Transformers: Universe CD-ROM
The Transformers: Universe CD-ROM was produced in 2003, and packaged with early waves of Transformers: Universe toys. The CD-ROM was to be the first CD-ROM pack-in, refreshed seasonally, which would tell the Transformers: Universe story to the general market. However, only one CD-ROM was ever produced.
The Universe CD-ROM features the Armada theme song, an Armada game, an Armada episode, and another non-Universe game. The only Transformers: Universe content on the disk is an animated comic, which tells a version of the basic Universe story.
The disk navigation features an animated robot head guiding one through the contents, with an animated system called the "Cyerber-Transformer" unit. It uses the same library/archive color scheme as the librarian from the Generation 1 episode "Surprise Party". The navigation system uses plentiful sound effects from the Generation 1 cartoon, the rights of which were almost certainly not cleared with Sunbow.
Disk Contents
The CD-ROM takes the form of a Cybertronian information archive (complete with library agent to guide you.) It contains 5 sections.
- Cybertron Factory - A Make-Your-Own-Transformer Game
- The Energon Within - An Armada game
- Video Datafeeds - The Armada episode "Awakening"
- Historical Data Link - A short animated Universe comic
- Web Link - A link to Hasbro's Transformers site
Synopsis
The Historical Data Link relates the story of a gigantic, mysterious space ship that, once a year, every year, travels to Cybertron, when the fighting there is at its peak. The ship arrives this time as Optimus Primal is beating the stuffing out of Reptillion; it kidnaps Reptillion and several of his Decepticon troops, then silently returns to deep space.
The Transformers of Cybertron have no idea where the great ship goes, but viewers learn that the vessel returns to Unicron, where its Decepticon passengers are disgorged and ultimately stored in a giant series of tubes—a vast army awaiting the day it is unleashed to bring victory to Unicron! Fortunately, a counter-power exists deep within Cybertron, and is recruiting an army of its own. Will Primus be able to collect enough recruits to counter the threat of Unicron?
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Other |
|---|---|---|
|
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Items of Note
- The comic has no connections to any other Universe fiction.
- So... this bigass ship comes to town once a year, every year, and kidnaps a bunch of Cybertron's citizens. And nobody has bothered to investigate where it goes?
- Considering that everyone who sees the ship is utterly shocked, the above is perhaps not quite so surprising, if still baffling.
- How does the ship know it's the most intense day of fighting for the whole year? What if tomorrow turns out to be even more extreme?
- Unicron (parts of him, at least) is based on an unproduced 1998 Beast Wars Neo Unicron toy.
- Since Unicron benefits from the Transformers' battles, and the Transformers are already smashing each other up with no outside help, why does Unicron need to kidnap them at all?
- Unicron's Decepticon storage chamber bears some conceptual resemblance to the human storage plant from the the Matrix movies.
