look toward gaming for inspiration. When initially released, the remotes used to control most of their robot toys looked like something you would use to turn on a TV or VCR. But more recent iterations include remotes that look more like video game controllers.

"We've definitely looked at video games for that," Sufer said. "We took some cues from video games to figure out how you would control a robot with multiple limbs."

WowWee's Tribot even uses tilt controls, allowing you to move the robot around as if you were playing a Wii game. There's also an iPhone app that allows you to control one of their robots.

"We're always looking at the latest technology," Sufer said. "Like controlling a robot by moving your hands, a lot of gesture based controls are happening right now."

But the company's biggest gaming effort hasn't yet come to fruition.

WowWee hoped to introduce a robot that used augmented reality to turn everyday spaces into a video game like world, but they backed away from the notion because they thought it might be too complex for the average consumer to understand and enjoy.

Rovio is a robotic wifi-enabled webcam. The dog-like device rolls around on three wheels and has a head-mounted camera and microphone. The device is controlled via a web browser.

"Initially the idea behind that product was more for gaming applications," Sufer said. "You play a game through a robot, by driving it around."

The idea was that you would place markers in a room in your house and then drive the robot around, controlling and watching it through a web browser, he said. When the robot saw and recognized those markers the software would replace the markers with gaming icons.

"We're still working on that angle," he said. "We thought it was a little too much for the market. People had to get used to robots first and then tack on gaming."

WowWee hasn't dropped the idea though, they hope to either release the software to support augmented reality with Rovio or perhaps release a new version of the three-wheeled bot with the game built into it.

"I think something like Rovio could be used as a gaming platform," Sufer said. "We are looking at it as a platform."

"I think that video games are getting more and more immersive and more and more interesting," Sufer said. "But there is always room for physical games and video games sometimes drive that need for real life objects."

As part of KotakuRoboto, we asked Garriott if he would send over some pictures of his personal collection of automata. His assortment, we're told, may be the largest private collection of automata in the world.

Here's a very, very small glimpse.

Poisoned Milk by famed contemporary automaton creator Paul Spooner.

Knocked out of commission in 1999 and brought back to life in 2300, the existentialist 'bot faces some tough moral choices in the game — way before moral choices were in vogue.

And if that wasn't enough, Robo will Rick Roll (Robo Roll?) you with his theme song. You cannot unhear this.

Well that all depends on who you ask. As we mentioned yesterday, we're doing this three ways. The actual outcomes have been determined by random number tumbling, with you, the readers, placing your predictions up against Crecente's automated R2-D2, which is using the randomly running over scraps of paper method of prediction. In the end, we'll not only know who is the top video game robot, but also a heartwarming tale of man's triumph over machine, or vice versa.

Why the official results are randomized: Some of you seem confused by why your votes are being ignored, so lets explain it a little more clearly. The winners have been predetermined by random number crunching. What we are voting on now is who we predict will win. Then we compare that to the predictions made by Crecente's robot, to determine which is better, human intuition or random robot hijinx. It's a war within a war. If we were to go solely on popularity, Monday's poll would have had Optimus winning, and this would all be over now. Moving on!

Let's take a look at the results of round 1!

How You Voted
First, we'll run down how you folks voted as of the writing of this post.

Optimus Prime VS. Dog
Optimus Prime: 64% (2917 votes)
Dog: 36% (1651 votes)
Winner: Optimus Prime

Mega Man VS. HK-47
Mega Man: 60% (2676 votes)
HK-47: 40% (1798 votes)
Winner: Mega Man

Portal Turrets VS. Kos-Mos
Portal Turrets: 50% (2219 votes)
Kos-Mos: 50% (2256 votes)
Winner: Kos-Mos by the skin of her teeth

Robo VS. Fruit Fucker 2000
Robo: 42% (1865 votes)
Fruit Fucker 2000: 58% (2527 votes)
Winner: Fruit Fucker 2000

How R2-D2 Voted

Using its powerful randomly running around ability, Crecente's R2-D2 robot picked Optimus Prime, Kos-Mos, Mega Man, and Fruit Fucker 2000. So both the robot team and the human team had the same picks.

And they were both half-right.

The Official, Randomized Results

In Los Angeles, Kos-Mos senses the dangerous Portal Turrets before they sense her, blasting them into bits and taking a good-sized chunk of the Los Angeles Convention Center with them in the process. Optimus Prime and Half-Life 2's Dog smash through downtown New York City, leveling buildings left and right until Optimus gently puts Dog down with a laser sword to the head. In San Francisco, Mega Man's buster proves an insufficient weapon against Knights of the Old Republic's resident homicidal droid, with HK-47 stopping at a junkyard to sell the blue bomber's parts for scrap, killing the junkyard owner and several curious dogs in the process. Finally, in scenic Raleigh, North Carolina, Chrono Trigger's Robo patiently waits for the Fruit Fucker to stop trying to have sex with him, eventually losing patience and crushing him like a can of vending machine fruit juice.

The remaining robots sense that the key to returning to their own realities lies in the transponders high atop Kotaku Towers. Unfortunately their battles have taken out the towers in New York, San Francisco, Colorado, Los Angeles, and Raleigh (that one was made of sticks), so they now turn their attentions to the other side of the globe...

Results So Far

With both human and robot predictions being exactly the same, the human race and machines are now tied at 50% accuracy each. Perhaps round 2 will change things up a bit.

Round 2, Fight!

OPTIMUS PRIME VS. HK-47
Feeling a deep ancestral pull to the land of the rising sun, Optimus Prime makes his way across the ocean, making a beeline for the Japanese branch of Kotaku Tower. Unbeknownst to him, HK-47 bought a plane ticket with the money he made scrapping Mega Man and is on his way to the tower himself, after stopping by a store for some gashapon.

KOS-MOS VS. ROBO
Wary of the reception that a blue-haired, scantily clad anime girl would receive in Japan, Kos-Mos instead makes a pilgrimage to the Canberra, Australia branch of Kotaku Tower, somehow missing the giant Chrono Trigger robot plodding along behind her.

Not counting his first Japan-only forays on the Famicom and Superfamicom, Astro Boy has only appeared in one PlayStation 2 game and one GameBoy Advance game. The year was 2004 and both Sonic Team and Treasure Inc. (partnered with Hitmaker) developed games based on the 2003 anime remake of the original 1960s Astro Boy cartoon. Sonic Team's PS2 game, Astro Boy, was pretty lousy while Hitmaker/Treasure's GBA Astro Boy: Omega Factor was one of the best things to happen to handhelds that year. Since then, we've got nothing but a quietly-announced, never-demoed tie-in game to the upcoming CGI Astro Boy film directed by David Bowers.

Astro Boy's absence from video games could be due to many reasons – licensing, marketing, etc. – but two big ticket items ultimately tank any hopes of a serious Astro Boy gaming franchise: demand and need.

There's not enough demand for Astro Boy video games in the United States because we don't love him the way they do in Japan. The 1960s cartoon didn't even complete its full 193-episode run in the States when it originally aired in 1963; and it took decades before Dark Horse Comics to translate and publish the manga. Poor Astro Boy just wasn't on the radar as America's resident robot hero.

Back in 1960s Japan, when Astro Boy was first created, there was a desperate need for heroes. World War II had been over for more than a decade, but there was a loss of hope in the country and a profound fear of technology and nuclear weapons*. Anime and manga icons like Astro Boy and Ashita no Joe restored to Japan a sense of purpose and youthful optimism they'd lost in the war. Also, science-y things like Astro Boy put a friendly, rosy-cheeked face on technology, which helped the country cope with the devastating fear inspired by the A-bomb attacks.

In short, Japan needed Astro Boy and America didn't. Without the need for the robot boy hero, America never established a connection to Astro Boy that would inspire parents to make their children watch the 1960s cartoon. Later when the 2003 reboot of the anime series reached America, the show still couldn't find its audience and was canceled after spawning the hideous PS2 game and the wonderful GBA game.

That's not to say America can live without robot heroes.

We have one, in fact, and his name is Mega Man. Mega Man does most of the same stuff as Astro Boy – he even has the beam cannon on his arm – and he beat Tezuka's beloved boy robot to the US gaming scene by a good decade or more. He may not be as fleshed-out a character as Astro Boy, because Mega Man didn't start out with a manga or cartoon series to establish his back story. But he did have the whole filial piety thing going on with his creator, Dr. Light, which was similar to the connection Astro Boy had for his adoptive father figure, Dr. O'Shay (a.k.a. Dr. Ochanomizu, Dr. Packadermus Elefun, Professor Peabody, Jimmy Durante's nose-twin). So what if Mega Man wasn't about childlike wonder or youthful optimism; so what if he never did anything serious like address racism against robots. Mega Man was about kicking robot ass and Americans can totally get in on that.

So, alas, Astro Boy. We loved you in Omega Factor and we respect you as a cultural icon worthy of Mickey Mouse's company – which is why you're in the Robot Hall of Fame. But Mickey doesn't have a great gaming franchise and so far, you don't either. Maybe your upcoming tie-in movie game on PS2, Wii, PSP and DS will be good. Heck, maybe the film itself will be awesome. But in the meantime, we'll be sticking with Mega Man 9.

*The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Donald Richie

Insomniac's little robot buddy is the co-star of one of the most consistently excellent platforming game series ever to grace a PlayStation console. Clank manages to kick ass in any situation, whether he's transformed into a giant-sized version of himself or relegated to helicopter backpack duty. He's got more than enough personality to carry his own solo title, Secret Agent Clank, and on top of all that, he's voiced by Beast Wars Megatron David Kaye. If we tried to stuff any more awesome into Clank he'd explode, taking out every living creature in a five mile radius.

So why do we love him? His blood is plutonium* and his eye glow. What's not to love? He's a Russian Robot with a mohawk! New Tekken games bring a new Jack, keeping the character fresh, and the new Jacks pack a punch, one upgrade at a time.

*Make that usually plutonium.

Terminator Salvation, the fourth Terminator movie, opened last weekend to cranky reviews.

Unimpressed with actor Christian Bale and director McG's take on the evil-android series, movie reviewers eviscerated the film. And in the process, they lobbed the grandest of insults:

They wrote: this movie's like a video game.

Here's a sampling:

*The Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal's John Beifuss: "...The giant shape-shifting robots (which harvest humans like the Martian machines in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds") are more Transformer than Terminator; they seem to have been designed for video games and Toys R Us spinoffs rather than for movie sequels."

*The Chicago Sun Times' Roger Ebert: "… most of the running time is occupied by action sequences, chase sequences, motorcycle sequences, plow-truck sequences, helicopter sequences, fighter-plane sequences, towering android sequences and fistfights. It gives you all the pleasure of a video game without the bother of having to play it." (Two stars)

*The Boston Herald's James Verniere: … "Terminator Salvation, which sports a surprisingly grating score by the otherwise great Danny Elfman, looks less like a movie than a hybridized video game." (C+)

*The Seattle Times' John Hartl: "… More video game than movie, "Terminator Salvation" is the fourth and easily the least-entertaining installment in one of Hollywood's most successful science-fiction franchises." (1 1/2 stars)

*The Tampa Tribune's Kevin Walker: … "Loud, monochromatic and relentlessly grim in the way of a video game for preteens, this movie - directed by McG (of the 'Charlie's Angels' movies and a whole bunch of music videos) - completes the transformation of the 'Terminator' series from mind-bending science fiction bolstered by great special effects to a special effects circus with very little story." (1 1/2 stars)

*The Minneapolis Star Tribune's Colin Covert: "The film proceeds with video-game logic. The humans have a chance to strike at the heart of SKYNET by jamming the communications link to its army of high-tech killers. But that goal can be interrupted at any moment by an onslaught of unmanned fighter jets, motorcycles or even mechanical eels patrolling the rivers." (2 1/2 stars)

*The Winnipeg Free Press' Randall King: "[Actress Moon] Bloodgood projects all the gritty humanity of a sexy video-game character." (2 1/2 stars)

*Gizmodo's Mark Wilson: It's a two-hour video game linking a series of sequences that have little reason for existence other than McG's action-packed directing style.

*(Bonus blast from the past from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's review of Terminator 2 back in 1991: "It is, at the same time, dazzling and numbing, a movie that stuns you in all senses of the word. ... It is as dehumanized as Nintendo, which is ultimately what it resembles — the world's biggest video game.|)

I didn't see the movie. Any gamers out there think this is inaccurate criticism? Or is Terminator Salvation guilty as charged of being too video-gamey?

Original characters created for video games set in the Star Wars universe rarely earn the sort of love we hold for HK-47, the homicidal droid who rose to fame in BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. HK-47 went on to appear in that game's sequel, also earning an appearance in the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion for Sony Online Entertainment's massively multiplayer online game, Star Wars Galaxies. We're keeping our fingers crossed for an appearance in BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO as well.

And while it may seem that HK-47 actually hates us, he does love to hate us, so it only stands to reason we should love him right back.

While the nuclear explosion launched by a frightened U.S. military managed to wipe out the majority of the robot combatants summed to the Colorado branch of Kotaku Tower, eight were shunted off by emergency systems to other tower locations across the United States.

But which eight? Your votes decided their fates.

With only the top eight robots surviving the blast, they now face off against each other in the ultimate showdown of ultimate robot destiny, and you have a hand in determining the outcome...sort of.

This is more than a war between robots. This is also a war between robots and humans...fiery passion and cold calculation...warm blood and twisted wires...you get the point. The winners in this tournament have already been determined based on random selection. Now it is up to you to represent humanity, casting your vote for who you believe will win each battle. Meanwhile, the evil Dr. Crecente will command his child's autonomous R2-D2 robot to do the same, using scraps of paper and the ability to freely roam about the floor using nothing but its robotic senses.

So while the combatants battle for what amounts to their lives, you will be pitting human intuition against random robot behavior. Got it? Good. On to the fights!
OPTIMUS PRIME VS. DOG
Autobot Commander Optimus Prime and Gordon Freeman's faithful robotic canine square off in New York City, home to the latest Kotaku Tower installation.

MEGA MAN VS. HK-47
Capcom's blue bomber materializes on the streets of San Francisco, immediately spying what is obviously one of Dr. Wily's newest creations, Meatbag Man.

KOS-MOS VS. PORTAL TURRETS
Perhaps ironically, the blue-haired avenging angel Kos-Mos finds herself lying in an impact crater just outside of the Los Angeles Convention Center, where E3 2009 is a week away from beginning. She stands, scanning the lip of the crater for hostiles, only to hear a strange whirring sound behind her, followed by, "I can see you!"

ROBO VS. FRUIT FUCKER 2000
And for some odd reason, Chrono Trigger's Robo and Penny Arcade's Fruit Fucker 2000 end up fighting in Raleigh, North Carolina. We didn't say this would make sense.

Cast your votes, and come back tomorrow to see who you picked, who R2D2 picked, and who fate picked to advance to the next stage of the Kotaku Robot Wars.