From "Battletech" to "Evangelion," "Power Rangers" to "Pacific Rim," science fiction fans have been waiting for piloted robot combat for decades. "BattleBot"s fills the niche of a competitive robot fighting league, but some folks just aren’t satisfied with watching small remote-controlled ‘bots duke it out in a caged arena with fire, spikes, drills and other hazards scattered around the field. No, some of us are still itching for a team of herculean engineers to develop meters-tall, piloted mecha like the stuff of dreams and nightmares.

That day is coming soon.

Enter the Kuratas by Japanese robotics company Suidobashi Heavy Industry. In development since 2012 and first revealed the same year, Suidobashi Heavy Industry’s 4,500kg, 4m-tall robot Kuratas is touted as the first giant, piloted robot. Operated by a lone pilot or by remote-control, it can be fitted with a variety of interchangeable weapons, including a high-output BB gun and a fireworks launcher.

Although it is equipped with sports weaponry and serious armor plating, the Kuratas was mostly built for novelty as an art vehicle, with little-to-no intention of ever actually competing against any other robots like it. For a couple years, there wasn’t even another bot in the world that could pose as a suitable opponent.

In the other corner of the ring, enter MegaBots, an American robotics company founded in California in 2014 and the developers of the USA’s first piloted mech, the Mk. II. Weighing in at 5,400kg and standing 4.5 m tall, the Mk. II carries two crew members: one pilot and a gunman for operating the paintball guns.

In 2015, MegaBots posted a video to their YouTube channel, challenging Suidobashi Heavy Industry to a giant robot duel, just like the stuff that sci-fi movies and TV shows had predicted. The competition would be similar to a game of paintball, with the robots shooting giant paint-filled projectiles at each other for scoring.

To everyone’s delight, Suidobashi responded with a video of their own, accepting the challenge and upping the game to include melee combat.

MegaBots engineers and mecha fans alike drooled at the chance to finally see arena-scale piloted robotic combat, and MegaBots branded themselves as “Team USA in the Giant Robot Duel” on their follow-up Kickstarter fundraising campaign, which successfully raised over the $500,000 goal.

While the original one-year development deadline has passed, MegaBots recently posted an update that the game is still on, and both teams are still in communication about the contest as they work full-time to prepare their bots for the highly-anticipated fight.

If you want to follow competitive robotic combat, BattleBots is currently running on ABC, and the MegaBots team continue to post updates to their Facebook page.