I don't know jack about Gundam, so I can't play. Thanks for bringing back some childhood memories of G1 transformers though.

Are you talking about Transformers: The Movie? I loved it as a kid.

Hmmm. I'll tell you this: Before the 3rd season was over, I was so tired of the copy/paste formula of every episode, with the Autobots chasing the Decepticons away at  the end, shooting at them as they flew away, that before I quit watching it, I was, briefly, actively cheering for the Decepticons. I was 10-11 around then. So, when I saw the movie, 2 years after it came out,  I really liked that the Decepticons were finally doing something other than tripping over their own feet. Finally, something was on the line. The threat of loss was real. Besides, the cartoon show itself wasn't much more than a 24 minute toy commercial. They didn't kill anybody to make way for new characters, but the roster was always steadily expanding.

Ha. I don't doubt it. It was very different from the TV show. I think AVGN even mentioned something along the lines of crying kids in the theater on one of his videos. I can say for a fact that the Prime death scene hit me pretty good. No bawling, but I'm pretty sure there were some tears.

I'm hoping Prime will win. Death Battle always managers to find some obscure moment where a writer lost their shit and use it as an advantage. They'll say 'Optimus Prime flew to Cybertron and back to earth. Cybertron is outside of our Solar System so he had to be traveling 800,000 times the speed of light"

We'll see, though. Should be fun.

I don't know. I can think of some pretty creative episodes that didn't follow a regular formula. Cobra Commander from GI Joe sneaking into an episode and manipulating everyone. Prime coming back from the dead, only to sacrifice himself again. The robot ninja named Night Bird turning on the decepticons. Starscream finding his lost friend Jetfire.

I'm 42 now so who knows how old I was at the time. They shaped a lot of my childhood beloegs. Yeah, they were really just commercials to get me to buy a toy but those commercials sometimes had great plots that stuck with me for decades!

I might be coming down a little hard on the TV show. Maybe. :)  watched a few episodes about 10 years ago, and my impression was that it had aged poorly. I was actually going to mention the Jetfire/Skyfire episode as one of the better episodes. If I recall, when he died, the Autobots at the scene all said in unison, "We shall remember". I was 9 or 10 for that episode, and it hit me pretty good in the feelings. Then very next episode they were digging him up, and Jetfire was back baby! We got toys to sell! Ha. 

That whole Jetfire/Skyfire toy vs cartoon thing was a weird situation. Do you remember the huge difference in how he looked in cartoon vs the toy? Plus the different name. I know it had something to do with Robotech, but have never looked into the details, if they're even floating around out there. 

Is Amuro the pilot, and how far along in his learning curve is he? Optimus probably still wins :)

I had that toy (so the marketing worked)! I still remember every time I hit the button to lower the spring loaded landing gear, it would pop out and hurt my finger. I was so dumb.

Basically, the American toyline was getting every changing Rocky robot could from Japan. They took   whatever robot was etfiree/Skyfire, repainted him and boom! New autobot.

I highly recommend watching The Toys That Made Us on Netflix. Fun, fun stuff! Very educational, too.

The RX-78-2 has a pilot that is a newtype, basically a super human that can see enemy moves before they happen. Optimus would lose by skill.