Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Review

Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots is based on the classic toy that featured two plastic robots battling it out in a boxing match. Players each had a handle with two buttons on it to move the robots on small moving platforms and to make them throw short jabs with their right and left arms. The goal was to place a punch on the other robot’s chin in order to cause it to pop-up on a spring. It was the kind of toy that was cooler in the day before video games, but even in its heyday it would only hold your interest for a short time. The robots couldn’t move around too much and there wasn’t much to it – just pound the buttons until a punch snuck in and popped a robot’s head up. With such limited play in the original toy it’s a bit surprising to see it used as the inspiration for a video game. For something like that to work, the developers need to really take the play to a new level above and beyond that found in the toy. Unfortunately that’s not the case here, a plastic button-mashing mechanical toy has been converted into a simplistic button mashing video game.

There’s really not a whole lot to this game. You can fight a single bout between the original red and blue robots from the toy game or a play a career mode. The career mode is basically a series of fights in which you lead a robot of a given color against a progression of robots of varying color. As far as I can tell, the only differences between these robots are their names, colors, and the brief animation accompanying their defeat.

Control in the game is similar to that in the toy. You push one button to throw a right, the other to throw a left. A little extra control is added in that you can hold a button to charge the punch and you can use the directional pad to make the punch a high or low blow, but there’s not much strategy to it – it’s the same button mashing play of old. At least the game is not a one-hit win bout. Each robot has a health meter that needs to be whittled down before a knockout can occur, and when a robot is on its last legs the game switches to a KO mode in which you have to rapidly press the two shoulder buttons to either knock the other robot out or prevent yours from being knocked out. This is more annoying than challenging as the length of time during which you need to keep flipping the buttons is ridiculous long.  After that the payoff is another button mash bout followed by carpel tunnel inducing finger flipping.  Woo-hoo.

There’s not much gameplay here, and what is here is boring and repetitive. You can pretty much see everything that the game has to offer in less than an hour, and there are plenty of far better ways to kill an hour.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 20%. It plays just like the classic plastic toy, except that you’ll get bored with it even faster.