Entertainment
Doctor Zoidberg Leads Robot Uprising In Unhinged, Raunchy 80s Sci-Fi
By Robert Scucci
| Published
When I fired up 1987’s Robot Holocaust on Tubi, I was expecting a Mad Max-style scenario with a bunch of clankers running amok and wiping out humanity. Instead, I got a weird, loincloth-laden odyssey where the most expensive special effects are red lights, and the villain is basically a giant, walking, talking Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama. I know I’m being anachronistic by comparing a 1987 film to a character that didn’t exist until 1999, but that’s the comparison I’m making, and I’m sticking with it.
Let me have this, because the other reality I have to live with is that this movie is pretty rough. There are barely any robots, and what transpires hardly qualifies as a holocaust. The male-to-female buttcheek ratio sits at a clean 50:50, and the nudity isn’t even the good kind. Everybody’s wandering around in punishing heat all day, so you just know the smell is so bad you can almost taste it.
It’s Listed As A Sci-Fi But It’s More Of A Fantasy Quest
The best way to describe Robot Holocaust is an ill-fated cross between Mad Max and the original Star Wars trilogy. You’ve got a ragtag group of city-dwelling slaves living under the thumb of the Dark One, with his laws enforced by Torque (Rick Gianasi), the robot who looks like Zoidberg.
These wasteland slaves are trying to overthrow the Dark One, and their plan mostly involves a lot of unsexy walking as they run into enemies, obstacles, and, occasionally, robots.
Leading the charge is Neo (Norris Culf), a New Terra drifter accompanied by his C-3PO-esque companion, Klyton (Joel Van Ornsteiner). Along the way, he links up with Deeja (Nadine Hart), Nyla (Jennnifer Delora), Bray (George Gray), and Kai (Andrew Horwath), all of whom are fed up with the Dark One’s evil machinations and willing to trudge half-naked through asphalt and overgrown wasteland to do something about it.
Alliances and wills are tested, but the goal stays the same. Our heroes, and there are too many of them to really invest in, especially given their almost aggressive lack of charisma, need to find the Power Station where the Dark One resides and wipe out him and his goons once and for all.
Amateur Hour, But Not Without Its Charm
While Robot Holocaust mostly plays like a college film project with no budget, I can appreciate what writer-director Tim Kincaid was going for with limited resources. Most of the exterior shots look like people wandering around the outskirts of NYC, and most of the interior scenes feel like they were filmed inside a Spirit Halloween. A lot of my enjoyment came from the production notes I made up in my head, like, “Places, everybody! This fog and these fake spiderwebs set us back $25, making it the most expensive scene we’re shooting!”
That said, I’ve got to give the cast credit for committing to the vision, even if they’re reaching pretty far to get there. The robot costumes actually look decent from a distance, but the illusion falls apart in the close-ups, which we get way too often.
At the end of the day, Robot Holocaust is perfect home-viewing material. It’s only 79 minutes long and packed with a healthy dose of camp. It doesn’t make much sense, and when the primary antagonist is finally revealed, it’s basically just a guy dressed like an egg. For that reason alone, it’s worth a watch because it’s just so random.
As of this writing, you can stream Robot Holocaust for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 29, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
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If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
To admire.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
ADORE
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Hurdle Word 2 hint
Heavy.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
HEFTY
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
Hurdle Word 3 hint
Two-legged.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
BIPED
Hurdle Word 4 hint
Hefty.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
HEAVY
Final Hurdle hint
Pointy.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
SHARP
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on April 29
It may appear full, but the Moon isn’t actually at 100% illumination yet. In fact, we’re still a couple of days away. But it’s still big and bright enough to do some moon gazing, so keep reading to find out what features you might be able to see tonight.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Wednesday, April 29, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. Tonight, 94% of the moon will be lit up, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide.
Without any visual aids, tonight you should be able to see the Mares Vaproum, Tranquillitatis, and Imbrium. With binoculars, you’ll see the Mare Frigoris, Clavius Crater, and the Alphonsus Crater. And, finally, with a telescope you’ll see all this plus the Apollo 17 landing spot, Rima Ariadaeus, and the Fra Mauro Highlands.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon is predicted to take place on May 1, the first of two in May.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes roughly 29.5 days to circle Earth once, going through eight distinct phases in the process. Even though we always see the same side of the Moon, the amount of sunlight hitting it changes as it moves in its orbit. The shifting light creates the changing shapes we know as full, half, and crescent Moons. Altogether, there are eight main lunar phases.
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is down to a record-low price at Amazon — now $400 off
TL;DR: Amazon has the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop on sale for $899.99, down from its $1,299.99 list price. That saves you $400 on a 2025 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 graphics, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 165Hz FHD+ display.
$899.99
at Amazon
$1,299.99
Save $400
Finding a current-gen gaming laptop in today’s economy for under $1,000 is already amazing, but Amazon’s latest ASUS deal is offering you an all-time low bargain.
As of April 28, the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is on sale for $899.99 at Amazon, marked down from $1,299.99. Price tracker camelcamelcamel has confirmed that this is the lowest-ever price for this gaming laptop.
For that price, you’re getting the RTX 5050 and Intel Core i5 version of the TUF Gaming F16, which is built around an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU. It also comes with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD, so it should be nicely suited for jumping between games, school work, everyday browsing, and plenty of tabs without causing your sessions to come to a sudden crash.
With those sorts of specs, this version of the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 lets you comfortably run games from the latest graphically demanding titles — including Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Pragmata.
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The 16-inch FHD+ display is a big part of the appeal, with ASUS’s fitted 165Hz 16:10 panel with 100% sRGB color giving you extra vertical space compared to a standard 16:9 screen while keeping motion smoother in fast-paced games like Fortnite and Counter-Strike 2. The handy Adaptive-Sync also helps cut down on stuttering and screen tearing when your frame rate starts shifting during intense firefights or brawls with lots of assets moving around at the same time.
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The TUF Gaming F16 keeps the series’ usual more rugged angle, as well. ASUS has had the laptop tested to MIL-STD-810H standards, while its 2nd Gen Arc Flow Fans, full-width heatsink, and full-width vent are designed to help keep performance steady without making the machine unnecessarily loud.
If you’re after a laptop that’s more for work than gaming, Samsung’s ultra-sleek Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 just got a $450 price cut.
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