DVD Reviews:  Transformers: Original Series 1

"Robots in disguise!"

Transformers is freakin' rad! I was a fan of these cartoons when I was a kid and every Saturday I'd get my cassette recorder and tape the audio onto a cassette tape as we didn't have a VCR back then. To find that my friends at the AV Channel were actually collecting all the shows was fantastic and even better when I was lucky enough to get to review the entire first series!

Imagine a world if you will full of intelligent, sentient robots that have ideal and feelings just the same as we do. Their home planet is called Cybertron and it is at war with the two main factions called the Autobots (good guys) and the Decepticons (baddies) under the leadership of Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. Cybertron is dying as they are using too much energy so both groups go in search of energon cubes and after a weapons exchange, they both find themselves stranded on the planet Earth and with no way home. After a dormant period of many millions of years, both groups struggle from the earth and go about finding ways of getting home.

Befriending some humans, the Autobots do their best to protect the Earth from the ravages of Megatron and his evil Decepticons, whilst at the same time, trying to make their way home to an unknown fate on Cybertron. The machines, both good and evil can change their appearance from vehicles to their true robot like form. When they crashed to Earth they changed their vehicle mode in order to not stand out.

One thing that I did find annoying was that the show did not jump back to the main menu at the start of each episode. The navigation of the disc is a bit weird and it's easy to jump all over the place, especially if you play this with a DVD rom drive as the video track goes for the whole length of every episode. The easiest way around this is to go manually to the main menu to select your episode if you aren't going to watch all the way through.

There are sixteen episodes in this boxed set comprising of three DVDs. The titles of each episode are as follows:

More Than Meets The Eye Part 1
More Than Meets The Eye Part 2
More Than Meets The Eye Part 3
Transport To Oblivion
Roll For It
Divide And Conquer
Fire In The Sky
SOS Dinobots
Fire On The Mountain
War Of The Dinobots
The Ultimate Doom Part 1
The Ultimate Doom Part 2
The Ultimate Doom Part 3
Countdown To Extinction
A Plague Of Insecticons
Heavy Metal War

It was such a nostalgic viewing watching this first season of a series that I grew up with and the nice thing is that even after all this time it's still very entertaining viewing that will have you watching all the way through without a moment's boredom.

I like the fact that although Transformers was an in your face action show with cool robots that turned into vehicles, there was always a moral or something that you could take away from the show, like the value of friendship that the Autobots showed for each other, going to great lengths to assist an injured or captured comrade.

I also had my favorite Transformers and that stands true even today. On the Autobots side there was Optimus Prime, the leader of the group, Bumblebee and the Dinobots. There was only one bad guy that I really thought was cool and that was Soundwave, the one that turned into a cassette player and he could eject three other smaller Decepticons who turned into cassette tapes. Not only that but Soundwave had the coolest modulated voice on the show as well. "Rrravage Trrranssform!"

Other than the first three episodes that introduced us to the series titled "More than Meets the Eye", my other fave would have to be the introduction of the Dinobots and the destruction that they create when first activated and then later they win the trust of the rest of the Autobots and make themselves official members of the team. Of course things go wrong later and we have to make another two Dinobots to fix matters up.

The episodes themselves were remastered from 35mm negative onto the three discs that comprise this set. You can certainly see that a lot of work has been done on this title and the quality shines through. I'm not sure if it will appeal to everyone but definitely folks who remember the cartoon from their childhood (like myself), or younger viewers seeing the series for the first time.

I have no problems recommending this series for a number of reasons. It's an attractive package for a great price (only $59.95) and there are many hours of fun viewing for the whole family (maybe with the exception of some mums and sisters!). This release is suitable for any age group and should keep them all amused as well.

I can't wait for the next set! Stay tuned to impulsegamer!

The disc is shown in 4:3 full screen and it looked clear as crystal the whole way through. A great transfer as far as I could see and this is the original ratio that the show was originally produced in. I seriously cannot find anything worth while commenting on as far as faults go, this is a nice looking DVD and other than the shoddy menu system, it's all A OK. There are some evidences of low level noise especially in blacks, however this is not a constant by any means.

Now I was stoked to find this disc playing in surround sound and cranking it up for some Transformers action! Sound was nice and clear and every channel seemed to get a nice workout.