In what has to be one of my earliest childhood memories, I sat cross-legged on the carpet at a family friend’s 5th or 6th birthday party. I was shy and didn’t know any of the other kids in the room, so when an adult popped in a VHS copy of Transformers: The Movie to placate a room full of hyperactive children, I was all in. What began as pure excitement to see a feature-length film of my favorite cartoon quickly dissolved into sheer dread: the very symbol of heroism in my young universe lay dying within the first twenty minutes.
Mouths agape, a room full of kindergartners tried to process what we were witnessing. I vividly remember kids turning to their bewildered parents, desperate for answers. People love to cite Game of Thrones for rug-pulling audience expectations by killing off core characters, but Transformers: The Movie did it first—and directly to a generation of unsuspecting children! The ’80s were wild.
Killing off a lead character is a massive gambit for any long-running franchise, but Peter Cullen’s vocal performance made the scene hit far harder than it had any right to in a movie designed to sell plastic Hasbro merch. The decision itself was jarring, but Cullen’s absolute commitment to the role made it feel devastatingly real. Watching Optimus Prime fall may very well have been the first time in my life I experienced genuine grief. Seems silly now, but when you’re five? That’s a big part of your world.
With Peter’s passing, he leaves behind an extraordinary legacy. The character of Optimus Prime will undoubtedly live on through other performers, but it is a testament to Cullen’s iconic work that four decades later, we are still talking about that singular moment. Anyone stepping into the role from here on out has impossibly massive shoes to fill.
So, in the spirit of honoring the man who scarred my childhood with his emotional performance as a giant transforming robot, here are the Transformers games I’ve enjoyed most over the years. It’s a franchise that frequently got shafted with low-effort licensed cash-ins, but there are a few absolute gems buried in the pile—sometimes even featuring the voice of Prime himself.
G1 Cartoon Perfection – Transformers: Devastation
Played on: The AYN Odin 2 (via PXPlay local streaming from PS4)
Back in 2015, Platinum Games came to the same conclusion that many fans had reached years earlier. There were still plenty of fans of the G1 Transformers world, but no games that offered a true recreation of Saturday Morning Cartoon action. Using cel-shaded graphics, the game flawlessly recreates the iconic 80’s animation style in a 3D world. The best part? The majority of your favorite voice actors from the original series, including Peter Cullen, are present and accounted for.
The best game in the Transformers lineup comes with a catch, though. In 2017, Platinum Games lost the rights to the Transformers license from Hasbro, and with it, their ability to continue selling Transformers: Devastation. In the years since, the game has been delisted from every major platform.
The Steam page still exists, but you can’t buy the game. I might sound like a broken record on this subject, but once again physical media has rescued a forgotten title from obscurity. The game even contained all of the data on its disc! No install delay when I popped it in the PS4 for streaming.
While I’d never directly advocate users turn to piracy, Devastation is a direct example of the limited options that players now have to access a great game. Either they own a physical copy, or they sail the high seas. Publishers have left consumers with no other options, and it’s exactly the type of example that highlights the need for important work like Stop Killing Games.
It might take a bit of effort to find, but if you can, go for it. Transformers: Devastation is the perfect love letter to the cartoons I grew up loving.
The Lost Vikings Formula – Transformers: Animated
The Nintendo DS had a bit of an identity crisis. It wanted to have the same ports as all the big-boy systems of its day, but even back when it was released, the DS was a criminally underpowered piece of hardware. Nintendo loves doing this to save money, and it has worked out well for them, but developers in the early 2000s were eager to fit a square peg in a round hole by demanding 3D action games on a system that just wasn’t very capable in delivering that experience. Transformers: Animated seemed to recognize this fact, and try something new.
Rather than some poor approximation of a 3D action platformer, Transformers: Animated pivots to a 2D sprite based puzzler that borrows from the classic formula of Lost Vikings. Players swap between Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead on the fly in order to solve environmental puzzles.
The formula may sound a bit tired by today’s standards, but developer WayForward has a proven track record of brilliant license adaptations that often outshine their own source material, like The Mummy: Demastered and Ducktales: Remastered. Transformers: Animated zigs when everyone else was zagging, and gamers 20 years later are much better off for it.
The ‘Still Counts as a Transformers Game’: DreamMix TV World Fighters
This was one that I was actually unfamiliar with until a few years ago. As a Japanese exclusive, I was unaware that DreamMix TV World Fighters even existed until I found the ROM while exploring a Kinhank drive I’d been sent. Since that discovery a few years ago, it has remained a fun jump-in title for quick fighting sessions on the Odin 2.
Borrowing the Smash formula, DreamMix TV throws characters from across the Hasbro universe into the fighting pits together to battle it out. It’s not a perfect title, but the core gameplay is extremely solid. It’s a shame that this one never made it stateside in 2003, because the combination of characters from the Hudson, Konami, and Takara (Japanese rights-holders to Transformers) is a truly unique piece of gaming history.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to fight Optimus Prime as Bomberman or Simon Belmont? Curse you, tricky international licensing deals.
The Old-School Mouthful: Kettō Transformers Beast Wars: Beast Senshi Saikyō Ketteisen
Another release that never made it over to western audiences, this Game Boy Color title takes the Transformers: Beast Wars world and packages everything into a surprisingly decent fighting game. A charming “chibi-transformer” art style really rounds out the whole package.
Despite the GBC’s simple two-button control-scheme, this Beast Wars fighter has decent mechanics, and a crisp 2D presentation that really translates well on modern emulation handhelds. It’s simplistic, but it doesn’t really need to be more than it is. The game is decidedly “decent” from an era that didn’t see many Transformers releases, and the ones that did make it to market often left players feeling like they got the short end of the stick.
The Lost Jewels: War for Cybertron (2010) & Fall of Cybertron (2012)
High Moon studios hit the nail on the head with these two releases. Featuring everything that makes the Transformers cool in the first place, the games focused on 3rd person action that seamlessly transitioned between robotic and vehicular combat on the robot. The developers brought in Cullen to voice a younger, earlier version of Prime than we were mostly familiar with, and the performance is often cited as the actor’s best work on the role.
Just like Devastation (mentioned above), both of these games were victims to expired licensing agreements, meaning that once again, it’s impossible to buy them. You’ll either need to buy an Xbox 360 or PS3 physical copy to play, or you could always *ahem*, obtain the PC version from places on internet. Let your own morals be your guide, but is there really a victim when downloading a title that the original publisher has left to become abandonware?
Prime Lives
So, while Peter Cullen may have left this mortal coil, his legacy as Optimus Prime (along with a 50+ year career in voice acting) will undoubtedly live on for the next generation. His deep graveled voice set the standard for a badass hero leader that was also just, brave, and selfless. Even in the games here that don’t feature his work, I still read the dialogue in his voice in my head. That’s how iconic his performance has been over the last 40 years.
While Transformers as a franchise has seen as many misses as hits in all media formats, there is no project that wasn’t vastly improved by Cullen’s involvement. It lends a certain authenticity to the experience when the voiceover you’re hearing is “the real Prime”. Pass on the Matrix, Prime. Till all are one.
