The quadrotors of the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Laboratory are all sorts of amazing (even when they're crashing). But this new footage of these futuristic bots hearkens back to something more retro — the pixelated shooters of arcades yore.

GRASP's engineers taught a group of miniature nano-quadrotors to fly in rectangular formations. I can picture a phalanx of these buggers someday roaming the skies, each armed individually with a taser or scimitar or some other implement of unpleasantry. Their only weakness? A bazooka that shoots quarters.

[Via Technabob]