Watch footage from a scrapped 'BattleBots' PlayStation 2 game

You might not know this, but BattleBots — the show about bots that battle — is actually in the sixth season of its second reboot over on Discovery (we have thoughts). While the competition’s current iteration is as ridiculous as ever, it still stands in the shadow of when it first aired on Comedy Central and became a brief, shining, spark-emitting pop culture sensation. BattleBots was so popular for a couple of years that there was even a battle royale game pretty deep into development for release on GameCube and PlayStation 2.

Alas, Comedy Central pulled the plug on the show before the video game could be completed, thus shuttering the project and depriving us all of our own robotic mayhem. Almost exactly two decades later, curious fans can finally get a look at what could have been thanks to a recently uncovered prototype release posted to the YouTube channel, GatorBox. Check out the in-depth look below:

A loyal adaptation — By all first impressions, the BattleBots video game looks, well, very much like a BattleBots video game. It features a roster of popular names to choose from the original series, alongside the prerequisite Arcade and Tournament modes, and even a cool custom robot system to build your own original in-game creations. If nothing else, it certainly seems both cheaper and a lot simpler than learning and funding your own real-life killbot — thus all the more a shame that we never got to see the game’s official release.

Scrapheap of history — As odd and dated as a BattleBots game sounds, it’s by no means the weirdest in the category of “scrapped video games of yore.” Lest we forget: There is a parallel universe out there which includes an officially licensed Sega Dreamcast game for The Simpsons in which you play as a bug flying around an accurate recreation of 742 Evergreen Terrace. Then there’s that time Kanye tried to pitch Nintendo a game involving his deceased mother going to Heaven. Or something. Honestly, we’d probably pay money to finally see that one come to fruition.