Fighter Machine
Fighter Machines (ファイターマシン Faitā Mashin) are robotic characters from a multiplayer fighting video game played by the Autobots' human allies on their moniters whenever the Autobots aren't looking.
The two main playable characters of the game are Fighter Machine A (ファイターマシン A Faitā Mashin A) who transforms into a jet and Fighter Machine B (ファイターマシン A Faitā Mashin B) who transforms into a tank.
Contrary to popular belief, these robots are not Mini-Cons.
Fiction
Armada cartoon
After Side Swipe joined the Autobots on Earth, Billy and Fred sneakily put the game on, on the Autobot base's monitors, while the giant robots were distracted by their newcomer making a rough intigration. Billy had just won the first round of the fight when the pair were discovered by Alexis who told them off, to which Fred asked if Alexis wanted to play. While the encounter with Alexis seemed to get of to a bad start, she soon found herself playing the game too—even going as far as winning every match she played. Past
Later, Rad and Carlos discussed the logistics of learning any real fighting techniques from the game the others had been obsessively playing over the last few hours.<ref>As mentioned above in #Notes, this piece of dialogue was swapped out in the English dub with nonsense about them using the Mini-Cons for morbid entertainment.</ref> Falling victim to the rabbit hole of the game, Alexis had become completely oblivious to everything else around her, suggesting that she should take a break from playing for a bit. Past II
Notes
- The name of the video game played in the show was never given a name.
- The names for the two individuals comes from their model sheets published in the Legends of the Microns Year Book 2003.
- In the English dub of the Armada cartoon, the pair are erroneously referred to as Mini-Cons. In a twist of morbid hilarity, the show even goes so far as to make out that they are being forced to fight against their will, rather than just being characters in a video game, which paints a pretty bad picture for the children.
- Both of the individuals transform similarly to existing Transformers toys, specifically the Generation 2 Auto Rollers. Fighter Machine A's design is in fact very similar to the jet Auto Roller mold.
- Very briefly, there is a third character shown on-screen who resembles Megatron with a slightly more simplified body and a different head.
