This new version sported wheel guards and a redesigned titanium blade. With BattleBots returning in 2015, so did Jim Smentowski and Nightmare. All of these robots were retired after BattleBots, but antweight and fairyweight versions of Nightmare still compete today. A middleweight version was also built, which competed under the name Locust as part of multibot The Swarm. It achieved even better success than its heavyweight counterpart, winning the Season 1.0 Lightweight championship. Team Nightmare also built a lightweight version of their popular heavyweight, named Backlash. Nightmare had several revisions over the years, starting as a boxy, awkward looking robot and evolving into a much sleeker and more powerful design by Comedy Central Season 5.0. Nightmare's inspiration came from bucket wheel excavators, with the collection mechanism replaced with a giant spinning disc. Nightmare won the "Most Aggressive Robot" award at the 1999 Long Beach event, yet never made it past the quarter-final stage in any competition. Since its debut, Nightmare proved to be a consistent performer and a feared opponent, largely down to its giant spinning weaponry which made it a poster bot for the show in future seasons. It returned for a one-off exhibition match having been a static display in the past, but has not competed since. Returning in 2015, an upgraded version of Nightmare competed in ABC Seasons 1 and 2, before Jim Smentowski entered Breaker Box in its place. It debuted in 1999 and competed in all five seasons of Comedy Central BattleBots. Its primary weapon was a 4ft diameter bludgeoning device with 5lb teeth on either side of the disc. Nightmare was a heavyweight combat robot built by Jim Smentowski, which fought in ten BattleBots competitions in total: including two 1999 events, all five seasons of Comedy Central BattleBots, two seasons of the reboot on ABC and an exhibition battle of the Discovery era. "Spinners like Nightmare have to soak up as much damage as they dish out." - BattleBots: The Official Guide. By the fourth take they finally got it right and the kids were moving forward at a good clip as they advanced past monkey bars, up a slide that was covered in chocolate syrup, down another slide into a pile of whip cream, and then on towards a few other obstacles that got equally messy.Statistics correct as of its most recent appearance on the show, or if not applicable, qualification attempt. But not having the necessary flag in the pillow took at least a few takes to get right since they seemed to keep forgetting that the flag was in fact needed.Īfter that came the unfortunate realization that while it was the kids’ first time on this obstacle course it was also the camera man’s, so when they went on to the next part of the course the camera man forgot that there were actual obstacles in his path and went head over heels as the camera landed on the ground, showing nothing but a lot of floor mat for everyone’s viewing pleasure. Now finding something in a huge wad of feathers might take a little bit of time but it’s certainly not going to take more than a few seconds for someone that’s really motivated to move forward. Unfortunately on the first take the people in charge had forgotten to put a flag in the pillow, which resulted in the kids never getting past the first stage. The first station was titled Nightmare, in which the kids had to pull a feather pillow apart in order to find the first flag. I can imagine it must have been a lot of work to get everything set up and ready for the first show but the one thing that was so crucial that kept things moving and wasn’t there to start with nearly derailed everything since it forced them to go through four takes where there should have only been one.įor each station there was a challenge that the kids had to complete so that their teammates could move on and advance them through the course. You remember Double Dare right? The kid-oriented game show where kids had to run through obstacle courses filled with various substances like chocolate sauce and whip cream? Well it turns out the first episode didn’t go so smoothly. It seems like the first episode of Double Dare was more of a nightmare than anyone realized.