Botcon.com just posted on their twitter account the winner of their twitter contest this year. Basically you just had to tweet about Botcon 2010 at any point over the convention weekend, whether you were in attendance or not. The prize was a lithograph signed by all the guests at the convention. Click on the image above to see a blown up version The signatures on this rock pretty hard.

And the winner of the BotCon 2010 Twitter contest is… @Laellon. Congratulations!!! http://twitpic.com/24pexn

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Botcon 2010. This year was the innaugural year of the Transformers Hall of Fame. Inductees included Megatron, Starscream, Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Hideaki Yoke, Kohjin Ohno, Peter Cullen and Bob Budiansky. Watch the video for more on the topic!

And for more on Botcon in general, check out this week’s PowetCAST here.

This year I wanted to wait until each of the figures in this year’s set had been revealed to do this post. The last figure has finally been unveiled, so here are your Botcon 2010 Convention Exclusives!

All pictures and descriptions can be found after the jump.

The exclusives this year are featuring a Generation 2 theme. Though, Sky-byte doesn’t really fit that theme very well.

 

First up is Spark. A repaint of Transformers Universe Inferno. The original Spark was a European Obliterator, which was just a re-release of Pyro. Pyro/Spark was never released domestically in the United States as far as I am aware. Spark was part of Generation 2. Pyro was not, though he did use a G2 faction symbol. That is to say he came in G1 packaging.

G1 Pyro...or G2 Spark?

Second is G2 Breakdown. It is only appropriate for a G2 Botcon set to have Breakdown in it. The first Botcon convention exclusive was G2 Breakdown in 1994.

 

And in 2004, for the 10 year anniversary of Botcon, G2 Breakdown was used again, but in Actionmaster form.

 

Here is the G2 Breakdown for 2010 using the Classics Sunstreaker mold with a retooled head. I must admit that new head looks fantastic. Note his license plate, ‘BCFW94′ – Botcon Fort Wayne 1994.

 

Third revealed is Streetstar. Streetstar is an interesting figure. He almost exactly matches the color scheme of the unreleased G2 Streetwise, however his name Streetstar is actually from same mold used for the combiner limb in Guard City from the Japanese “Operation Combination”.

 

Next is Clench. Not to be confused with the Mini-con that came with Armada Galvatron, the original Clench was a European Obliterator, much like Spark. He wore the G2 faction symbol, but came packaged in G1 packaging. He was never released domestically in the U.S. as far as I am aware. You can see more about him here. I think they did a nice job with the new head on this exclusive. Its a little more embellished than the original, but I think in this case the changes work and look better than the original. If anyone reads the IDW comics, you will recognize Clench as the leader of the underground fighting ring from Megatron: Origins, in which, the refugee miners including Megatron participated.

 

Clench is funny because Streetstar’s images were reported earlier than the official announcement because someone got creative with a trial and error url search for the images (which I’m pretty sure every news site has tried already). When Streetstar was officially announced the name was a surprise because the images had the name Streetwise in the filename. Before Clench was revealed, a similar process was used to guess the file names, but the folks at Botcon went one step further and actually posted fake photoshopped images of a different figure with the expected color scheme under the expected file name. When Clench was officially revealed, it turned out to be a completely different mold and Pete@Botcon had the last laugh. Being someone who did not report this false information (like Seibertron.com), I found this all very hilarious.

This is not the Clench you are looking for.

And finally Sky-byte. Sky-byte doesn’t really fit well in this set. He’s not from Generation 2, but Robots In Disguise instead. He also lacks the garrish and fluorescent color scheme of a Generation 2 figure/character. He uses the Energon Sharkticon mold with a retooled head. This figure looks great and has been a long time coming, but probably should have been tabled for a future set. Some more G2 Stunticons would have been very welcome.

 

Images surfaced recently here, that show what could be a convention exclusive souvenir figure, Sharkticon Gnaw using the same mold as Sky-Byte with a G1 sharkticon inspired color scheme. It is expected that this will be offered as set of two or three as a troop builder set similar to the Sweeps from the 2009 convention.

 

Its anyone’s guess what the rest of the figures will be, but I have a hunch we may see more reuses of the Classics Prowl/Smokescreen mold. In the meantime, here are some images of the box art.

 

It hasn’t been announced officially yet, but if you click on the ‘Registration coming soon’ button, you can register for Botcon 2010 in Orlando, Florida.

[UPDATE: Its Official!]

A BotCon video! In September?

BotCon 2009 was a great time. We talked about it in Episode 11 of the Powetcast, but we also shot a bunch of video at the convention itself. Fans of the Powetcast and Transformers fans alike should enjoy this little peak into the event of the year, before we were let down by Revenge of the Fallen.

(How do you feel about the slew of celebrity demises in the last two weeks? Or do you just want to weigh in on the latest summer blockbuster? Leave a comment below!)

Audio Netcast Details
Subscribe to the Powetcast on iTunes
Direct Link: Powetcast Episode 13: Cinema and The King Are Dead

Show notes after the jump!

The Panel
Sean “drove to South Carolina” Corse
Crazy “GIVE ME YOUR FACE!” Jaco
“Wants a Starscream Plushie” Sindra
aDam “Admiral Zed” Gardner
Zac “Public Enemy” Shipley

News

*RIP
**Ed McMahon
**Farrah Fawcett
**MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON
**Oh, and Billy Mays

*Transformers: RotF
**$112 million opening weekend
**$200 million since Wednesday
**…and a 20% on Rottentomatoes.com.

Roundtable

*Transformers, and the importance of a director
**How can two films (Star Trek and RotF) have the same writers, but their critical reception is light-years apart?
**http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/bonus_robs_transformers_2_faqs.php

Cool Beans

*TV
**Batman Beyond DVDs

*Games
**Wii Punch Out
**Fallout 3
**Ghostbusers
**Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Pimpin’

*Keep Playing: Rewind – DemonSword (last week) June 24
*Powet Toys: ROTF Wheelie (this week) July 1st
*Powet ABCs (this saturday) July 4th

This month I have put together a quick glance at each of the figures in the Wings of Honor Botcon 2009 Exclusive Box Set. Sorry, no transformations. With 5 figures to look at, that was the first thing to get cut.

Show Notes:
The SWAT repaint of Energon Rodimus is named Checkpoint.

Images come from: TFWiki, Google Image Search!, Seibertron.com, Botcon.com

Yes, I’m wearing a Botcon 2009 Staff shirt.

You know what’s weird? “Weird Al” having to ask David Kaye “how do we do this?” That’s pretty weird – especially weird for David Kaye. “They can make that happen, this is LA.”

Tom Kenny, AKA Spongebob Squarepants, played Starscream and Sumdac. Did you know that? Oh yes. Tom Kenny brought his son in for a recording session, not telling him that Weird Al was also going to be in to record that day. SUPER-COOL, OR WHAT? Best dad evar.

David Kaye went into TF: Animated thinking that he was going to do Megatron again, but a with a call from his agent, he found out otherwise. “Congratulations, you’re Optimus Prime!” “You mean… the good guy?” So it became very strange during the first few episodes when Sue Blu would call for Megatron’s lines, and David would stand up before remembering, “oh, it’s Corey [Burton].” Meeting his idols turns him into Chris Farley (“remember when…”), like when he got to meet Peter Cullen for the first time in Providence. Now that’s just Prime.

How much improvisation is there in the show? In Al’s case, they tailored the part knowing he was going to be the actor. “’I dare to be stupid,’ WHAT??” Not so much, really. But Al gets to Tweet something as Wreck-Gar. He gets an almost immediate response! …from someone in the crowd: “’You’re very funny with David Kaye in this panel.’ Well, thank you, Brian Rueben!”

What would Al like to work on? Produce the next U2 album, of course. But mostly he’s just happy to still be “Weird Al” for a living. Working on the live-action movie, given the opportunity? “Let’s think about it… YES.”

It’s sad that Animated won’t be continuing, because it’s clear that these actors are very attached to it, and Hasbro is very happy with how fans have responded to it. We’ll find out what’s going on with the TV show at the Hasbro panel.

Activision and Luxoflux

Activision and its developers are set to jump all over this Transformers bitch. How are they gonna do that? How about five unique games? One for Xbox 360 and PS3, one for Wii (taking advantage of its controls), one for the PS2 (thankfully NOT being ported to the Wii with waggle tacked on), and 2 for DS (much like last year). Each game was designed specifically to take advantage of the strengths of each console. But, of course, the most useful feature? You can Jump and Transform! Oh yes.

Activision spared no expense making these games epic; between all five, 500 people worked on development. Oh baby! Luxoflux is developer responsible for the “next-gen” systems (but not the other games), and was present for the panel, so most of the questions would seem to be largely be centered around this version of the game – although other aspects may apply to the rest.

The voice talent for these games is crazy. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker are back as Prime and Megatron respectively. They even got to record together, which was a great experience for the developers to watch. It was difficult to get voice talent for the first movie because the actors weren’t all decided until the last minute. This time, with lots of returning characters — and the foreknowledge that the robots would be able to talk — it was much easier to secure the voice talent for this game. Even got Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox into the studio, which was “a really GREAT day.”

This game wasn’t designed to address what might have been wrong with previous games, but rather was created first and foremost as a “great game.” The designers would look at the characters and critically think about what role each character would fulfill on the battlefield. This especially comes through in multiplayer. Oh yeah, the multiplayer! Haven’t seen anything like this since the moderately adequate Beast Wars games. Does that mean the fighting isn’t inane and repetitive? Hmm…

DLC is going to be super-happy fun time! Apart from characters (such as Soundwave), there will be “a lot more”, including stuff that will “make G1 fans happy.” The content will be equal across the Xbox 360 and PS3. Likewise, acheivements and trophies aren’t designed to be given for completing inane tasks; instead they reward players for mastering different aspects of gameplay. There are a few tied to completing a separate “medals” system within the game, so you definitely can’t get them all until you’ve completed these milestones. But for sure, players won’t be playing and replaying the same stages over and over, grinding pointlessly to get every achievement (or trophy) in the game. The most interesting achievement is a “viral” achievement that you can only get if you compete against one of the original “carriers” (one of the developers), or play against someone who got it from the developers… or someone else!

So how “spoilery” is the game? How different and unique is it that one can play this game without ruining their enjoyment of the movie? The developers asked Paramount what the top four or five best moments in the film, which allowed them to extrapolate and explore ideas that might not have made it into the film. Both the movie and game “begin and end with the same storyline”, but the game will definitely “tell the story from the bots’ perspective.” Even some of the same music is going to be used for both the film and game, due in no small part to the composer of the original film also working directly on the game. Cool? You bet it is.

I’m looking forward to this game, especially as an improvement over the previous Activision offering, but even more as a nice end cap for a Powet.TV Transformers game retrospective! Stay tuned, Powet Rangers.

Orci and Kurtzman

At noon Friday, Roberto “Bob” Orci and Alex Kurtzman took the stage to great fanfare, as hungry congoers expended much-needed life fuel to heap praises upon these hardworking writers. The duo immediately declared a moratoriam on all Star Trek discussion because “this is Transformers time”. We’ll see how that turned out at bit later…

Follow us on this magical journey of parallel silicon-based evolution, mistaken identity, car aficionados, the viability of massive mechanical deities, and much more!

“We’re listening”

Right off the bat, Orci and Kurtzman dispatched any fear that the writer’s strike had harmed the film. In fact, they felt that the strike helped them focus, as they had turn in a completed story outline before the beginning of the strike. Michael Bay and company went off on a lot of the pre-production process with just this outline, at a time when “even calling us could have been seen as ‘iffy’”. Once the strike was over, they claim that Bay locked them in a room and checked up on them every few minutes to make sure that they were indeed working on the script. In response to a question (asked later in the panel), the writers felt that the addition of Ehren Krugar was both necessary and a breath of fresh air. He was chosen in particular because of his immense knowledge and love of Transformers, but didn’t exactly petition for the job. For all of these reasons, they feel a better film will result.

As a first sequel to their own work, Orzi and Kurtzman felt it was important to observe a few personal rules. First, they did not want to make this movie “just because”, and felt the need for a story to drive it along – which makes them meeting their pre-strike deadline all the more amazing. Second, they wanted the returning humans – specifically Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox’s characters – to have a reason to be there. While the Autobots are learning if they will be able to coexist with the Earth’s natural inhabitants, Sam takes a parallel journey to try and live a normal life after something extraordinary happened to him.

Q&A

Well, that was pretty much everything I wanted to know! Fortunately, many fans had questions I hadn’t thought of. Of course, the declared moratoriam on Star Trek was lifted almost immediately, as nearly everyone thanked them for finally making Trek interesting and (quoting one fan) “Better than Star Wars”. Speaking of which, the question came up surrounding rumors that Leonard Nimoy would be voicing The Fallen (or some other character). Orci and Kurtzman were not sure he made it into the film in time, and believe that at best they were able to do was a shout out. (citation?) (Apart from his role as Galvatron in the original 1986 animated feature, Nimoy is also connected to the current Transformers film through his wife, whose nephew is… Michael Bay!)

So many questions! Why weren’t there more characters in the first film? Why didn’t they have more screen time? Who was responsible for picking the ones that made it in? Why no females in the first film? The answer to most of these questions had to do with the studio being unsure if the idea of live-actions robots could even work. This lead to the weirdness of the execs openly asking of the robots should even be able to talk. “Of COURSE they should talk,” Orci replied, playing himself in the re-enactment of their discussions. But, apart from selling the idea, they had to make sure it was technically feasible as well. So we see more humans in the first film for this reason, but also because the cost of any one robot “is several million dollars per minute”, and they are entirely fictional constructs. By comparison, humans tend to work for much less, and can actually be there for production. Besides, what’s the point of being a robot in disguise if you have no one to hide from? Eh? Ehhhh?

Now that the film has proved itself, they have more resources and more freedom to make story decisions. Whereas a female robot might have been a hard sell originally, this time around no one will even question it because, “duh, they’re characters!” All the same, Orci and Kurtzman do try to explain how things work with their own private technobabble that they struggle to keep out of the film proper. It’s important to know where this stuff comes from and how it works – so long as it relates to the story beat at hand.

Orci and Kurtzman have to give their props to the humans, though, especially Shia LaBeouf. He had to work with an actual, crushed hand. With all the stunts he was doing himself, he could have done further, permanent harm. But that’s just how dedicated he is. Would they give any other guy 30 DVDs (of movies he hadn’t seen before) while he was laid up in the hospital if he weren’t so completely rad? I don’t think so.

That’s the meat of it, but there were lots of other interesting questions:

• Is the giant steam shovel Demolishor or Scavenger? Turns out there’s a story reason for this confusion! Similar with the Blackout versus Grindor issue. Hmmm…
• What about Dispensor the Dew Bot, the Xbox 360, and all the other characters who came alive during the fight in Mission City? Clues for their fate will be in the second film, but “Don’t expect him to have settled down with a Pepsi machine to raise a family.” Aww…
• Michael Bay is directly responsible for a few of the odd characters. He wanted to inject more comedy with the robots, and Skids and Mudflap were chosen because of their less robust histories and ingrained appearances. But speaking of ingrained appearances, the switch of Sideswipe from a Lambourghini was Bay’s call – he’s a big car affecionado, and the writers don’t get much say for those alt modes. The “twin” idea is addressed differently in the film, since there’s no Sunstreaker (probably with Skids/Mudflap). As for the ice cream truck? Again, fits into the comedy goal. Speaking of the ice cream truck…
• Ah, combiners! Why do they suddenly show up in this film, and is there any overarching explanation for it? Apparently not! It’s not as if they spend the movie talking about “Megatron’s deadly new weapon” of combining robots, being this newly developed technology that only a select few can do. According to the writers, it just sort of “happens”. They feel that mechanical beings being able to combine with each other is just a natural extension of their physical state. When we see it onscreen for the first time, it’s going to be something of a surprise.
• A few fans expressed their desire to see if Unicron would be in the next film. Rather than comment on the subject, instead the writers asked completey open-endedly what the pros and cons were of his inclusion. Does this mean they’re considering it…?

Regardless, here’s looking forward to Transformers 3: Megatron vs. the Enterprise!