Transformers Soundbytes

Transformers Sound Bytes

Music

Iridion 3D Menu music (MP3) -
From the GameBoy Advance game, "Iridion 3D", this short tune is extremely similar to the Vince DiCola track, "Autobot / Decepticon Battle" from the Transformers Movie soundtrack. Way too similar to be coincidence. The composer must be a Vince fan. ^_^
French G1 Cartoon Theme (MP3) -
"Transformers: Pour Un Monde Meilleur" ("For A Better World"). Monzo of the Obscure TFs page pointed me to this song. It's the opening theme from the French dub of G1. Completely new song, not just a translation of the American one. With the help of Thomas Hamann, the lyrics have been translated. You can read them (both languages) in this accompanying text file, but I've put all the same information in the "comment" area of the MP3's ID3v2 tag, so you don't really need to keep the separate file.
Quebec G1 Cartoon Theme (MP3) -
The G1 cartoon had two different dubs into the French language... one done in France, and the other in Quebec. This Quebec theme song is a fairly direct translation of the English song.
Italian Beast Wars Theme (MP3) -
"Rombi Di Tuono E Cieli Di Fuoco Per I Biocombat". Very roughly, "The rumble of thunder and skies of fire of Biocombat". Biocombat being one of the European names for Beast Wars. Monzo gave me this one as well. Like the song above, this is a completely new song written as the theme for Beast Wars in Italy. I can't decide if it sounds more like J-Pop, or like a missing song from Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Evita". It's sorta bizarre, but I totally love it.
Robots In Disguise music (link) -
Glenn Scott Lacey, the composer of the music for Robots In Disguise (which had all new music compared to the original Japanese "Car Robots") has two clips of RID music available on his site! No opening theme, just two pieces of background musc. Follow the link, then "change channels" on the TV until you get to Transformers.

Dialogue

From "The Evil Meteor" (OGG or WAV) -
Taken from an episode of the cheesy dub of the "Headmasters" cartoon, here Sparkle (aka. Spike) explains Danny's mission. "Spaceship Bruce" is, apparently, the name of Fortress's gigantic transtector/spaceship (aka Fortress Maximus). The WAV is about one and a half megs, and is provided just in case you don't have a program that will play OGG. (Pretty much anything that plays MP3 will play OGG, too. It's a compressed format like MP3, but it wasn't developed by a corporation who demand royalties for using it.) I encoded this myself from a videotape of the episode.
"I hear what you're sayin'..." (WAV) -
The Armada kids want to come along on a mission. For a second it sounds like Hot Shot might let them come, but then BAM! He shuts them down arbitrarily. He comes off as such a mean guy. Hehehehe...
"My official answer is: I don't know." (WAV) -
Armada Red Alert asks Hot Shot what the plan is... and despite having become the leader of the Autobots, he has no idea.
"Humans... come... with... us..." (WAV) -
Every time High Wire the Mini-Con would actually speak, he just sounded creepy to me. It didn't help that usually what he was saying was forboding anyway. This clip is also funny for all the kids going "whaaaaaa?" and "ohh!", as often happens in badly-dubbed anime.
"Unicron is frightening" (WAV) -
More scary Mini-Con speech. Unicron will destroy space. And of course the kids don't understand.

Other

The Cybertron sound (MP3) -
Encoded by Gyumaoh, this was actually taken from a VHS tape of the BBC's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (the collector's edition). This music is played during the opening. However, it's identical to a short piece of ambient theremin music played in the first episode of the G1 cartoon as Cybertron first appears. Other theremin music -- possibly from the same track -- is played again in many establishing shots of the planet throughout the series. The section of this file which appears in that first episode begins at around 16 or 17 seconds. This track -- or perhaps a longer version of it -- is probably either in the public domain or is fairly cheap to license, hence it's inclusion in both TFs and in the 1993 introduction to the HHGTTG tape. This sort of generic "sci fi" sound is produced with an instrument called a theremin. (Actually, it might be a ondes martenot rather than a theremin, but I suspect not. Here are the Wikipedia entires for the theremin and ondes martenot in case you want to know what I'm talking about, and a theremin website.)

This page created by Steve-o Stonebraker (sstoneb@gmail.com).
Content last changed on 2008-May-19.