The Energon Pub

Since I was last here, I succeeded in getting all 3 of the first wave of SSGE figures. I've messed with Prime and Barricade so far, and plan to mess with Bee some soon.

Barricade was the first one, and he's alright. He is great to look at, and has a great large presence. Unfortunately his robot mode is hard to pose and cannot move too well. But the alt mode is really nice. And they did a good job on the back making him look like the game model.

Prime is the clear winner here. He is really chunky and solid, and very posable. He is great.

messing around with Bee today, I like him more than I thought I would based on early photos. He is cute. I like him.

I just can't get over Bee's huge "wheel gaps" on his chest's sides. They could have engineered some panel to fill those in.

Prime and Barricade are adequate, but IMO that Bee is a huge swing and a miss, in both modes. Robot more so than vehicle. It's still inferior to the original in design, especially the chest piece. Looks as bad as MP Arcee. Sadly Cliffjumper is just a straight repaint, nothing will change for him either.

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Barricade: "I'm not crying, you're crying!"

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Barricade: "I'm not crying, you're crying!"

I know I am!



Emerje

War for Cybertron



Bee is still neat to me

Got Gamer Megatron!
Here's my impressions.



The bot is fantastic looking. I love his arm canon but his mace is ridiculous. The overal proportions of the bot are on point and his colors are superb.

But there's one glaring flaw. He just have ONE hard click of articulation in his knees! As if those are no knees, but transformation joints. In today's days and ages, it's baffling.



That's the ONLY way the knees can bend. No further than that. Unless you start transforming the legs.



Compared to the original Generations deluxe (in all its yellowed glory), the SS Gamer Megatron is barely any bigger. He still looks way better.



Contrary to the original, Gamer Megs have NO hollow parts. At all! Even the "hollow" on his back don't count because the multi-headed mushroom peg act as a "spinal column". There is not even any hollows inside of his legs nor his arms. A true miracle.



The transformation was easy to figure out despite the altmode being Cybertronian. There's many interesting steps and the transformation was very satisfying to do.



The only hollow part of the vehicle is an "exhaust port" at the back. Much less egregious than on Gamer Optimus. Of course, storing the giant mace on top of the vehicle ruins the look.



The vehicle is barely bigger than the deluxe original, but it's more cohesive all around.


Overall, Gamer Megatron is worth getting at full price. I was blown away by him. I don't think he'll need any upgrade kits to be truly complete like for Gamer Optimus. But I'm looking forward the Reprolabels to make him look even better.

Looks like no one gives a fuk about this line but have a video review of Megs regardless.

I've been hearing that megatron has a wide spread misassembly, where it looks like the knee piece hindering the knee bend was either installed wrong or wasn't supposed to be there in general. It was not in stock images or anything, and only showed up now, and adds nothing to the alt mode or transformation, so misassembly is very possible.

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:I've been hearing that megatron has a wide spread misassembly, where it looks like the knee piece hindering the knee bend was either installed wrong or wasn't supposed to be there in general. It was not in stock images or anything, and only showed up now, and adds nothing to the alt mode or transformation, so misassembly is very possible.

Let's hope no pins nor glue are involved if that's the case. I'll wait for any confirmations before starting to mod mine.

Studio Series Gamer Edition Megatron is out there... a bit. Him and Rhinox are slowly being distributed across both the US and Canada. Some specialty retailers got their copies in, and smaller retailers too, which is why some Americans may find this wave at Gamestop. If ever you are curious about this Megatron, we have a video review and pictorial review for you below. The pictorial review is from out very own Kanrabat, and we have a nice shot comparing him to the previous version. You'll let us know what you think!

-Kanrabat- wrote:Got Gamer Megatron!
Here's my impressions.

The bot is fantastic looking. I love his arm canon but his mace is ridiculous. The overal proportions of the bot are on point and his colors are superb.

But there's one glaring flaw. He just have ONE hard click of articulation in his knees! As if those are no knees, but transformation joints. In today's days and ages, it's baffling.

That's the ONLY way the knees can bend. No further than that. Unless you start transforming the legs.

Compared to the original Generations deluxe (in all its yellowed glory), the SS Gamer Megatron is barely any bigger. He still looks way better.

Contrary to the original, Gamer Megs have NO hollow parts. At all! Even the "hollow" on his back don't count because the multi-headed mushroom peg act as a "spinal column". There is not even any hollows inside of his legs nor his arms. A true miracle.

The transformation was easy to figure out despite the altmode being Cybertronian. There's many interesting steps and the transformation was very satisfying to do.

The only hollow part of the vehicle is an "exhaust port" at the back. Much less egregious than on Gamer Optimus. Of course, storing the giant mace on top of the vehicle ruins the look.

The vehicle is barely bigger than the deluxe original, but it's more cohesive all around.


Overall, Gamer Megatron is worth getting at full price. I was blown away by him. I don't think he'll need any upgrade kits to be truly complete like for Gamer Optimus. But I'm looking forward the Reprolabels to make him look even better.

I adore my Gamer Megs, but I really wonder what's up with that knee design?
And if those are indeed misassembled, they are held in with a pin, making any modding very difficult.

Often when talking about Studio Series and the progression from live action movies to animation to video games the question of what exactly is a "studio" comes up. Thanks to a Q&A held by TFW2005 with the Hasbro Transformers team (and thanks to Seibertronian Munkky for bringing this to our attention) we get some insight into just what qualifies as a studio. The short answer is, well, basically everything including comic books.

Q: So we kind of hit on this with the comic talk, but just to elaborate – first we had 86, now we have Gamer Edition expanding Studio Series even more. What sort of other things could happen?
A: Anything that’s technically a studio could be on the table. We’re trying to look at that and make sure that it’s authentic to what Studio Series is. We don’t want to just shoehorn everything into Studio Series, but we do know that there are opportunities to grow the brand. We always say from screen to toy. And a lot of people read comic books on screens now.

Q: Hasbro turns the tables! Asks us if we’d consider comic publishers as studios, and that they could live in the Studio Series segment?
A: Led to a small back-and-forth on this subject, but in short it seems Hasbro may be interested in something like this.

On that note, they also talked about what games they're open to doing in the Gamer Edition line.

Q: For Gamer Edition, is it limited to just WFC or will FOC (Dinobots, Bruticus, etc) and all the Transformers games be included?
A: Pretty much all of it. Think the clear winner will probably be, everybody wants some Devastation stuff, we need to figure out how to do some cell shading for it. Continuing from WFC, think FOC is on the table. Team has even joked about doing Mystery of Convoy, doing some sort of dot deco or something like that. We have the Ultra Magnus now and we have the Rodimus from Kingdom, it’s like why not. Why not some N64 Transmetals too? We can get some of that in there, there’s a lot of options. If it’s been in a video game, we have the opportunity to look at it, taking a little bit of a cue from what the Star Wars team did with their gamer stuff. There’s no licensing issues, we own all of that, it’s all on the table for us. But with the live action movie stuff, there’s always that stuff going on, you still have to deal with Paramount and the licensors.

Could we really see the Studio Series line become the home of Beast Wars Transmetals figures or future and former Commander Class figures done up for Mystery of Convoy for the Nintendo Famicom? Time will tell!

Final big piece of news that's currently making its rounds on video game news channels is the current status of Activision's Transformers games. It's a mixed bag, but the team seems optimistic about these being available again. Turns out licensing was never the issue as has long been speculated.

Q: Possible to re-release the Activision TF games to coincide with Gamer Edition?
A: Sadly, apparently Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company things get lost, and that’s very frustrating. Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox that they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all, because it’s an easy Game Pass add. We want those games back up for people to have a chance to play.

Q: How did that impact the process of making Gamer Edition?
A: Sam had to load up the games on older platforms because there were some deco details we couldn’t find – we have the CAD, but it’s not colored. So we had to find some of the character details within the games themselves.

Q: So you do have some of the game assets then?
A: We do, but it’s very interesting. FOC, we have everything. For WFC, we had to rip it ourselves, because they could not find it – they kept sending concept art instead, which we didn’t want, we need the CAD. So we booted up an old computer and ripped them all out from there. Which was a learning experience and a long weekend, because we just wanted to get it right, so that’s why we did it like that.

Hopefully Activision finds those hard drives, fans have been begging for new opportunities to play those games for years now.

TFW2005 also did a very lengthy solo Q&A with Evan where he talks about figures he'd like to make, what is and isn't possible, and whatever happened to that Takara Armada Optimus Prime prototype among many other things. It's a very extensive read so check it out the link at the top of the page.

N64 Transmetals?

Which could, in theory, mean Transmetal reissues with shiny paint instead of flakey vac-metal chrome?!?

And here I started the article thinking I'd be most excited about the "studio" definition being stretched to include comic stuff, opening up the possibility of more Marvel book characters.

They could even do monochrome repaints of G2 stuff and claim it's accurate to that Tiger LCD game!

Based on the reviews, I actually cancelled my pre-order for Gamerverse Megatron. Even though I'm a fan of Megatron as a character, this just didn't seem like enough of an update to be shelf-worthy. It's really small, and the only thing that might include enough plastic to make it a voyager is that big mace. And I don't think the mace looks all that good. The alt mode has a lot of gaps, the robot mode has articulation issues. Maybe if I find it on discount someplace, but I didn't see this being worth full price. It's even less of a 'voyager' than SS 86 Ironhide.

Cell shaded runamuck and runabout generics seems only a matter of time now

or there was the Super Nintendo Transformer at one point in Japan

from tfw2005 question about collabs answer from hasbro. What, where and when or was that an answer given by the guy that really should have more/some product knowledge?

On the bright side googling stuff, g1 megatron custom in NES zapper colors is amazing.

INJECT DEVASTATION-RELATED ITEMS DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS PLEASE

It would be really nice to get updated FOC figures. 2011-2012 were such poor years for mainline figures quality-wise.

Sign me up for studio series idw and n64 transmetals, pls and thx

Studio series straxus and rack n ruin from comics would be nice too

Anyone remember the PS2 Armada game that came out in the early 2000's? Such a great game, and honestly still holds up even by today's standards. With Armada getting so much attention again (finally), I would love to see something come out of that. The Decepticlones from that all sport awesome designs that could span various size classes. Also, a perfect opportunity to create some army building like they mentioned. The Mini-cons in that game also had some badass and interesting designs as well.

Studio series Beast wars the gathering ahaha

Razorbeast88 wrote:Studio series Beast wars the gathering ahaha

THIS right here. I'm such a sucker for Beast Era characters in cybertronian/vehicular bodies. That comic had SO many good designs.

Still sad I'll never be able to own that BotCon set with the pre-Earth Maximals and a couple preds.

Stormshot_Prime wrote:

Razorbeast88 wrote:Studio series Beast wars the gathering ahaha

THIS right here. I'm such a sucker for Beast Era characters in cybertronian/vehicular bodies. That comic had SO many good designs.

Still sad I'll never be able to own that BotCon set with the pre-Earth Maximals and a couple preds.

Agree on the Botcon thing, but Hasbro could do new ones of those if they wanted: Studio Series Hot Rod repainted as Cheetor would be awesome. The other day I saw a custom of Iguanus as Rattrap, it looked excellent. A slightly remolded Galvatron would make a great Cybertronian Megatron too. Or, hey, maybe even entirely new molds, now that the beast boys are a little more widely recognized.

"Why not some N64 Transmetals too?"

Ho. Ly. CRAP. Honest to God the LAST thing I expected to read clicking on this article.

I thought for sure Hasbro would forget that game even existed - I still have the working cartridge for my N64 and I still boot it up from time to time.

Honestly? I'd say its likely they go to this particular well when you consider that (IIRC) we seemingly don't have any Beast Era figures on the horizon.

Yeah they'll likely just be reissues with updated decos at best... but I'll still be honest and say that this was day-making news for me - I even let out an audible "WOW" when I read it.