On Life, the Universe and Motorcars

Everyone my age remembers Transformers from their youth. Everyone young today remembers Transformers from the recent film.

So that's everyone then.

I was quite the fan when young. I had lots of the toys. I saw the films. I watched the TV series. I read the comics. Whenever you fondly remember something from your youth you tend to have a sort of predetermined distaste for any attempt to revive and modernise the concept. Imagine then my horror when I learned they were making a new Transformers film, and that I'd be working on a microsite promoting the line of new toys.

How could the new stuff possibly compare to the nostalgia-enhanced awesomeness of my childhood?

Luckily the new film is pretty damn good. It is pitched at just the right balance between serious, cool and self-deprecating humour.

Even better, the new toys are damn good too. We only had the big Optimus Prime and Megatron toys in, but both are pretty impressive. The Megatron toy is the lesser of the two and only transforms into a sort of alien airplane thing. The Optimus Prime toy changes into a very nice truck model via a really complex series of transforms. You keep spotting new bits about it that are cunning. For example, you split, pull out then twist part of the truck grill to become the feet. As you're doing that internal mechanisms move another part of the feet into position for you. There are similar nice touches all over the model, including hands adjustable fingers and thumb.

Anyhow, that's enough of a free advert for them. Now for the one they paid me to make. Click below to play out the Autobots Vs Decepticons in cool street-fighter stylee action.

http://www.cartoonnetwork.co.uk/microsites_advertiser/transformers

I'm fairly pleased with a few aspects of this game. Since we started from the Turtles game we built a while back, we could afford to enhance a few features.

• AI tuned separately for each character. Each enemy in Turtles was essentially the same AI bashing the keys of the other characters.
  
• Mild element of learning in the AI. Use the same special over and over and it'll learn to counter effectively.
  
• AI self tuning. If it starts to thrash you it lets up and plays a bit easier for a bit. If you kick its ass it gets more aggressive.
  
• Better specials - from projectiles to transformation specials, there's more imagination to enjoy.
  
• Matched characters. As part of testing I put both characters on AI mode at quadruple speed and let them slog it out. Over 60 rounds later, the results were too even to call!