FightBox

During the early 2000’s, a trailer was broadcast on BBC TV channels, advertising a new TV gameshow. Basically, viewers were asked to go onto the BBC website, to create “The Ultimate Warrior”! The trailer then showcased multiple potential designs, exploring size, skill and look for these warriors, before then stating to viewers the need for them to go online, and create these warriors. Basically, they were advertising the arrival of a gameshow, which did not yet have any constestants.

I though was very intrigued, and wanted to take part, that was until I discovered that you had to be 18, and over to take part, and I was only about 12. So like many things back then, I grit my teeth, and decided to wait until I was old enough, believing there would be many more series to come down the years. Further disappointment then followed, when the show launched on BBC Three, a channel which my family did not have at the time. But luckily, it eventually began repeating on BBC Two, possibly to fill the hole left by Robot Wars moving to Channel 5.

Even though I was ommitted from taking part, I still enjoyed the show on the whole. I looked forward to watching each episode, even when the declining viewership moved the show to the graveyard slot of lunchtimes on a Sunday, and was therefore disappointed still, when I never got to see the final (I did many many years later on YouTube).

So, personal story out the way: what was FightBox? FightBox was a gameshow, where contestants built video game like warriors, to compete in a show, against other players creations. It was hosted by Trevor Nelson, Lisa Snowdon, with Paul Dickenson as the show’s commentator, and the video game engine was created by Runecraft. Each episode featured 4 warriors, as they competed in a range of challenges, which were a cross between the games played in Gladiators, and platform levels found in Super Mario games. The studio had a large pit (not a box), where the warriors were added in edit, with the action being played to the audience via a relatively un-well-hidden large TV screen. Two would compete in games, with the winner going to face one of the other two challengers featured later in the same episode. Losers were rather cruelly mocked as well by the show’s presenters, and cheerleaders.

But it wasn’t just other players warriors that contestants needed to be wary of. NO! The show also provided six “Sentients”. Think less like the Gladiators in Gladiators, and more like the House Robots in Robot Wars, but somehow carrying a legendary status (provided by the show’s producers), before the first episode, as they had won ‘other competitions’ in the past to become “Sentients”, with the winner of this series becoming a new “Sentient”. The already in existence “Sentients” were:

• Banshi,
• Big George,
• Nail,
• Kodiak,
• Pearl,
• and Vesuvius.

And if you want to know who won and joined these ‘illustrious competitiors’, it was Kill Frenzy.

As you can sort of guess by now, the show was a bit of a flop, with an average audience of around “22,000 viewers” after just three weeks. So it was moved around channels to try and pick up interest, before then being casually dumped in the bin (with BBC Bosses probably trying to remember why they let Robot Wars flee the nest). The show though did have something of an immediate legacy. Firstly the show was followed by it’s own video game release for PC, PlayStation 2, and Game Boy Advance, and then another show came along also on BBC, with a very simillar base idea.

Bamzooki was another gameshow produced by the BBC, but this time for the CBBC channel, and much like FightBox, it required kids to go online, download some software, and create little CGI creatures, to take part in a series of challenges. Whilst FightBox only lasted for one series, Bamzooki lasted for four series, between 2004 and 2010.

So if the spin-off succeeded, why did the original fail? Well there are probably many reasons for that. Firstly the production and studio was a bit of a joke, with the audience starring at an empty pit, to be filled with characters in the edit. Anothe reason could be was that it was a video game made solely for a TV show, and shows like that in the past never really worked out (Cyberzone, and Virtually Impossible), where as shows featuring actual off-the-shelf video games not only lasted longer, but are still fondly remembered to this day (Games World, Time Commanders, and GamesMaster).

Anyway, whatever the reason for Fightbox’s failure (maybe it was because it was a good eight years before user generated content took hold of the gaming scene, or it accidentally predicted the friend cube design from Portal); to me it was quite a quirky, and frequently fun gameshow, featuring a Robot Wars like aesthetic, whilst also being video game like, at a time when I was becoming a video gamer more and more. It was also a whole lot better, and more entertaining than that ridiculous robot combat show presented by Chris Jericho!