San Diego Comic Con happened at the end of last month, and it brought some news in the world of Transformers. After the Con (heh), Transformers World 2005, a site dedicated to the franchise, had a Q&A with Hasbro. The main topic was upcoming toy lines, but some of the questions delved into the War for and Fall of Cybertron games.

The question was whether the games would see a re-release to coincide with an upcoming line of figures based on WfC, dubbed "Gamer Edition". Initially it was reported that, while Hasbro would love a re-release, Activision doesn't know where they are on their drives. The hope is that, with the Microsoft acquisition nearing completion, they'll go through the archive and add them to Game Pass.

Quote From Hasbro

Q: Possible to re-release the Activision TF games to coincide with Gamer Edition?
A: Sadly, apparently Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company things get lost, and that’s very frustrating. Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox that they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all, because it’s an easy Game Pass add. We want those games back up for people to have a chance to play.

However, Lulu Cheng Meservey, CCO and EVP Corporate Affairs at Activision Blizzard, clarified that they do have the code and it was never lost.

Quote From Lulu Cheng Meservey

These headlines are wrong. We have the code, it’s not lost and never was.

Currently, Hasbro has a number of assets from WfC and all the assets from FoC (likely for making toy molds, not game development), and they're still the ones holding the rights to the games, Activision just licenses them.

Quote From Hasbro

Q: So you do have some of the game assets then?
A: We do, but it’s very interesting. FOC, we have everything. For WFC, we had to rip it ourselves, because they could not find it – they kept sending concept art instead, which we didn’t want, we need the CAD. So we booted up an old computer and ripped them all out from there. Which was a learning experience and a long weekend, because we just wanted to get it right, so that’s why we did it like that.

Q: What led to Gamer Edition’s creation? Were Activision or High Moon involved in coming up with the idea at all?
A: They actually weren’t, because we own the rights to the games, they’re licensed from us to be produced, so we have that freedom.

While the Cybertron games are the most fondly remembered, Activision actually has a lot of Transformers games locked in their vaults. Tie-ins to 4 out of the 5 Michael Bay movies and the Animated and Prime tv shows, plus an action title by Platinum Games (Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising) in Transformers Devastation.

The Cybertron games were developed by High Noon Studios, who also developed the Deadpool game, and that's a great segue into the Marvel titles. Activision made A LOT of Marvel games, including the first two Ultimate Alliances and about a dozen X-Men and Sider-Man games each. That's a ton of games that people can't get legally, at least not directly from the publisher. While there's no word from Marvel the matter as far as we know, we hope they're as open to re-releasing them as Hasbro is for Transformers.


Are you excited at the prospect of Transformers games making a return? What other games from the Acti vault would you love to see released? Let us know in the comments below!