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Why did it take so long for us to get a good, high profile Transformers game?

Kadve

Member
Sure there is the 2004 game and a pretty good GBC fighting game from 1999. But it still feels like no-one could actually deliver a good one prior to high moon and hell, even after those we only had like a couple good ones such as the Prime tie in and Devastation, which was 9 respective 6 years ago.

To recap prior to War For Cybertron:

The Transformers (1985):
A boring C64 puzzle platformer that even the developer later admit to be embarrassed about.


Transformers: The Battle to Save the Earth (1986):
The more famous C64 Activison game that has very little to actually do with Transformers beyond the art assets. The tape version is also famously unbeatable due to a bug.


Transformers: Mystery of Convoy (1986) and Transformers: The Headmasters (1987)
Two Japanese Famicom games infamous for their high difficulty and poor controls.



Beast Wars: Transformers (1997):
A third person shooter published by Hasbro themselves and incorporating the worst aspects of a PS1 game. Clunky controls, poor framerate and crappy draw distance.


Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals (1999):
A 3d arena fighter for PS1 and N64 with really slippery controls and boring gameplay


Kettō Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Senshi Saikyō Ketteisen (1999): (Say that three times fast)
The after mentioned Japanese only GBC game that's actually really fun.


The Transformers: Call of the Future (2003)

A Japanese PS2 exclusive that was entirely in English for some reason. Really clunky controls, uninspired gameplay and has 17 (!) minutes worth of cutscenes before the game actually starts.



Transformers Armada: Prelude to Energon (2004):
The after mentioned good PS2 game that sadly fell under the radar.


A hole slew of movie tie ins (2007 - 2013) that i am not going to bother recapping. As they are all pretty terrible.

Transformers Animated: The Game (2008)
A puzzle platformer (that's surprisingly similar to the 1985 game) that while decent didn't exactly set the world on fire.
 
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Kadve

Member
That PS2 game looks fun.
I had personally dismissed the prime tie-in as well, a tie-in. But looking it up it genuinely looks fun to and has some great music. Wonder if it works in Cemu.


Came in here to shill Transformers Devastation but DAMN at that Beast Wars GBC game. Wonder if I can Ebay a copy.
Also check out the super moves from the game. The developer really put their A-game into them.

 
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yurinka

Member
I didn't play the 2004 game, but I always felt Transformers had a lot of potential for videogames but all the games I played were crap, including the one from Platinum Games, which was almost decent.
 

CamHostage

Member
Transformers is hard because they're large robots that transform into vehicles. So you need maps that can incorporate both on-foot characters (but on a rather large scale) and then also vehicles that can drive or fly. (You could of course just have separate levels for driving and fighting, but then that kind of defeats the purpose of them being "Transformers".) It's a frustrating level of scale and obstacle design that's difficult to overcome.

In fact, as good as the High Moon games are for what they are, one could argue that even those games never really solved the problem. They were great shooters, but the driving paled in comparison.

And the PlatinumGames game looked sweet, but it could have been any major franchise skinned into that beat-em-up play, and if I remember right the vehicle form was just a fun way to extend or link combos with a kind of dash-attack-on-wheels. (I barely played it, somebody please school me if there's more to the driving than I am mentioning.)
 
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Kadve

Member
If Transformers wasn't dead in that 90-92 period it probably woulda gotten a cool arcade game from Konami or something.
We almost had a SNES SFX one based on G2 by Argonaut in 1994. No pictures or much information from it exists though beyond Takara apparently also wanting a PS1/N64 version that also never released.


 
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Camreezie

Member
Most old school cartoons wish they had as good a video game as good as Devastation
 
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Cryio

Member
Loved War and Fall of Cybertron. I'm still to this day afraid to try Rise of the Dark Spark, just because I know it's a different dev AND they tried to meld the game universe with the Michael Bay movie universe and I know it's impossible for that to have worked out.
 

Duchess

Member
Why did it take so long for us to get a good, high profile Transformers game?
It took us just as long to get a decent fucking live action movie..!

The opening sequence of Bumblebee shit all over the 5 Michael Bay movies that came before it (seriously, I was so angry at Bay after watching Bumblebee).

 

playXray

Member
I think it’s just down to the popularity of Transformers as a whole. Like you pointed out, things went quite on the western front while Japan got a couple of local exclusives. Then we went into Beast Wars territory, and it was a while before Optimus Prime and Co came back into the mainstream, and even then G1/Generations are still relatively niche these days.
 

stranno

Member
Platinum's Devastation was wonderful, imo the best Transformers game ever. The last great game for Playstation 3 and XBOX 360.



 
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I did. Read the top of the page.
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