Rise of the Robots is a 1994 fighting game developed by Mirage Studios and published by Time Warner Interactive. It was ported to numerous home console and computer formats, and was also released as an arcade game cabinet. The game is very similar in style and gameplay to other fighting games popular at the time, such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, but with pre-rendered 3D sprites rather than pixel art or digitized sprites. The game's characters, including the player, are all robots, and the plot borrowed heavily from the cyberpunk genre, specifically such movies as Blade Runner, Metropolis, RoboCop and The Terminator. Rise of the Robots was announced early in development, and generated considerable buzz for its advanced graphics. On release it became notorious in the video gaming industry for myriad crippling gameplay problems. Today it is generally considered one of the least successful and most critically reviled fighting games of its time.