NOTE: This is a full-featured but incomplete version of my BC2000
report, which includes blabbering about hanging around with my TransFan
friends.  If you are not a TransFan yourself, you probably won't know
any of these people, and even if you are a fan, you still might not
know them, or might not care.  I wrote (or started to write) this
report for my own enjoyment, so that stuff is there.  If you don't like
it, too bad.  ^_^



                    Absurdly Long BotCon 2000 Report
                             (incomplete)
                        by Steve-o Stonebraker

BotCon 2000 was held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at the Grand Wayne Center.
Ft Wayne is the hometown of Jon and Karl Hartman, the two TransFans who
founded BotCon in 1994 for the 10th anniversary of the launch of the
Transformers line.  That original BotCon was also held in the Grand Wayne
Center; this year's three video rooms had housed the entire convention
that year.  For BC2000 the entire convention center was rented out.  The
total number of attendees in 94 was 174; this year, there were over 1600.

BotCon is now run by the Hartmans and their friend Glen Hallit who are
collectively known as "3H Enterprises"; 3H is a corporation formed for the
express purpose of running BotCon, because it's easier to make business
deals with Hasbro if you're a company instead of just a person.

The guests at this year's convention were:
  o Vince DiCola - the composer of the score to Transformers: The Movie
  o John Moschita - the voice of Blurr in TF:TM and the G1 cartoon,
    also known as the Micro Machine man (the guy that talks really fast!)
  o Ian Corlett - the voice of Cheetor in Beast Wars and Beast Machines,
    as well as many other roles like Mega Man and Goku
  o Alec Willows - the voice of Tarantulas (yay!) in Beast Wars
  o Venus Terzo - the voice of Blackarachnia in Beast Wars and Beast
    Machines, plus many other roles such as female Ranma
  o Joe Madeco and Jamie Overby, Hasbro's Project Management Engineer
    and Global Marketing Manager for Transformers

I spent most of my social time with a group of TransFans from the IRC
channel #WiiGii! on DALnet servers.

With those comments out of the way, here comes my BC2k story...


---> Friday, July 28 2000

-> Friday Morning: Travel to the Convention

I woke up at around 4:30 AM from my last night of sleep in my first-ever
apartment.  The night before I had moved about half of my belongings to a
place a couple blocks away where I'm staying in August, before the lease
on my new place starts.  This kept me busy until around midnight, so I was
not feeling very well rested.  But of course, it wouldn't feel like a
BotCon weekend without the sleep deprivation, so I guess I was just
getting an early start.

I shaved, showered, and grabbed my bags.  Heading outside at about 5:15, I
was dismayed to see that it was already light and looking like morning...
stupid long-daylight-in-summer... you go squish now.  I loaded up on cash
from the ATM around the corner and sat down at the subway station.  At
around 5:30 the first train of the morning came by, I hopped on, and my
journey had officially begun.

When I got to Logan Airport at about 6 AM, my first task was to check in
at the United Airlines desk to get boarding passes for my electronic
tickets.  Last year I was able to check in at the gate for my flight on
American Airlines, which was very easy, but some reason this year I was
forced to guess at the meaning of cryptic signs which said "Economy" and
"Premier" before choosing which unmoving line to stand in and then wait as
each person's turn at check-in took 5-10 minutes... aarrrrrrgh.

Eventually I reached the desk and was informed that my 6:45 flight was
delayed until 7:40.  This meant that I would be arriving in Chicago O'Hare
airport about 15 minutes before my 9:30 connecting flight to Fort Wayne.
If I missed the 9:30 AM, the next flight to Fort Wayne would be at 5:30
PM, which would be quite unacceptable.

I sat down at my gate around 6:30 AM to wait.  I recognized one of the
other people at the gate, but couldn't quite figure out who he was...
Initially, I thought I might be recognizing him from a previous BotCon,
but it turns out he's just somebody who once took a class at Boston
University that I was the TA for.  Ah well.  I tried to write for a while,
but eventually sleepiness overwhelmed me and I sort of zonked out for the
rest of the wait.

Eventually the plane boarded and I took my seat.  First food of the day: a
bagel and some fruit provided on the flight.  When we arrived in Chicago,
I indeed had to hurry to get to the gate for my next flight. Predictably,
not only did I have to rush to a different terminal, but from the very end
of B, where I arrived, to the very end of C. I made it there at 9:13 AM
Chicago time, and the little sign for my flight said that boarding would
begin soon, so I sat down.  There was an announcement for passengers who
need extra time to board the Fort Wayne flight, and then a few for a
flight to someplace other than Fort Wayne which was boarding and strangely
enough at the same gate as mine (I think it was St Louis or something).

Then, out of nowhere, they asked for standby passengers for the Fort Wayne
flight to start coming to the desk.  So, I went to the desk, saw that the
board now said "boarding", and told them I was a non-standby person for
the flight.  They said to hurry down to the plane, then, and hope there
was a seat left.  Yow!  Thankfully, my seat was still open, but I continue
to wonder what happened there... did I somehow not notice them call to
board the Fort Wayne flight?  Was it the same as this other flight and
they decided to refer to two different destinations?  It's a mystery.
But I got on, and made it, so it doesn't really matter at this point.

The little turboprop was really, really hot inside until well after
takeoff because there wasn't an AC truck available to help us out.  The
flight attendant was also really hot, and remained that way throughout the
whole flight (and presumably to this day).  It took another half hour from
the time I boarded until we actually got to take off, so in the end, I
guess spending 20 minutes in the terminal wondering why I wasn't being
called wasn't such a bad thing, since it meant I didn't have to spend as
much time sweating in the plane.

The Fort Wayne airport is a nice little place, but, my first thought was,
"This is an *international* airport?"  I guess all that means is that they
have the capability to land and service big planes on international
flights... not that they actually ever *do*.  ^_^

I walked up to an information desk and asked the nice elderly people
sitting there how I would go about getting to the convention center.  The
pointed me to a bank of hotel phones, so I called the Hilton and they told
me their shuttle would be out in 15-20 minutes.  When it arrived, I
boarded along with two pilots and three other BotConners.  The other fans
talked TFs most of the way to the hotel; I only spoke up a couple of
times, spending most of the drive just listening.

-> Friday Midday: Hotel and Convention Check-In

At about noon the shuttle arrived at the Hilton in downtown Fort Wayne.  I
took a seat in the lobby to wait for my roommate, Matt "Thylacine
2000" Greenbaum to show up.  Matt graduated from Harvard this past year,
and since I'm at Boston University we used to hang out with each other
from time to time for TF and non-TF activities.  While I waited I saw
several familiar faces, including Doug Dlin and the Darkwings brothers
(Hydra and Buster).

Matt showed up and gave me my keycard for the room.  I dropped off my
stuff, and we headed back down to the lobby.  The group from #WiiGii! was
around somewhere, but we weren't sure where.  We wandered about for a few
minutes until SwiftEagle came by and told us WiiGii was already outside
waiting in line for pre-registrant check-in, which was to start at 1 PM.

I headed out with Matt and we found WiiGii sitting in the shade of a
skyway which reaches between the convention center and a movie theater
across the street.  The end of the line to get in was a lot closer to the
door than the group was, but the line was also in direct sunlight, so the
plan was to sit in the shade until the line got long enough that it
reached us, at which point we would *be* in line without having to leave
the comforting coolness of the shade.  Among the people there that I can
recall were Picard42, PerceptorTFWW, Tonyfitz, Monocle, Swift, Quez,
Hooper_X, CoolSlider, and Trent Troop...  After a short while Walky and
Windy arrived, and Phil "Skyjammer" Zeman passed by us a few times with
his camcorder.  There were probably other people there too, but, I don't
remember everybody, and some people in the group I actually didn't catch
the name of through the whole weekend...  Heh...  ^_^;;;

As a group we chatted, caught up with each other, looked at some new toys
(most notably the BW Mutant Soundwave, and Dalmatian's Beast Rider
Mechatron which he carried around with him for the entire convention,
taking pictures of many different people with it), and generally goofed
around.  I was reminded of how loud Hooper can shout.  Yikes.

Before too long the doors opened and the line started moving in to the
convention center.  Unlike previous years, the check-in lines moved very
quickly!  The 1100+ pre-registrants were split into four lines based on
their registration number.  When you reached the table for your line you
would show your confirmation letter with your name and number on it, sign
next to your name in a log book, and have your registration packet handed
to you by a staffer.

There was then another table well behind there where one could pick up
their t-shirts and get a free string or a $3 BotCon lanyard on which to
hang one's name badge.  I opted for the cool lanyard, since it says
"BotCon" and has faction insignias on it.  Neato.  Sadly, there was a
design flaw in the clips on the lanyards and there wasn't enough time
after receiving them for 3H to send them back: the part of the clip you
squeeze to open it up and allow you to slide on to it whatever you want to
hang is *too short*, which means even when it's "closed" there is a small
gap; this led to many, many lost name badges and announcements of "Person
X, we have found your badge, please come to the front table".

As soon as I had my lanyard I continued down the corridor in which this
was taking place and found that (after passing through some dividing
curtains) it led back to the hotel lobby.  (The Hilton and Grand Wayne
Center are connected on both the first and second floors, a fact which was
very handy for transporting toys back and forth when it rained.)  Those
WiiGii people who had been in front of me in line were already gathering
together in a huddle on the floor to check out the packet's contents, and
I joined them.  The convention t-shirt had an unknown symbol on the front
breast with the words "BotCon 2000".  The back has a drawing of the
original Optimus Prime and Megatron with the words "Legends Forever".
This drawing was done by the popular TransFan artist Dan "the art guy"
Khanna.  (Get used to hearing that name!)

First up in the registration packet was the convention program guide.
The cover features headshots of all the guests.  Inside is some of the
usual stuff like a schedule of events and bios for all the guests.  The
program also has a two-page color poster drawn by Dan Khanna which mimics
the TF:TM poster but is drawn with characters from Beast Wars and from the
last few years of BotCon exclusive toys.  (All the BotCon toys are brand
new characters who are involved in a story which continues from year to
year.)  It also has a greeting from 3H, some pricing and behavior rules
for the convention, and lastly, as in every other year, it lists the names
of all pre-registered attendees.  My friend Pema had a great idea and had
her friends sign her program next to their names this year, making the
program like a yearbook... I've gotta do that next time.  ^_^

Also in the registration packet was a set of three Transformers postcards
from Rhino, advertising their recent TF video releases.  Lastly was the
name badge: Preregistrants got a blue badge with a picture of Jetstorm on
them.  Dealers had green badges with Tankorr, special guests had yellow
badges with G1 Optimus Prime, and convention staff had **(who).  The font
on the badges was kinda small yet again... although other people (with
shorter names) had larger letters on theirs.  Next year I think I'll just
put "Steve-o" instead of "Steve-o Stonebraker" to make it end up larger...

As we sat in our little group looking at our stuff, we came to realize
that the group was really not at all little.  Eventually there were
probably about 30 people sitting and standing around.  WiiGii travelling
in large packs was a theme which would continue throughout the whole
convention.  Before too long, Rob Powers appeared from around the corner,
having just picked up his registration stuff, and an extended cheer rose
from our ranks which made him take a step back.

By this time - probably about 2 PM - I was really hungry, having eaten
nothing but that bagel and fruit on the plane since thursday at lunch
time... maybe even thursday morning.  Phil Zeman said he was going to make
a McDonald's run, so CoolSlider and I skittered after him.  We procured
some greasey goodness and returned to the lobby, where the gathering had
grown even larger, and sat down to consume our victuals.  At this point
the mighty Tengu had arrived, impressing us all by having both a
preregistrant badge *and* a staff badge.

We started hearing rumors that Men In Black Collectibles was around
someplace...  MIB is a dealer of sketchy reputation who ran the slipshod
BotCon '96 and have since been running a convention called "TransCon: The
robot convention... starring Transformers".  They've had numerous problems
in the past by promising things for their conventions which they can't
deliver, often without even getting clearance from their sources (like
Hasbro) before advertising the deal as done.  MIB has always been present
with a dealer table at BotCon in the past, but this year they rented out a
side room of the hotel on friday night and were claiming to have been
"banned" from actually being in the convention.  This was something we'd
have to go see for ourselves later...

I was chatting with Tengu, Phil and Tonyfitz when Dan Khanna and Vic (his
pal? brother? assistant? I never bothered to figure that one out... hmm)
came into the lobby.  Tengu had carpooled with them to the convention, and
Dan apparently had brought a motherload of t-shirts with his artwork on
them to sell at his dealer table.  Dan and Vic were hungry, so the six of
us jaunted down to Rally's.  I'd eaten not too long ago and wasn't ready
for another full burger meal, so I just got some fries and a milkshake.
We shot the breeze for a little while at Rally's; Dan said that there was
a lot of his art on official BotCon merchandise this year because Andy
Wildman - one of the premiere artists from the original Transformers comic
series, as well as a major contributor to past BotCon artwork - had been
asked initially but was bogged down in work committments at his new job.
Wildman couldn't get everything done that 3H wanted, so Khanna was asked
to pick up the rest.

By the time we were done eating, the dealers were allowed into the dealer
room to set up their tables for the frenzy which would start saturday
morning.  Dan said he could use a hand transporting the piles and piles of
t-shirts from his hotel room to the convention, so we all offered to pitch
in.  Most of us carried gym bags packed full of them, but lucky Phil got
to have a stack of shirts in plastic bags dumped into his arms.  ^_^  We
took the elevator down to the first floor and started walking down the
corridor to the dealer room, and with every step the bottom few shirts in
Phil's load slipped a little bit further out of place.  "Don't stop!
Just keep moving, I can make it!" he said.  We all followed Dan and Tengu
right into the dealer room, pausing only momentarily to wonder if we'd be
allowed in without dealer or staff badges.  And then, right in the doorway
to the dealer room - just four or five meters from Dan's table - Phil's
stack of t-shirts self destructed.  Awwww.  Tony and I helped gather those
that had fallen and we dumped the whole supply on Dan's table.  (He really
had prime positioning, being the first dealer one saw when coming through
the door.)

After the t-shirt move Tony, Phil and I headed back to the WiiGii cluster.
Tengu needed to take care of some staff-related stuff, and seemed very
apologetic that he couldn't hang out with us some more at that time.  He
must have asked if it was okay to bail three times.  Yes, Tengu, it's
okay!  Go help the convention run smoothly, and we'll talk to you more
later...  ^_^  Upon rejoining WiiGii, one of the jokes being tossed around
was the animation in the N64 version of "Beast Wars: Transmetals" when
Cheetor (or Tigatron or Ravage) wins a match, which involves putting his
hands behind his head - elbows out - leaning back, and sticking one leg
forward and bouncing it up and down... not exactly pelvic thrusts, but,
well...  Matt Greenbaum in particular was fond of demonstrating this
motion for the rest of us.  Heh...

By now some more WiiGii folks had shown up, most notably the contingent
consisting of LiquidVelcro!, Trixter, Megatron33, Alan (the robot train),
Grim, and Billy.  (Actually, they may have been around before, but I don't
remember... d'oh.)

At some point we decided to seek out the MIB dealer room, which was
supposed to be on the second floor.  With only a little searching, we
found them, being pointed in the right direction by a notice written in
black marker on a large drawing tablet which said "Transformers" and had a
big arrow pointing around the corner.  There was also a notice that the
room would be open from "noom - midnight".  Okay, so it said "noon", but
the second "n" was written in darkly over an "m" which you could still
see...  There wasn't really very much to the MIB table; most of their
items were really overpriced, probably because they knew there were no
other dealers working yet so nobody could comparison shop.  They still had
some pretty big stacks of the Onyx Primal exclusive from their BotCon 96.
They were also doing their best to get rid of old TransCon t-shirts, which
MIB front-man Dennis Barger said he really didn't want to have to ship
around with him anymore.  Barger also made several bitter comments about
BotCon and Hasbro.

It was now past 3PM, so the 24-hour video rooms had opened up.  We peaked
our heads into each of them, watching a few minutes of various episodes.
Eventually, I got tired of standing around and I'm sure the people
watching were tired of having a huge crowd standing just outside the door
and talking to each other, so I walked away a bit and took a seat by the
balcony wall, and eventually WiiGii followed my lead.  Here we had one of
our first conversations about the dubbed TF anime series, which is a
staple source of amusement for us.  Trix had a tape with her which
contained some great moments I had heard about but not yet seen, so I was
looking forward to a screening.  LV had told us about "Goth Wheelie" and
his "It's too late for apologies" line a whole year ago at BC99, so there
was definitely a lot of anticipation there.

-> Friday Evening: Semi-Formal Dinner

After a couple hours, it was time for us to go change clothes for the
semi-formal pre-BotCon dinner.  I wasn't sure if others would be wearing
ties or not; the dress code info we had said something like "guys could
wear a jacket or a shirt and tie" so I sort of figured most of them would
be...  As a result, I wore my own.  Darn thing took me about four tries to
get on right without one end or the other being way too long.  Then, it
turned out, nearly nobody was wearing one anyway.  ::sigh::  The best-
dressed dinner guest, though, had to be Jennifer "Trixter" Ulm, who had
made a dress for herself out of an old set of Transformers bedsheets and
accessorized with a Time Warrior watch.

The WiiGii group met up back in the lobby at 6:30 and then moved to the
waiting area for the dinner hall.  Entry for the meal wasn't until 8PM, so
we were really early.  Of course, we still weren't the first ones in line,
and would have just been sitting around talking to each other anyway, so,
why not do so and ensure good seats for the dinner at the same time?

When we were let into the dining room some of the best tables (closest to
the podium) had already been taken by those in front of us, but our
contingent eventually spread itself out over two and a half tables or
so.  3H came in to much applause, and Glen took the podium to say,
basically, "Everyone's really hungry, including us, so we're not going to
do a greeting yet.  Let's eat, and I'll talk later."

The food at the dinner was, IMO, kinda substandard.  I was
disappointed.  My salad was limp, the "seafood louis" was unimpressive
(although it amused Tonyfitz greatly to declare one of the waiters, who
looked like an aged jazz musician right down to the shades he was wearing
inside, to be the real Seafood Louis), and my chicken was... well, heavily
processed, it seemed.  They followed everything up with a desert of
chocolate mousse, which I thought might redeem them, but alas, it was
very, very dry.  '_`

Even ignoring the Seafood Louis jokes, my table-mates were really on a
roll, especially LV (what a cut-up).  Here's a few choice samples from the
dinner conversation:
  o After Dalmatian fumbles over a sentence --
    LV: You're the most eloquent man in existance.
    Dal: You, shoot up.
  o LV: Yes, Genital Hammer is AirHammer's less popular cousin.
  o On why some people prefer Grand Maximus over Fortress Maximus --
    LV: Justify your existence!
    LV (as a GrandMax fanatic): I have Cerebros' Pretender shell!
  o This one's paraphrased, because I don't remember it precisely --
    Tonyfitz: I could have sworn I saw somebody walking around in a sheet.
    LV: No, you're just remembering your Klan rally.

Between the main course and the desert, 3H stood up and talked to us from
the podium for a few minutes.  They got a huge round of applause again, of
course, and the Glen introduced the guests, who were all seated near the
front, and told us about the convention's exclusive items that
would be for sale later.  Here's the rundown:
  o new comic by Simon Furman and Geoff Senior which concludes the current
    BotCon story arc, "Reaching the Omega Point"; dinner guests receive a
    free copy with a variant cover
  o commemorative plate with Dan Khanna artwork of G1 Prime and Megatron
    on a Cybertron / space background; exclusively for dinner guests
  o Shokaract, the large toy, a repaint of TM Rampage done in blue, teal,
    and brown, with a box designed like Masterforce-era Japanese packaging
  o Apelinq, the small toy, a repaint of TM Primal done in silver and
    maroon, with a Beast Machines style box
  o cloth tote bag with the BotCon logo and all the faction insignias
  o poster of the supreme size Cheetor toy from Hasbro
Glen also informed us that the theatrical showing of the Transformers
movie had been changed from three screenings at a distant theater to one
screening at the Embassy Theater across the street.  The Embassy has a
seating capacity of 2500, which is more than big enough for everybody at
the convention to see the movie at the same time.  Hooray!  Also, Glen
informed us that we could pick up our exclusive toys as we left the
dinner, rather than having to wait until saturday as in previous years.

After Glen had finished his little speech, most people filed out to get in
line for their toys.  Most of my friends hung around a little while at the
tables, and then went over the the guest tables to hear what they had to
say.  I listened to Sharon "Tut" LaBorde and her beau Daryn talking to
John Moschita for a little while.  At one point Doug Dlin asked Mr.
Moschita if he knew anything about whether some of Orson Welles' lines in
the movie had been done by another actor.  Mochita thought that they might
have been, at which point Tut spoke up and brought the issue to a close:
She and Daryn had met Leonard Nimoy at a Trek convention recently and had
directly asked him.  Yes, Nimoy did some of Unicron's lines.  Ta da!
There's one TransFan mystery solved.

After a while I decided to go pick up my merchandise, so I started with
the comic book; Glen was hanging out near the exit and handing these out
to people as they left.  I took mine, happily.  I also snapped a photo of
him dancing with **(IIRC Tengu... I guess I'll know when I get those
developed...).  I paged through the comic as I waited for my friends to
meander over to the toy line from the guest tables.  Geoff Senior has
always been my favorite TF artist (not that I have any sort of dislike for
Wildman; he's great too, but, Senior's the greatest), so I was really,
really, really excited that 3H had commissioned him to pencil this comic.
When Glen had made the announcement that it was drawn by Mr. Senior, I let
out a whooping cheer, along with Walky, Senior's #1 fan, who happened to
be sitting right next to me.  ^_^

Eventually my friends were ready to leave the glow of the voice actors and
we got in line for our exclusive toys.  A few minutes later, and they were
ours... Shokaract and Apelinq.  Woo hoo!  Afterwards, a segment of our
group was gathering in LV and Trix's room, so I went to my room first to
drop off my loot and get rid of my tie, and then went back to join the
fun.  We all looked through our copies of the comic, talked about some of
the implications of the story, admired the artwork, etc..  I got a chance
to play around a little with LV's supreme Cheetor, although I ended up
fairly perplexed by it, and I kept knocking pieces of him off!  Overall, I
wasn't impressed, although his missile-firing gimmick, accompanied by
flashing lights and sound effects, is one of the coolest I've ever seen.

I was feeling pretty darn sleepy by that time, having gotten barely any
sleep for the two previous nights, so by 1:30 I went back to my own room
and zonked out.

---> Saturday, July 29 2000

-> Saturday morning: Dealer Room Mayhem

I awoke at about 7:30 AM, waited for Matt to finish showering, and then
took my turn.  Matt headed down to the convention center to get in line
for the dealer room's opening with the other WiiGii folks and take their
breakfast to them (donut holes they'd gotten from the store friday
afternoon), and told me to join them when I was ready.  Before too long I
headed down there myself and merged with the group.  I ate some donut
holes and we goofed around while we waited.  Same old, same old.  When the
doors opened around 9 AM and the line started moving in, a wave of cheers
and enthusiasm rippled back past us.  And then we were inside... great
Primus, this was a big dealer room.  BotCon just grows and grows...

Of course, even a really big room can get really crowded when you have a
thousand people all trying to see what's for sale.  Near certain
bottlenecks (narrow passages and tables with rare merchandise) it could
take you a full minute to move twenty paces.  My first targets for
purchase were a group of large Car Robots toys.  I was after a Gigatron
and Black Convoy for myself, and a second Giga for a friend back in
Boston.  I made a couple rounds of the room - one to scope out what was
available, and a second to make price comparisons.  Interestingly, the
Japanese dealer's table (home of Fumihiko et. al.) had significantly
higher prices on Car Robots figures than the net.merchant Wizzywig (I'm
talking differences of $20 or more).  So, I plopped down $130 in cash at
Wizzy for my Car Robots pieces, and then trucked them back up to my hotel
room so I wouldn't have to lug them around all day.

I went back to the dealer room for more browsing.  My remaining targets
were a TM Tarantulas repaint (the "Fox Kids" version done in black and
grey) and a Starscream & BB.  Neither of these was evidencing itself.  I
stopped at Hydra and Buster's table for a bit and saw they had a video
tape running.  I asked Hydra if it was one of the Masterforce fansubs
they're working on, and he confirmed that it was.  He said that the tape
they had with them was not a final version, because they hadn't gotten
master copies yet from the Masterforce LD set, so the picture quality was
a little lower on these.  They wanted to have something from their project
to show at BotCon, though, so they'd prepared this tape with episodes 1-4
from their personal copies of the series.  He then proceeded to hand me a
gratis copy of the tape as thanks for my support of the project!  Thank
you again, Hydra!  ^_^

(And in case you didn't know, you can visit their website for more info on
the project...  http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/hantaakiraa/pt/fansub.html
They need donations!  Help them out, people!)

Finally, I located a dealer who had the Tuxedo Tarantulas for sale:
Rugby's Starbase seemed to be the only place to get it.  The price was
pretty steep ($20) for a toy which is, technically, still findable on
retail shelves, but as I've never seen any of the FoxKids TransMetals
repaints for sale in normal stores, I figured I may as well get it there.
I still wish it hadn't cost so much, but I'm very glad to have it... TM
Tarant is one of my favorite toys of all time... I would buy a dozen color
variants of him if they existed!  ^_^

-> Saturday morning: John Moschita panel

At 11 AM the first of the convention panels began.  This was an hour-long
question and answer session with John Moschita, who played Blurr in the TF
movie and the post-movie cartoons.  Mr. Moschita was really funny; I sort
of expected him to be a fun guest, but he exceeded my expectations.
Very, very entertaining guy.  He also graced us with a lot of information
about his career and his work on Transformers:

The most interesting thing, in my opinion, that came out of this was his
statement that a lot of dialogue for the third season of the cartoon
series was actually recorded *before* the dialogue for the movie.  This
strikes me as incredibly strange, since the movie's animation was at a
much higher level than the TV series, and would have taken a lot longer to
get done.  I would have thought voice recording for the movie would be
done much further in advance, possibly even parallel to season two...  I
asked him about this later in the day while he was signing autographs, and
he said that, as he recalls, about half of S3 was recorded before they did
their movie lines, and seemed to think this was because they hadn't
decided for sure to do the movie before they were in planning for S3.
That doesn't make much sense to me, though, since S3 pretty much requires
the movie for setup...  Unfortunately I didn't get to pursue this with him
because there were still a lot of people in line for autographs, and it
wasn't really fair for me to stand there and buffet him with questions.

Also at this panel he stated that the voice acting union allows each actor
to play a main character and up to four other characters in any given
episode.  If they have more than those five roles in a single episode,
they have to be paid double.  (This explains why Scott McNeil got more $$$
than the other Beasties actors, although the exact workings of the
contracts in the Canadian union are probably slightly different than the
American one.)

During recording for the Transformers movie, they did most of their work
in isolation, with only one or two sessions where an ensemble was
present.  (In contrast, recording for the TV series was almost always done
in groups.)  Additionally, he stated that for the movie in particular,
they were often given no context for their lines, such as what planet they
were on or who was after them.  He also recounted an anecdote of Orson
Welles looking over part of the script which referred to struts being
melted and asking "Now, what exactly is a strut?"

Regarding the recording sessions for the TV series, Moschita echoed
statements by other G1 actors that the group recording sessions were a lot
of fun.  He specifically named Roger C. Carmel (Cyclonus) and Dick Gautier
(Rodimus) as being particularly good at improvising hysterical voices.
Another interesting bit of trivia is that the editors would sometimes take
dialogue recorded for one episode and insert it into another one.  He was
sometimes cut completely out of episodes he had recorded for, only to have
those lines show up elsewhere.  Thus, he would sometimes receive royalty
checks for episodes he'd never gone to the studio for.  Transformers
cartoons are still airing in some parts of the world, and he says that
recently the checks he gets for their residuals come in piles of about 200
which total to about $4.  (This may change soon, though, with Rhino's
recent video releases of the movie and several cartoon episodes.)

Moschita treated the audience to a few examples of his fast-talking,
including Blurr trying to pick up women.  He also responded with an
affirmative when asked if he ever uses his talent to "mess with people",
giving a specific example of a conversation he had with a customer service
operator at his phone company.

On non-Transformers topics, he had a lot to say as well.  He stated that
he's been disheartened in recent years to see a shift of focus in the
entertainment industry from creation to moneymaking. John is also heavily
involved in a children's charity; what I wrote down in my notes at the
panel is that he's executive VP of the Starlight Children's Foundation,
but in double-checking the Starlight's website, they list somebody else at
that position.  So, either I misheard or their website is out of date.
(Phillip Thorne's report says Moschita holds this position for the NV/AZ
chapter, rather than the national organization.)  He actually had a
charity committment for that evening, attending a screening of "The
Klumps" with a group of ill or handicapped high-school students, and thus
passed on the opportunity to watch the Transformers movie with us at the
convention.  (I think he made the right choice.)  Moschita also stated
that he loves roller coasters, but always has to wear a disguise of some
sort to amusement parks, and even then sometimes gets recognized.  He even
told a story about a friend convincing him not to conceal his identity
when they went to a grocery store, only to have a crowd of people form
around him within minutes.

Moschita was in a FedEx commercial not too long ago, and said that the
making of the commercial was a bit of a hassle because of the involvement
of some corporate suits.  After doing many, many takes of one sequence, he
and the director started to throw in little jokes, and in the final
version as he's in the board room he gives the names of two people there
as "Load" (you can guess what sort of load they mean) and "Dork".  John
also created a board game in the US called "Motor Mouth" which sold very
poorly, but has been a commercial success in Europe where it was retitled
to "Tongue Tangle".  Recounting his previous works, John Moschita has been
a series regular 4 times, done 1000 various TV episodes, and been in 12
movies.

Mr. Moschita also talked to us about the fast-talking world record, which
has become a matter of some dispute.  The way the Guiness book decides
this record is by recitation of the "To be or not to be" sililoquy from
"Hamlet".  There's a man in the UK named Steve Woodmore who had a talk-off
with Moschita on a live morning TV news show and completed the speech in
.01 seconds less time.  The Guiness judge then had to make an immediate
declaration of the winner without having time to review the tapes of the
contest because of a pressing international news item which had taken up
more time than expected.  Going just by the time, Woodmore was declared
winner.  Later, upon listening to the tapes, it was found that Woodmore
had omitted three sentences!  Although Moschita never got him to come
to a rematch, Woodmore did repeat his feat with the full speech and was
declared the new record-holder.  At least, in the UK Guiness book.  The
editor of the American version doesn't feel that Woodmore's speech is
understandable, and continues to list Moschita.
**(check that to be sure it's true)

Two other random tidbits: During the course of the panel, John was asked
*four times* "How can I become a voice actor?"... two of these times were
by the same guy, who started with "I have two questions, and one of them
is kind of a repeat of a previous question" only to ask essentially the
same thing twice.  Also, Moschita apparently spent a year as a live-in
babysitter for Dom DeLuis' children as he recovered from being hit by a
drunk driver while roller skating in Venice.  Hey, I said it was random.

-> Saturday lunchtime: WiiGii Invades Burger King

Following the Moschita Q&A there was a one-hour break before the first fan
panel, so we took the opportunity to go get lunch.  A conclave of about 30
TransFans, most of them WiiGii'ers, headed out from the Grand Wayne Center
with an intended destination of Wendy's, which was a block away.  As we
neared Wendy's, however, the Burger King came into sight, and for some
reason several members of the group preferred BK, so we headed onward.

It's an unfathomable mystery of the universe that the more people you have
in a group, the slower they seem to walk to get anywhere.  Being not bound
by such foolishness, I found myself near the front of the group with a
couple other non-slowpokes.  ^_^ This gave us the advantage of not having
to wait in line for 20 minutes before we got our food.  Bonus!

Eventually, the restaurant was at least 3/4 full, and *everyone* was from
BotCon.  I shared a table with Phil Zeman, Dark Angel, and Megatron33.
At the table next to us were Walky, Windy, and WARendfeld.  Yes, WAR was
at BotCon, but by lunch nobody knew who he was, so Hooper X had him paged
before we left the convention center and we brought him along with us.
(He didn't seem to talk much, but I can imagine he might have felt a bit
overwhelmed.)

This was but the first time WiiGii would overrun a fast food restaurant
over the course of the weekend.

-> Saturday afternoon: Beast Wars / Machines Voice Actors Panel

We didn't get back to the convention center from lunch until past 1:30.
The voice actors panel was set to begin at 2, so while all the WiiGii
folks stopped back in the dealer room, I went almost directly to the panel
room to catch the end of the first fan panel - about fanzine publishing -
and get a seat for the next one.  I found out that there's a fanzine
called Trans Net which has the purpose of transmitting Internet TF content
to offline fans... a great idea... although I don't remember who runs it,
and I can't find a website for it...

When the fanzine panel ended I started looking around to see if my friends
had come in yet and sat elsewhere, and spotted them on the other side of
the room.  I headed over to join them, and before long the panel started
with guests Ian Corlett (Cheetor), Venus Terzo (Blackarachnia), and Alec
Willows (Tarantulas).  All three of them were very friendly, and Ian and
Alec were both really funny.  (Venus didn't seem to make too many jokes.)

This time, "How do I become a voice actor?" was only asked once!  Hurray!
On the other hand, they were asked "How did you get inspired for your
characters' voice?" twice.  That in itself isn't a bad question, although
the answer is often pretty bland ("Well, uh, I just made it up."); but it
didn't need to be repeated.  They were also asked by a confused-sounding
guy why there hadn't been a full schedule of events in the convention's
pre-reg confirmation letter *and* whether they would start having
mail-order toys like they used to.  (And here I wasn't aware that Ian
Corlett had *ever* offered mail-order figures!)

Some other bad questions included:
  o "Is there going to be a BW or BM movie?" -- Maybe you could ask
    somebody involved in producing or marketing the show instead of the
    actors?
  o "Ian, you remind a lot of people of Hot Rod from the original show.
    What do you think of that?" -- These are actors, not fans, so don't
    expect them to know the old characters.  Also, it's Cheetor that
    reminds people of Hot Rob, not Ian.
  o "Who is your favorite character from the original series?" --  Did I
     mention that they're actors and don't know the old characters?

And then, the creme de la creme was a guy who walked out into the aisle
with the microphone (prompting a "Look, it's Donahue" from one of the
panelists) and unabashedly slammed Beast Machines and its developments for
the characters, ending with his question of "When you finished recording
the show did you all walk past Bob Skir and give him the finger?"

Now, even ignoring the fact that Skir (who story edited the series with
partner Marty Isenberg, but was the front-man for fan relations) wouldn't
be present at the recording sessions anyway, *and* ignoring the fact that
TransFandom is quite divided on whether Beast Machines was good or bad,
this is a flat out rude and inappropriate way to express grievances.  If
you've got some overwhelming urge to be an asshole in public, you should
at least do it in a clever way to prevent yourself from looking like a
complete stooge, but this was a complete failure on that front.

Thankfully, the actors were able to somewhat save face by intentionally
answering a different question.  It was Alec, I believe, who stepped in
first and talked about how so many characters met untimely ends in Beast
*Wars*.  (Of course, Alec didn't have a role in Beast Machines, so that
was about all he could discuss anyway.  Plus, he repeatedly joked about
his character's death and the time he was "turned into a suitcase".)

Enough with the bad stuff; overall, this panel was very interesting and
fun.  The actors joked around a lot - some of the recurring gags were Alec
feigning bitterness over Tarantulas' death, Ian complaining that all of
his characters sound like his normal voice, Tarantulas saying "We need
more energon!", and picking on the question-askers lightly when they
misspoke.  An example was when Alec was asked about his role as Mega Man
(Ian Corlett did that part)... in a very deep voice he said, "Hi, I'm Mega
Man.  I'm played by Ian Corlett.  I sound just like me."  I think he may
have tagged an "ultra gear," on at the end, but I'm not sure.  ^_^

There were a few fun moments regarding having both Blackarachnia and
Tarantulas on-stage together.  When Alec Willows was asked whether he
thought Tarantulas or Blackarachnia was "better", he said "I think
Blackarachnia is a little bit ahead in the brains department because she's
still alive."  Also, my roommate Matt "Thylacine 2000" Greenbaum got Alec
and Venus to sing the chorus to "Anything you can do I can do better" in
their characters' voices; that, as you might expect, was very funny.  The
other request that I remember them honoring was for their characters to
order food at a McDonald's drive-thru...  Ian's Cheetor ordered an armload
of Happy Meals ("for Bigbot", he claims... yeah, right), and Alec's Tarry
punctuated his order with "We need more fries!"

There was also a request for Ian to do Cheetor saying "I like pie!"  The
request was met with a solid round of cheers from the audience, which led
Ian to agree, but only after asking *why* we wanted him to do it.  He
wanted to know the origin of the joke, so the WiiGii crowd kindly all
pointed to Picard42, who curled up into the fetal position on his chair.
(It was actually Hooks who came up with that line for him in the first
WWFF, but Pic was the best representative of the franchise to embarrass.)

One of my favorite jokes from the whole panel: Alec had just given an
example to help answer a question and said "I'm full of analogies today."
Ian then punned, "Must be that analgesic you took."

We also learned that in the TransMetals video game Alec Willows did the
voice of Rhinox, that Alec had originally wanted to play Rattrap (he did
an example), and that when Ian was in high school he used to make his own
animated films to enter in festivals.  Additionally, Ian talked for a
little while about why he stopped doing the voice of Goku for "Dragonball
Z".  Frankly, he told us, it was a money issue.  Doing voiceovers for
pre-animated shows, and getting the speech to match the mouth flaps, is
basically a big pain in the butt; it's frustrating and difficult and very
time consuming.  While he appreciates the technical challange of that work
(called ADR, or sometimes looping), there's little reason to spend all
that time and effort while getting paid *less* than he would for work on a
new series.

-> Saturday afternoon: Hasbro Panel

Immediately following the voice actors' panel, the Hasbro panel
commenced.  Originally scheduled for later in the afternoon, it had to be
pushed up because the Hasbro representatives' flight back to their office
had been changed.  Quite sadly, this meant that they would not be able to
stick around after the panel *at all* to talk with fans.  I had really
been hoping to talk to them for a long time afterwards, as I had about two
dozen questions prepared.  (I remember Anthony Gaud, the HasKen rep from
BC96, hanging out with people for hours in the lobby after the panel that
year.  He was one of the few good points of that convention.)

The Hasbro reps this year were Joe Madeco, the head TF project engineer,
and Jamie Overby, the global marketing manager for Transformers.  (!)

First up I'll take care of the bad and embarrassing questions, like I did
for the voice actor panel...  For one thing, the confused guy who wanted
the actors to give him a BotCon schedule was still around and this time he
asked a question about the cartoon series.  (Too late!)  His second
question was actually relevant, although I don't remember what it was...
heh.

The guy who asks - every year - for an Arcee with Daniel headmaster was
back again; other people may joke about it, but this guy *is* serious.
Although there was a lot of groaning at this question, when Jamie asked
how many people would *buy* an Arcee toy, there was a strong reaction.
(But, of course, that doesn't mean there ever will be one, especially one
which matches her G1 incarnation, and ESPECIALLY especially one with a
Daniel headmaster.)

There was another guy who took a loooong time to get to the point of his
question, starting out with a story of how he bought Fort Max when it came
out, and found out years later that the Japanese FM came with a big sword
accessory which he really wanted.  He then asked if there was any way to
get parts for TFs from Hasbro.  Now, some people seem to have interpreted
this as him asking *specifically* if Hasbro could give him the Japanese
FortMax sword, but I think he was asking a general question, and merely
giving an example story to go along with it...  In which case, the
question isn't bad in itself, just the way it was asked.  (The answer was
"no", in case you wondered.  Hasbro used to send out replacement parts,
but has changed their policy to replacing only whole toys.)

There was another strange incident where somebody claimed to have come up
with an idea for a new Transformers movie which he had cleared with Takara
and Marvel and Sunbow, and then sent off to Hasbro for consideration, only
to hear nothing back.  He then asked something akin to "I'm just wondering
how long I should expect to wait before you guys steal my ideas."  Yikes.
I guess I can understand that this guy might be frustrated if he's been
trying to get a response from them, but that making that sort of statement
in a public gathering is totally inappropriate.  Jamie Overby essentially
said, "We don't steal ideas, talk to me afterwards, I'll see what I can
find out."

The absolute low moment of the entire convention, though, the crowning
jewel which is symbolic of all that is rotten in TransFandom is the man
who has been dubbed variously Vomitous Man, Vomitous Maximus, and Mr.
Vomitous.  Essentially, this organism who was sitting just a couple of
rows from the front took his turn to ask a question to verbally berate the
Hasbro reps over the "Beast Wars Mutants" sub-line, referring to the toys
as "vomitous".  He acted as if he had taken serious personal offense to
the existence of these toys, and had no problems with showcasing his
contempt for the very people who had created them.  There are a million
other ways to say "I don't like the BW Mutants" which are *not* offensive
and tactless and crude.  When you start out with an insult like that, you
pretty much invalidate your entire statement, and chances are you're not
going to be taken seriously.  Thankfully, his comments elicited boos from
all around the room, and there were shouts then - and spoken comments
afterwards - from people who *like* the Mutants.  The Hasbro reps
themselves said very little, aside from repeating what their response to a
previous "what was with Animorphs?" question...  "We try lots of different
things; sometimes they work, sometimes they don't."  I hope that this was
merely meant to pander to Vomitous Man rather than indicating that they
consiered Mutants a failure - already! - as they apparently consider the
Animorphs.

So, that about does it for the parts of the Hasbro panel I *didn't* like;
please, people, when you ask questions of industry personalities at
conventions, make sure your question A) makes sense and is decipherable
and 2) is being asked of somebody who might actually know the answer and /
or is not bound by a non-disclosure agreement to say "no comment".  The
one remaining bit of this panel I disliked was how testy the crowd got
about all these bad questions...  It got to the point that people were
booing and heckling nearly every question, even the ones which were simply
mediocre rather than being bad or silly.  I was frustrated by the lack of
probing and unique questions, too, but it's a *bad thing* if the mood of
the room becomes so hostile that people become afraid to raise their hand.

The guy who had mentioned the Fort Max sword actually asked two
questions... the second one started off sounding bad, but turned out
okay...  He opened with a "I think I'm speaking for all the fans when I
say..." kind of statement, which is a very, very dangerous place to go,
because it's extremely rare that *anybody* can actually speak for this
divided, factionized fandom as a whole.  He then continued, though, by
saying that the Unicron prototype designed for the Japanese Beast Wars Neo
was beaufitul, and asked whether there was any chance of it being
produced.  Admiration of the BWNeo Unicron is, by all appearances, a
nearly-universal feeling.  That doesn't mean there's nobody around who
think it looks dorky, or is annoyed that it doesn't match his movie
depiction very well, but it's true that almost everybody seems to like
what they've seen of it.  So, he managed to sort of save face by *not*
saying "I speak for all the fans when I say Beast Machines SUX" or
something inane of that sort.  Anyway, both Joe and Jamie expressed
familiarity with the piece, and did not flat-out say "No, it will never be
produced," which was actually a bit surprising.  However, they said
nothing which I think is fair to take as "encouraging", so don't get your
hopes up, folks.  It would be sweet, but it looks real unlikely.

When asked about the packaging for Beast Machines, and the lack of unique
artwork for each character, they explained that their plan was to go for a
consistant "line look" and incraese the toys' visibility in the store
aisles.  The fact that the packaging style for "Digimon" looks alsmost
exactly the same was an unfortunate stroke of bad luck.  Sometimes that
happens.  I think it was made clear to them that we like having individual
artwork, and they didn't seem especially attached to the current strategy.
It was just something new to try out, and whether it continues will depend
on how it seems to have affected their sales.  From what Jamie said, it
seems that "packaging" is a separate department within Hasbro than
"marketing", which was sort of surprising to me... if anything, I would
have expected it to be a subdivision within marketing.  On a similar note,
we were polled (by a show of hands) as to how long we think a given toy
should remain available at retail after first hitting stores.  A timeframe
of about one year seemed most popular.

On the "we love G1 and Takara" side of things, there was a lot of
interesting info revealed.  For one thing, Jamie said, and this is a
direct quote, "We know you like vehicles."  Of course, that comes as no
surprise.  The real question is whether the mass buying public likes
vehicles.  (Hence the fact that there are more Maximals in BM than
Vehicons... according to Ben Yee, that is definitely no accident.
They're testing the waters.)  Of course, it's not even *true* that
TransFans universally prefer vehicles to animals.  The long-term fans
mostly do, but not all of them, and among the newer fans animals may even
be *more* popular, since that's what they started with.

Joe, the engineer guy, said that those "Heroes of Cybertron" sketches have
been passed all over the place.  So, for those of you that hope to someday
see them produced, take heart in that they haven't fallen into a black
hole.  From what he said, though, I think this goes in the same "don't
hold your breath" file as Neo Unicron. (Heroes was a proposal put forth by
somebody within Hasbro Direct for a line of what amounts to Action Masters
of classic characters, but with much more detailed and stylized molding.
I could swear I've seen the sketches at a BotCon, or seen photos on the
web that somebody took of them at some other convention... I must say,
they looked pretty nice to me.)

One of the big revelations to quell the furor over G1 re-releases is that
not only are a lot of the original molds lost or destroyed, but even the
ones that *do* still exist are mostly in pretty bad shape from the heavy
use they got in the 80s.  The tooling for most G1 toys is simply not
usable in its present state, and would require extensive renovation before
it could be put back into service.  According to the BotCon panel 3H held
at the end of the convention, the few G1 releases which Takara *has* made
in the last few years with Beast Wars Second, Beast Wars Neo, and Car
Robots are among the few that are still viable, and were not restored to
that state without some significant investment.  The anniversary Convoy
(Prime) they've just released - as we know from the preliminary articles
about it... it wasn't addressed in this panel - actually had a *new* mold
recast from a toy because the old mold was gone.  Don't expect them to go
to that much effort for anybody less important than Prime.

Regarding the release of more Japanese toys in the US: They gave us a
"We'd like to, but no" to a question about importing some as store
exclusives.  Hasbrocollectors.com will continue to offer JTFs instead.
However, the reason they still have the same toys for sale that have been
there for ages is that they need to sell through the stock they have of
those items before they'll put up anything new...  So if you've been
holding off on any of those items, please order them now!  ^_^

Another topic which the Hasbro reps were asked about was the overabundance
of twist-ties in boxed US TF packaging over the last few years.  Those
twisties are there for two purposes: A) to keep the toy safe from damage
during transport, and 2) to help pose the toy in its packaging for display
in the store.  Jamie said that this method was chosen over Takara's habit
of an overlying plastic blister for reasons of marketing differences
between the two countries... basically, Hasbro prefers not to have
multiple layers of plastic between the toy and the outside of the
box.  That way it's easier to see the toy itself.  I imagine that cost is
also a factor, although that wasn't stated by Mr. Oberby... seems like a
handful of twisties is probably cheaper than a specially molded plastic
overlay.  Takara typically spends more money on their TF packaging than
Hasbro does anyway.  And remember kiddies: those twisties are easy as pie
to remove with a pair of nail-clippers.

The Hasbro reps also repeated and embellished some of what we've heard in
the past about the toy-development process.  They reaffirmed that Hasbro
and Takara work together closely in the development and marketing of the
US TF line.  There is a back-and-forth on sculpting options between
engineers in both companies, and design elements and gimmicks from older
toys are often referenced to help explain their ideas.  (ie. "Attach the
arms to a rotating brace like on Sixshot and Tigerhawk.") Representatives
from Takara visit the Hasbro facilities in Ohio 4-6 times a year for two
or three days to cooperate on the engineering and "debugging" of the toys
that they design together.

(Oh, and this ties in to the official reason for TM2 Blackarachnia's poor
distribution... she was brought back after being first produced for "color
and material changes"... that's fairly vague, and it's not immediately
obvious why that would lead to distribution problems once she was ready,
but, okay.)

Also, all the tech specs are provided by a single copy writer, then passed
around the whole TF team for comments and changes.  Like many fans, Joe
and Jamie like the way a lot of G1 Canon references have been made in
recent specs.  (If you haven't seen the specs for the Deployers and Beast
Riders, go check them out at Ben's bwtf.com.)

Lastly, here's a rundown of the news they revealed... some of it we knew
already, some we didn't.  First off, season two of Beast Machines was
announced to have a subtitle: "Battle For The Spark", and the BM
McDonald's toys were also brought up.  Both of those are now public
knowledge anyway, of course.  Jamie told us to expect a major renovation
of the official Transformers website in the near future.  The "Dinobots"
sub-line is selling very well; as well, in fact, as the "core characters"
from Beast Machines.  Jen Donahoe (a Hasbro rep from BC98) is now Hasbro's
retail marketing manager.  More efforts are being made to match the toy
and show incarnations of their characters, so hopefully we won't see a
repeat of what has happened with Beast Machines on that front.  And
lastly, there will be toys of every character from BM Season 2 except for
one whose name starts with "Bot".  (That should be vague enough to not
spoil anything for those who haven't been spoiled already.)  The other
toys should all be out by Christmas.  This includes Rattrap, whose release
has been pushed back to work out more design issues.

-> Saturday afternoon: Fan Panel by Tim Finn, Ex-Intern at Sunbow!

Immediately following the Hasbro panel came the next fan panel.  This one
was run by Tim Finn, who is probably most well known for his "Trans Spoof"
humor fanzine and the BC99 video.  The title of his panel was "10 Things
You Didn't Know About Transformers" and showcased a bunch of rare
Transformers material that he dug up while working as an intern for
Sunbow, the entertainment company responsible for all Generation One TF
animation, from the toy commercials to the movie.  As you might expect,
it was a fantastic panel.

One of the first and best surprises Tim had for us was a set of "Knowing
is half the battle" lessons featuring *Transformers* instead of G.I. Joe
that were produced but never used.  Yes, they actually ended with the same
"Now we know!" schtick.  We saw them first in a rough state with no sound
other than the dialogue and animation which hadn't been touched up or
**(color-corrected, and later in their final forms).  I found it
interesting that the background music for the finished spots sounded new
to me... I don't think I'd ever heard it before.  There were five spots
featured:

  o Tracks - Two hoodlums are walking along when they see a phat blue
    Corvette parked on the street.  "Nice car!" one of them says.  "Yeah,
    let's steal it!" the other suggests gleefully.  He takes out a coat
    hanger, but at the last minute the car transforms... it's Tracks!
    *gasp!*  Tracks tells them it's not nice to steal, which doesn't seem
    to bother them, but then he goes for the heart: "If somebody stole
    *your* car how would feel about it?"  "Pretty bad...!" the hooligan
    replies, scratching the back of his head.  Who knew it could be so
    easy to stop crime!

  o Red Alert - Two kids are riding bikes at night and Red Alert almost
    *runs them down* before he spots them.  I'm not kidding, it almost
    looked like he was aiming for them at first.  He transforms and tells
    them that if they have to ride at night to use reflectors on their
    bikes and wear bright clothing.

  o Powerglide - Two boys are skateboarding in the park when a girl comes
    up and asks if she can skate with them.  Clearly, being a girl, she
    couldn't possibly know how to skate, so the boys scoff at her.  Then
    Powerglide shows up out of nowhere (his spider-sense must have told
    him there was trouble) and lands on his tail like a Buck Rogers rocket
    before transforming.  He then convinces the boys to give the girl a
    shot, and they're amazed to see that she's as good as they are.  Whoa!

  o Bumblebee - Two boys are walking through the woods and one explains to
    the other that his parents are jerks and he's going to run away from
    home.  They come up to a street and Bumblebee just happens to be
    driving by.  He pulls over, transforms, and changes the runaway's mind
    with about two sentences worth of cliches.  "Running away doesn't
    solve anything!" he realizes.

  o Seaspray - A group of kids are on a sailboat, and two of them
    encourage the third to put on their life-jacket.  The daredevil has
    nothing but disdain for floatation devices, however, and insists upon
    standing on the boat's railing with no protection.  Immediately the
    wind changes, the sail spins around the mast, and our fearless child
    is slammed full force by the sail's foot, plunging into the
    ocean.  Thankfully, Seaspray has the eyes of an eagle and can travel
    at the speed of light, because he zooms out of the distance,
    transforms, and helps the fool of ambiguous gender back into the
    boat.  He then recommends wearing a life-jacket in the future.  As if
    that wasn't amusing enough, in the rough version of the spot the hair
    color of our protaganist alternates between blond and black from shot
    to shot.

As filler, in bewtween the big finds Tim would play rare old TF toy
commercials, like the Bruticus spot with a rap song, the MicroMaster
bases (they're not just small! they're Transformers!), and the Monster
Pretenders.  He also showed a very short animated piece he created called
"Burn Rubber"; it was a rather flat-looking computer animation, vaguely
reminiscent of South Park in visual style.  It was only about a minute
long, and had Optimus driving around on Cybertron and then going into a
base of some sort.

Tim also brought with him a bunch of material related to the Transformers
movie.  For one thing, he showed an American version of the extended
Japanese movie trailer; yeah, the one with extra battle footage and Ultra
Magnus in his Diaclone colors and such.  The Japanese trailer is narrated
in Japanese, of course, although the character dialogue is the same
English as the US movie.  This, however, was all in English.  Tim believes
it may have been sent out to theater owners as a promo for the film,
especially because near the end the narrator says the film will "bring
audiences back again and again".  ^_^ The background music for this
trailer was unfamiliar to me; definitely not DiCola's score.  I'm not sure
what it was.  (It's not unusual for early ads for a movie to have music
that isn't from the film itself.)

Also shown was a collection of TV ads for the movie, complete with the
title card at the front-end giving the title of the spot, its length,
etc..  Interestingly, there were ads targeted both to kids and teens.
The ads for teens were noticably trying to be more "hardcore"... one of
them was more or less identical to one of the kid ads, except the
narratation had been redone with a harsher, more gravelly voice!  And it
was very amusing to see that nearly every commercial had a statement like
"It's the final battle between Prime and Megatron!" or the astoundingly
blatant "Does Prime die!?!?!" coincident with the shot of Prime being
blasted by Megs and falling over backwards.  I really did not remember
that from my viewings of the commercials as a kid... the only line I
recalled was, "You'll have to see it twice to take it all in!"

Some other behind-the-scenes info included a photo of the voice-track
recording schedule listing all the actors and what days they were asked to
come in... everything was done on 9/10 and 9/11 of 1985.  (It's
interesting to note that Welles died on 10/10/85, a full month later...
either the recording was delayed, or had to be extended from the original
plans, or perhaps there was a later callback to redo some lines which
*did* take place after his death...)  Also, Tim quote the grosses for
TF:TM and the Gobots movie as $5 million and $2.9 million respectively.
It's worth noting that these figures do not match those on the IMDB (which
is pretty unreliable, anyway) or on CJ Stankiewicz's movie page
(http://iocon.com/cj/tf/movie/movie.htm).

The big news in the TF:TM department, though, was an extended look at the
original storyboards for many of the movie's sequences.  It was surprising
how detailed the storyboards were, going as far as to specifically name
which characters were onscreen, even when they were almost background
figures.  They seem to have been an intermediate step between the original
script (which can be found online in such places as Rob's Pile of
Transformers) and the final product, with some differences from both.
There was some really cool stuff revealed in the snippets that Tim Finn
showed during his panel, about half of it dealing with the first
Decepticon attack on Autobot City.  Since none of the following material
was actually in the movie, it's not really right to consider it true
Canon; but, many fans like to incorporate "original intent" and
behind-the-scenes stuff into their personal canon, so this should prove
interesting:

  o During the title sequence, after travelling through the "O" and seeing
    all those funky lights, as the credits roll, the storyboards call for
    a more interesting space journey than the plain starfield that made it
    in the final film.  The storyboards show a zoom **(in or out) sequence
    which passes such things as space probe from Earth, an asteroid belt,
    and **(Saturn).

  o You know how when Prime arrives at Autobot City and starts his little
    rampage, right after he runs down Thrust, Blitzwing flies off to avoid
    getting hit?  The storyboards show that after OP takes everybody else
    down with his rifle, Blitzwing swoops by **(in robot mode and
    tackles) him, knocking his gun away.  Several more Decepticons rush on
    screen and pile on top of him before the shot ends.  This encounter
    with Blitzwing is why Prime does not have his laser rifle during the
    fight with Megatron, until he picks it up from among some debris.

  o After Devastator fights off the Dinobots, he continues
    wreaking havoc elsewhere in the city.  As he trudges through a
    corridor, Ultra Magnus drives up in carrier mode.  Red Alert, Tracks,
    and **(Mirage) pile out and all of them transform.  They fire their
    missiles at Devastator, who shields his face from the attack but is
    hit hard enough that he dismantles.  The Constructicons **(get
    reinforcement?) land with no lack of acrobatics and start barraging
    the Autobots with laser fire.  The Bots scatter and retreat, but as
    they go, Red Alert gets nailed square in the back and goes down, dead!

  o Immediately afterwards, we get a transition where it's revealed that
    Megatron has been watching this firefight from further down a
    corridor.  He smiles at the outcome.  Then, entering the corridor from
    behind him he notices... "Prime!" who responds with the classic,  "One
    shall stand, one shall fall."  At last, we know what Megatron was
    *doing* just standing there like a dofus when Optimus came up behind him.

  o Then, after Megatron asks him "Why throw away your life so
    recklessly?" we see Ramjet running up behind Prime.  OP backhands the
    conehead, grabs him, and slams him into the ground before delivering
    his retort... thus explaining why he seems to be *standing up* as he
    says "That's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron."

  o The Matrix of Leadership appeared in the storyboards in a slightly
    different form.  This was presumably an earlier design.

  o In the finished film, after Galvatron incinerates Starscream, Rumble
    asks "What'd he say his name was?"  In the storyboards, this is
    followed by Bonecrusher saying "He didn't."  If you watch Rumble's
    motion during this scene, you can tell he's even turning towards
    Bonecrusher before the shot ends.

  o Ultra Magnus' death scene on Junkion was shown in the storyboards as
    it is in the script and comic adaption: the Sweeps draw him up into
    the air and quarter him.  This explains not only why the laser blasts
    coming from the four Sweeps in that shot are *continuous beams* to
    start but also why the Matrix seems to fall nicely out of nowhere in
    Galvatron's hand.  Tim believes that the voice track which was used in
    the final version may have been intended to go with the quartering;
    the pattern of Magnus' groan does seem a bit odd for somebody being
    simply shot and then spontaneously exploding.

One question which remains regarding these storyboards is why, if these
scenes were never animated, there seem to be transitions from "missing"
shots to shots which *are* in the movie, such as the Matrix falling into
Galvy's hand and Prime standing up while talking to Megs.  While this
certainly makes it seem as if those shots may have been animated and then
simply edited out, it's also possible that those transitions appear simply
because they are in the storyboards.

So, for example, there was a decision to change Magnus' death to firing
squad, but this may have affected only the shots which showed his death.
Before and afterwards, the storyboards were left as they were.  Hence,
continuous beams and falling Matrix.  As is often stated, doing
fully-finished animation is very, very expensive, and it's extraordinarily
rare to see anything more than pencil tests for shots which are left out
of the final product.  For that reason I stand by my belief that the
"missing" footage doesn't exist in finished form.

Near the end of the presentation, Tim also showed us a few storyboards
from the Beast Wars episode, "Code of Hero", which were drawn up by the
ep's writer, Bob Forward and won by Tim at the BC98 raffle.  (Bob got his
start as a storyboarder on He-Man before he moved into his first story
editor position on BraveStarr.)  It was somewhat interesting to see these
boards, too, but the real reason Tim put them up was so we could enjoy
Bob's rendition of Rampage's crab mode...  He looked sort of like a mutant
version of Sebastian from "The Little Mermaid"... really, really funny.

-> Saturday dinnertime: Rain and Burgers

At the close of Tim Finn's panel, I decided that I absolutely had to get
something to eat.  I was famished.  That breakfast of donut holes hadn't
been too filling, so even though I had eaten a decent lunch it didn't
really make up for the lack of food I'd had in the previous couple of
days.  I was out of cash at this point, so I asked if anybody knew of an
ATM that was closer than the one in a liquor store a block away.
Perceptor said there was one in the bank tower around the corner, so off I
went.

Turned out this ATM was at least as far as the other one, and when I
reached it I found that the entire building was locked tight, including
the ATM's booth.  It didn't even have a little slot to stick your card
into and have it open up... it was just locked.  Thinking there might be
another machine elsewhere around the large building, I started walking
around.

It was about this time that a steady rain started falling.  As I walked
back to the convention center I grumbled to myself, remembering how that
morning I'd taken my umbrella out of my backpack and left it in my hotel
room thinking, "I'm definitely not going to need this, I'll be at the
convention all day!"  By the time I got back to the Grand Wayne Center I
was pretty wet, but I still needed money and didn't want to end up soaked
through to my skin, so I went up to my room to dry off and get my
umbrella.  I then left again and went to the liquor store ATM.

With fresh cash in my wallet I headed across the street to McDonald's.
While in line (the service was kinda slow...) I chat with a random G1
TransFan.  He lived nearby and had driven in for the day when he heard
about the convention.  He wasn't really interested in most of the new
material, and wasn't sure if he wanted to come back on Sunday, as he'd
done all the toy shopping he wanted (and was surprised at how expensive
some stuff was).  He was a pretty cool guy.

So anyway, I got some grub, and then took it back to the convention center
where WiiGii was still milling about by the dealer room entrance.  I sat
down to eat, and about a minute later WiiGii decided they all wanted to
get dinner.  Arrrgh.  I tried to quickly work through my meal so I could
join them, and followed the crowd to the hotel lobby where people were
going to rendezvous after hitting their hotel rooms.  I finished my meal,
and then we all waited around for a while until everybody showed up, and
then waited around some more as a decision failed to be made about what to
do.  After a few minutes a destination was decided upon... McDonald's.
Arrrgh again.

-> Saturday evening: WiiGii Invades McDonald's

The group schlepped over to McDonalds.  I took a seat immediately, as I
didn't really need a second value meal in that hour.  The WiiGii enterage
numbered approximately 25 people again, as with our overthrow of the
Burger King at lunchtime.  Unfortunately, by this time I was starting to
feel a bit over-stimulated by all the commotion...  I'm pretty heavily
introverted, and it takes a lot out of me to socialize and be surrounded
by crowds all day.  I wasn't in a state to really interact much, and
withdrew from the conversations to recharge myself.

I sat near Bobbi, Hooper, and Recharge.  Somebody - either Billy or Alan,
I think - had picked up a Titanic-Bot which they had with them, as well as
a train robot which appeared to be from the same company.  Dal also had
Mechatron with him, naturally, and there were lots of MicroMasters to go
around.  I don't have a clear memory of the topics of conversation from
that dinner, unfortunately... I guess I don't get to make my report that
much longer than it already is.  ^_^

-> Saturday evening: The Movie On A Big Screen

Following the McDonald's outing, we proceeded directly to the movie
theater where "Transformers: The Movie" would be shown from actual film
reels instead of a video tape.  The theater was conveniently located
directly across the street from the convention center; they're even
connected by a skyway.

This was the first time since 1986 that most anybody had seen the movie on
film, so, it was a highly anticipated event.  It should be noted that this
would not have been possible without the efforts of TransFan and film
collector Andrew Southam, who over the years has gradually built up a full
set of reels for this film.  Andrew has told 3H that his reels are
available for their use anytime they want them.  This means that, assuming
there is an appropriate venue for showing it, a theatrical TF:TM showing
will likely become an regular BotCon event.

The movie was set to begin at 8PM, and we got in line in the theater's
lobby at, oh, probably shortly after 7.  I was still feeling a little
drained from all the social interaction earlier in the day, so I found my
way into a nice, soft chair against the wall.  Everybody else stood around
and shouted a lot.  (There were *hundreds* of TransFans stuffed into the
old-fashioned theater's lobby.)  I was amused to note that, even though
nobody was getting in through any doors, the line seemed to slowly advance
nonetheless as people scrunched forward in anticipation.  When I took my
seat, I was near the front of the WiiGii block, but by the time we were
let into the theater itself, ten people or so had passed me and I was with
the tail-end of the group.

The WiiGii group split in two as we entered; half to two-thirds of the
group went upstairs to the balcony.  Since *everybody* seemed to be going
to the balcony, I suggested to those WiiGii'ers near me that we could find
a better seat on the main floor.  So with Rob Powers, Bobbi Carothers,
Trixie, LV, and... um, some other people (Billy? Alan? I don't know...
they were much further down the row where I couldn't see them anyway)
picked out a nice spot for ourselves.

The Embassy Theater is downright beautiful.  It's one of those pre-WWII
era movie palaces with chandeliers and all sorts of baroque detailing and
paintings on the ceiling and stuff.  Also, it's enormous, with seating for
an audiance of 2500.  Although the colors of the walls and plaster
sculptures look a bit dingy and faded, it's simply a facet of their age
rather than an indication of not being taken care of.  Although I'm sure a
full restoration would make the place even more gorgeous, it's not really
in need of one.

After waiting for 10 or 15 more minutes during which I chatted with Rob,
3H ascended stage left and a spotlight was shone upon them.  They
explained that the original plan had been to have several smaller showings
of the movie at a place a few miles down the road, but that theater
suddenly cancelled on 3H just a couple weeks before the convention.  Glen
then called Karl up in a panic, explaining what had happened, and Karl
said "Maybe we can get the Embassy..."  Karl called them up, and an hour
later it was all taken care of.  And honestly, I think most people would
agree that it was better this way... everybody got to go, and we all got
to see it together.

Before the lights went down, there was one final announcement made: A
request for relative quiet during the screening...  "No reciting all the
lines" and such.  After all, not only had nobody seen the movie on film
for over ten years, but many fans there had *never* seen it in a theater
before.  So, yeah, keep the cheering and heckling to a minimum please.
And with a few minor exceptions, the audience conducted themselves
well.  With that said, the lights went down, the projector started up, and
the film began...

And... wow.  Even though I lost count long ago of how many times I'd seen
the movie, this was amazing.  The picture quality that comes from a film
reel is so much better than what you get on a TV screen... the resolution
is better by magnitudes.  All sorts of fine details became visible that I
had never noticed before... there was really a lot of care put into a lot
of this animation.

So, what was there and what wasn't?  There were no extra scenes that
aren't found on the videos.  Spike's curse line was included.  (As
expected, but people want to make sure.)  It was *not* widescreen.
That's right.  The aspect ratio of this film print is 4:3, or 1.33:1.
Same as a TV.  I've rewatched my tape carefully, and everything people
(including me) saw at BotCon is either on the tape or in the TV's
overscan, just barely offscreen.  Furthermore, Andrew Southam has said
that he's never come across a widescreen (anamorphic) version.  **(All
this time we thought we had a pan and scan video of the movie, but what we
*really* had was an film animated in open matte (full screen) which was
matted *down* to widescreen for its original theatrical run.  That is,
what you saw in the theater as a kid was merely the middle bar of what you
see on your video version, with the top and bottom blacked out.)

-> Saturday evening: Post-Movie Antics

After the movie, most of the WiiGii group headed up to a party in
TonyFitz's room.  (Now an official WiiGii-BotCon tradition.)  I stuck
around downstairs for a little while with Rob, Bobbi, and Recharge as we
talked to Nightwind and, uh... a guy with Nightwind.  ^_^;;;  About half
an hour later we parted ways, and Rob, Bobbi and I went up to the WiiGii
party.  Upon entering we were quite saddened to learn that we'd missed not
only a videotaped message from Walky's roommate, Dirty Ol' Steve, who we
met last year, but a screening of Blaster's classic death from the dubbed
Headmasters series...  Blaster: "Get the Power Pack!" **(?):"Billy, are
you okay!?"  Blaster:"Not really..." ::explodes::  (Yes, Blaster is named
Billy in the dubs.  Also, Blurr is named Wally, and the Power Pack is the
Matrix.  Don't ask why.  It's better not to question such things.)  Also,
the three of us missed out on the now-chic "Darn that Soundwave!
*yaaawwwn*" line from Galvatron (also dubbed Headmasters).

However, the dubbed-TF-anime-fest continued, and I finally got to
experience some segments that I'd been yearning to see since last year's
convention when I first heard about them, like the episode where Sparkle
(aka Spike) is almost killed when he gets to close to a battle...
There's a number of choice moments in that one, like the famous "Goth
Wheelie" moment where Chromedome is beating himself up over what happend
to Sparkle under his command and Wheelie says - in a non-rhyming bad
British accent - says "It's too late for apologies!"  Shortly afterwards,
there was a visually suggestive struggle between Chromedome and Hardhead
which WiiGii has declared to be an anal rape.  (Eeek.)  This episode also
showcased such lines as "Fortress has come himself" and "Fortress cannot
enlarge".

Eventually, we had our fill of badly dubbed anime.  Next on the agenda was
a music video Lith had put together, and afterwards, the second annual
BotCon WWFF reading and recording.  (For the uninitiated, WWFF stands for
World's Worst FanFic, and is a series of parody fics by a subset of the
WiiGii crowd.)  Unfortunately, there was a disagreement between Lith's
tape and the VCR involving stereo vs. mono such that we got no sound when
we tried to watch it, and the remote for the VCR to change its sound setup
was in Walky's house, many kilometers away.  So, we temporarily hijacked
one of the video rooms that only had one or two people in it, and watched
clips of lots of TFs beating the crap out of each other to the tune of
"Stayin' Alive".

Next we wandered about trying to find a proper location for the WWFF
recording.  Last year it was done in TonyFitz's room, but we ended up
laughing so loud that we were afraid we'd disturb other hotel guests.
This year we wanted to find someplace less risky.  We nixed a few ideas
for various reasons (too many people around, too much echo, etc.) and
eventually found the perfect location...  The skyway between the
convention center and the Embassy theater.  It was deserted,
sound-isolated, and non-echo-y.

It took a little while before Picard42 got us all organized and ready to
begin, but once he did, everything went pretty smoothly.  With the
exception of one flubbed line which was repeated, we went straight through
in one try.  I played Ratchet; I was asked to also play Shockwave since
when we got to him in the cast list I only had one character, but for some
reason I was intimidated by the script's demand that he sound "whiney" and
declined, unsure of how exactly to play that.  This seemed to annoy a
couple people... sorry...  ^_^;

The fic itself was cool; I think I liked last year's better, but this one
certainly had its moments.  The fic itself and the recording of our
reading can be found on the Transformers World's Worst website,
"http://fandome.com/tfww/".

Following the fanfic reading, we stopped in on the video rooms.  In the G1
room we saw "Webworld", which I hadn't watched in many years.  Next up was
"Starscream's Ghost".  I was enjoying the episode itself, but some of the
WiiGii people were heckling it pretty harshly, and were about as loud as
the dialogue, so that sort of sapped the enjoyment out of it.  I thought
about asking them to quiet down, but I was pretty sleepy anyway, so I
decided it would be easier to avoid the conflict and just slip out and go
back to my hotel room.

So, that's what I did.  Once there, I played around a little bit with my
first-days' purchases, and then got ready to go to bed.  Matt came back up
not too long after I did, too.  We talked a little bit about the
convention thus far, and then went to sleep.

--> Sunday morning: BotCon MST Presentation

On sunday, things started at 9 AM.  The dealer room opened and the Mystery
Science Theater treatment of TF episodes started at the same time.  I knew
I was going to be in panels all day, with no time to spare, but I wanted
to make another round of the dealer room, as well...  So, I sucked it up
and skipped the beginning of the MST.  I looked about the dealer room,
trying to spot anything else of interest.  I'd decided to pick up a copy
of "Transformers In Japanese Missions", a booklet put together by Fumihiko
which has pictures of all the G1 Japanese exclusive toys and a little info
on most of them.  I also wanted a second copy of the BotCon comic with the
non-variant cover.  And, I was still looking for a Starscream & BB.  My
first two goals were easily accomplished.  The other was fruitless.  I
didn't see a single SS/BB set during the whole convention.  I only saw
two Dreadwings (one loose, one boxed and overpriced).

I did pick up the other two items I was looking for, though, and then
headed into the MST session.  I looked around, trying to locate the WiiGii
folks, but couldn't see them.  I wandered slowly down the right aisle and
had just spotted them when somebody I had just passed said my name.
Turning, I saw Jameel (MegaBee) sitting there.  I hadn't seen much of him
yet, so I told him to slide down a chair and joined him.  The MSTing
itself was pretty fun, as usual.  The hecklers this year were the regular
cast: M Sipher, Rob Jung, and Doug Dlin.  Phil Zeman and Hex assisted
offstage.  Turns out I had completely missed the first episode, Beast
Wars' highly cheesy "Victory".  I wandered in near the beginning of the
Beast Machine ep "Forbidden Fruit".  Following it were "City of Steal" and
"The Dweller In The Depths".

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have taken any notes during the MSTing, so
I don't have much specific to say...  I liked the Conan O'Brien ripoff,
"In the year 2001", although I must agree that Rob Jung's falsetto was
rather... uh... piercing.  The Q&A section worked surprisingly well,
considering half of the questions were improvised.  Also, I was glad to
see the panelists continuing their tradition of shooting Phil dead.  I see
a running gag developing... heh heh...  ^_^  And of course, there was a
Bulbasaur reference, so, how bad could it be?

-> Sunday midday: Ravestrike's TF Video Game Panel

Following the MSTing, Jameel went off to do other things and I sat by
myself to hear Ravestrike talk about his involvement in getting the
Japanese "Beast Wars Metals" fighting game released in the US under the
name "Beast Wars: TransMetals".  This was mainly a Q&A panel, although he
did give a brief introduction, and took a few other opportunities during
the hour to speak for a few minutes at a time about certain aspects of the
project.  While he spoke, the panel room's giant video projector was used
by volunteer fans to duel on both the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions
of the game.

Ravestrike has been in the video game industry for at least a few years,
and has worked previously at Capcom.  He's now at a startup company called
Genazea which was started by he and his boss, who left Capcom in order to,
basically, make Transformers games.  (As of this report's writing,
Genazea's web domain is registered, but the site is still empty.)  After
learning about the Japanese "Beast Wars: Metals" game for PSX and N64,
Rave and his boss decided that they were going to get the game out in the
USA at all costs.  At this time, they were **(still at Capcom).  Hasbro
Interactive was completely uninterested in publishing the game stateside,
as was Capcom.

Eventually they located BAM! Entertainment, who were willing to release
it.  Working closely with both Takara and WaveEdge (the development house
for the Metals game), Ravestrike arranged for localization of the game for
the US, had new voice samples recorded by Beast Wars voice actors, and
even had four secret characters added to the PSX version.  The addition of
the new characters was one of the most expensive aspects of the
conversion, with a cost of about $20,000.  This expense was payed for
entirely by Takara.  (An interesting choice for them to make, really,
since the improved game was for US-only release, where they don't have a
controlling interest in Transformers.)  Additions to the N64 version
included extra voice samples and new ending sequences for each character,
bumping up the cartridge size from 96 Mb to 128 Mb.  Localization for the
N64 version had to be completed in just one month.

Here's some behind-the-scenes info on the conversions: Not all the voice
actors were in on the day Ravestrike went to get recordings done for the
game.  They had Scott McNiel, Ian Corlett, David Kaye, Gary Chalk, Doug
Parker, Alec Willows, and Venus Terzo.  Rhinox, normally voiced by **, was
done by Willows instead.  The initial plan for the N64 conversion included
even more bonuses -- three brand new character models of G1 robots.  With
simple reskinning they could expand three models (a seeker jet, a car, and
a semi) into a dozen characters including the likes of OP and Magnus,
Prowl, and Skywarp.  Unfortunately, the development house who was doing
the conversion, **(not Wave Edge I guess), went out of business before
this work could be done, so the game was wrapped without this addition.

Ravestrike himself is personally responsible for developing the scenerio
for the TransMetals game.  Because of the character selection, the game
doesn't fit into the Beast Wars timeline anywhere.  (Some characters exist
as TMs that were never TMed in the show, for example.)  Rave came up with
a story which sticks the game in an alternate BW timeline:  At the end of
BW season three, as the Maximals are taking Megatron back to Cybertron
through transwarp space, Megs sends a signal back in time to
himself.  With knowledge of the near future, the Megs who receives this
message plays his cards differently and the game's timeline is
established.

When asked to compare the two versions of the TransMetals game, Ravestrike
said that the PSX version has more impressive special effects, and more
extensive voice sampling, as well as interactive playing arenas with
obstacles and such.  The N64 version has flat arenas, so those saved
polygons went into improving the character models, which are noticably
better on the N64.  The Nintendo port also has more accurate transform
animations, and a slighly deeper gameplay element.  Both games had a
fairly small production run.  The PSX version is apparently selling out in
a lot of locations.  Rave himself didn't have a copy of the N64 version of
the game.  The copy being played on-screen was a rental.  o_O

Ravestrike then went on to talk about a new project that Genazea is
devoting itself to:


[ that's all folks ]