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Power Up Teaser Guesses Recap

The 2018 FRC Game FIRST Power Up started this morning with the release of the game animation and rules.

Spectrum watched the 2018 FRC teaser back in September and guessed what was going to be in this game. Tonight we are going to start the season off with how well we did on our predictions. Commentary is in italics. 

What did we get right?

Elevation Changes
Got this about half right, robots are going up.
  • Power UP – makes it pretty obvious that robots will have to climb something,
  • that may be stairs like the student walks down in the beginning of the clip or it could be ramps that robots have to drive up.
  • There are stairs/ramps in the poster and on top of the arcade machine
Power Ups = changes or bonuses mid match
Hit this one pretty much on the head.

  • Bonus points
  • Get certain items or score in a certain order and then there are multipliers. Similar to ubertubes in 2011
  • Unlock certain parts of the game or objectives after scoring or completing objectives

Misc

We got this one right.

  • Human players score the game pieces on the side of the field similar to pilots placing gears this year.

Just for Fun

Dean Kamen was wearing a DK tie in the kickoff video, we are taking this one as a win.

  • Human players dressed as Donkey Kong

What did we get wrong?

Elevation Changes
Didn’t end up being any big elevation chages for the robots, no large ramps on the field but we did see some platforms moving just not for the robots.

Power Ups = changes or bonuses mid match
No audience selection or different power ups each match but teams do get to choose how and when to use them.
  • Possibly get to choose which power ups to use each match
    • Audience selection of power ups?

Coins
No Coins at all in this game, guess it was just a red hearing.
  • Collecting them as a game piece
  • Discs/Frisbees/Disc Golf Discs
  • If you turn in coins your human players can put out different game pieces based on the amount of coins.
  • Possibly scoring in coin slots
  • Tiny coins (like 1in or less)
  • Large coins (2 ft or bigger diameter)
  • Coin dispensers on the field, so you have to pull something, push a block, hit something, to release more coins (hoppers?)
  • 500 = Coin Amount on the field?
    • (Searches for “500” in google did not return any relevant results)

FIRST Logo on poles (similar to logo motion)
Nope it wasn’t part of the game
  • Possibly hanging logos like 2011
  • Maybe have to get logo pieces off the poles instead of putting them on
  • 4 out of 5 games on the machine were pick and place games
    • 2005, 2007, 2011, 2017 (not 2016)
Misc
Nope nothing as cool as these ideas.
  • Size changes?
  • The power ups may allow your robots to expand to a taller or larger size.
  • Inflatable robots (unlikely but cool)
  • Video Game Mechanics
  • A lot of things are possible with video mechanics.
  • Mystery boxes
  • Co-op elements
    • Intra alliance co-op elements were it takes multiple robots on an alliance to do something
    • Inter alliance co-op similar to 2012/2015 (hopefully not)
  • Barrel Jumping/Ladder Climbing

Just for Fun
Didn’t expect to get any of these right, 1 out of 5 isn’t bad.
  • Fire Alarm = Lava Game

Conclusions

Overall we got more wrong than we did right, but there was a lot in this teaser to think about and did lead to some very accurate conclusions.

– Spectrum


Source: Spectrum

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