The gasoline-powered Mark II weighs in at 12,000lbs (5,400kg) and requires two pilots to fully operate its movement and cannons.
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“We have a giant robot, you have a giant robot-you know what needs to happen”, MegaBots announced in their challenge video.
“Yeah, I’ll fight”, Kogoro Kurata, Suidobashi CEO and founder, said on YouTube. Kurata also noted the Americans’ aesthetics and sensibilities, building something so huge and then sticking big guns on it, it’s really Super American, he chides. “Giant robots are Japanese culture”, Kurata said in a counter video before challenging his opponents.
It all started when the team behind MegaBot, a US-made robot, challenged its Japanese counterpart Kuratas to a duel.
“It came out of nowhere”, Kurata said in Japanese.
In 2016, the United States will dominate Japan again in a giant robot duel.
Suidobashi Heavy Industry is one of the few firms which have successfully developed an ultra-large robot which could easily be employed in a fight dedicated to these marvels of science and technology.
The robot is a single pilot machine, which utilises a full heads-up-display and a twin ball-bearing Gatling gun that fires 6,000 rounds per minute. In contrast to MegaBots’ propensity for guns, he said he intends to beat the Mark 2 into the ground through melee or close-quarters combat. But hopefully, the two teams will follow through at least to some degree.
MegaBots haven’t yet agreed to Suidobashi’s new terms. Previous year the company ran an unsuccessful crowd-funding campaign aimed at raising $1.8 million to build a slew of robots that would have battled each other in front of spectators. MegaBots’ challenge is a bid for the company to promote its latest development, the MegaBot Mark II.
“Megabots: Organize the duel”.
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And while we still have no clue when this battle will take place, we know that it will happen next year.
