It finally happened. Last night, America’s MegaBots Inc. took on Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industry in a giant robot duel streamed on Twitch. The 26-minute show (which actually took place a while ago, and was recorded over the course of several days) is now available to watch on YouTube. If you don’t want to find out who won, stop reading right now and have a watch.

Done?

Okay, so, congratulations to team USA! Commiserations to team Japan! And well done to all involved for actually going through with the project.

Now, considering this fight has been in the works for more than two years , expectations were extremely high. The MegaBots team did a fantastic job of selling the dream of Giant Fighting Robots — too good, in fact, because the reality was always going to fall far short. As we predicted, the match was less Pacific Rim, and more Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots. Albeit with some very big robots.

There was a lot of faffing about hiding behind barrels and firing off paintball cannons, but the actual fighting seemed to come down to which bot could stand there and take the most damage. The whole thing seemed very scripted (how about those girders ‘nearly’ falling on the commentators?) but we shouldn’t begrudge that. If the US military and its annual budget of $600 billion or so can’t make giant fighting robots happen, a sparky Kickstarter wasn’t going to come up with anything too surprising.

Still, MegaBots Inc has always been hopeful that this initial match would just be the first in an international series of duels. Their dream? A whole league of giant fighting robots. Let’s see if anyone else is going to step up to the plate.