Lost media

Lost media is a common term for media that existed at some point but either isn't currently available to the public or has been completely lost over time, often as a result of either a limited distribution of the original material or copyright disputes regarding its publication or sometimes just an outright loss of all available copies. Online searches and preservation efforts dedicated to this category of media have led to the term being popularized in the turn of the 2020s.

Being a franchise spanning four decades of content in just about every possible medium - much of it exclusive to different regions separated by linguistic barriers - it is inevitable that there's a staggering amount of lost Transformers media: thus, the content in this page is hardly comprehensive, and there's almost certainly more beyond what's listed here.

Lost Transformers media

Film

• The Secret of Cybertron was the first draft for what would eventually become 1986's The Transformers: The Movie, featuring a very different story compared to the finalized project. Flint Dille claims he might still own a copy of this script, but it has ultimately never been made public.
• The IMAX edition of Transformers (2007) features two minutes of additional footage. This footage has never been included in any of the many home video releases that the film has received throughout the years.

Cartoon

• Dark Glass was an unproduced episode of Beast Wars: Transformers. A complete script has been written but remains ultimately lost despite multiple fan attempts to get it published.
• Primeval Dawn II was a 10-minute motion comic that debuted at Wizard World Chicago in 2002. While a short introductory animation exists, the full episode has never been published online or distributed in any other medium since.

Video games

• Battle for the Allspark was a browser-based multiplayer game that went offline in 2009. No archive of its content remains.
• Battle for the Allspark v2 was also another browser-based multiplayer game that went offline sometime after 2009 and, much like its predecessor, it is also completely lost.
• Transformers Online (2012) was yet another multiplayer game that was shut down in 2012 and is currently unplayable.
• Transformers Universe was, yes, another multiplayer game that was shut down in 2014 and is currently unplayable.
• Transformers Online (2017) was - you won't believe it! - a multiplayer game that was shut down in 2017 and is currently unplayable.
• Transformers: Reactivate was, like all of the above, another multiplayer game, except this one was never released at all, being cancelled in 2025 after struggling through development hell since its announcement in 2022. Plenty of cutscenes and gameplay videos have leaked throughout the game's development, showing that a substantial amount of content has been made for this project that will probably never see the light of day.

Comics

• A BotBots comic book titled BotBots & The Cele Crew's Adventure was released exclusively in South Africa. Some pages have been recovered by fans but much of the comic remains lost.

Others

• The Binder of Revelation is a 354-page production bible for the Aligned continuity family that has unfortunately never been released beyond some snippets and pieces of artwork.

Recovered Transformers media

Some cases of formerly lost Transformers media have since resulted in the recovery of such media, often through extensive fan efforts.

Animation

• Starscream's Fantasy was a short animation made to tie into Transformers Animated, originally screened druing BotCon 2009 and later brought back for BotCon 2012. It had never been made available in any other format until 15 years later, in 2022, when Marty Isenberg allowed it to be published on YouTube after many fan requests.

Video games

• Transformers Battle Universe had been rendered unplayable since the online service it relied on had shut down in 2009, but it was again restored into a playable state by fans in 2017.
• The Hoover Dam exterior level for the PC and home consoles version of Transformers The Game was long assumed to be lost, until it was successfully datamined - in a state surprisingly not too far from completion! - from the Wii version during 2018. It was also later discovered in the PS3 version, albeit in a much more incomplete state.