Nightstalker (G1)

Nightstalker is an Autobot Mini-Cassette from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Somewhere, Jason Yeo is crapping his pants. You know, with joy, not due to incontinence. We hope.

Nightstalker was once the partner of Ravage. His devotion to his superiors, however, exceeds even the Decepticon's—Nightstalker will unhesitatingly sacrifice his own well-being to save those he has sworn to protect.

No! You can't abandon the Overlord now - you can't!Nightstalker, "State Games"

Fiction

Marvel UK Generation 1 comics

Nightstalker, along with his partner Ravage, was bodyguard to the last surviving Overlord, an Autobot ruler who had grown so old and enfeebled that he needed constant re-energizing life support to stay alive. When the Overlord visited the city-state of Tarn, war broke out between it and its neigbor, Vos, forcing the Overlord to retreat to his own home in Iacon. Accompanied by Optimus Prime and a pre-Decepticon Megatron, the Overlord almost made it--but Tarn's forces tracked him down and demolished the bridge to Iacon before he could cross, trapping him and his retinue. Like all of the Overlord's bodyguards, Nightstalker possessed a powerful last-resort self-destruct mechanism, and in a display of extreme loyalty to his charge, he now used it: detonating himself and taking out all of Tarn's forces with him.

Nightstalker's sacrifice would be in vain: the Overlord died soon afterwards from energon deficiency after Ravage betrayed him and sided with Megatron, refusing to give up his own energy to sustain the old, rusting fool. State Games

Toys

Encore

You always remember your first pointless casualty.

• Twincast (2012)
  • ID number: 22

Transformers Encore Nightstalker is a black redeco of Steeljaw, included with Encore Twincast and Stripes. Nightstalker's tape mode is a near perfect reproduction of the tape detailing used for Ravage (likely to further associate them as one time partners). He uses Ravage's accessories.

As was the case with other cassettes released with Twincast, Nightstalker sports an image of Scorponok which reveals the city-bot's weak spots when viewed through Twincast's clear-red chest door (in the same way Tech Spec decoders work).

Notes

We wonder whatever happened to Jason Yeo...

• It was thought Nightstalker may have been loosely based on a similarly-named fan character that was entered into (and won) one of Marvel UK's character creation contests. This character, named "Night Stalker" (with a space), was less of a Ravage clone in design, with a canine robot mode (though with a similar color scheme to that of the Decepticon feline). However, when interviewed by James Roberts for The Transformers Classics UK Volume 2, writer James Hill stated that this is just coincidence (sorry Jason) and that the name was probably lifted from the Kolchak TV show.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Nightstalker (ナイトストーカー Naitosutōkā)