Transbot

Yes, I know, this is a Sega Master System game. But it’s okay as I have a Master System convertor for my Mega Drive so it’s all good.

What can I say about TransBot? You’re basically some kind of spaceship shooting at weird UFO’s.  During your quest to destroy said UFO’s you can pick up power boosters which change your weaponry and can even convert your spaceship into a robot. Every time you pick up a weapon booster you only have a certain amount of shots before you convert back into your original form. It’s a pretty cool idea and gets you somewhat hooked looking for your next power-up but unfortunately some of the power-ups are pretty crappy. There are one or two power-ups however that are bad ass and allow you to kill heaps of enemies in one shot. When you collect a power-up icon, a slot machine type of process takes place where you cycle through a number of letters which correspond to each power-up and you have to quickly select where you want to land and hope it’s on the weapon you really want.

The enemies look like crap. There’s no denying that not much creativity has gone into the construction of these pathetic looking bad guys. The game then keeps recycling through the same six enemies as you progress through the stages. You are rewarded though when you come to the big boss who looks like a rip off of that Star Wars two legged robot thing. This guy looks pretty cool and is a welcome relief to the shitness of the other generic enemies. He is however so god damned easy to kill and once you have destroyed him you go back to the start and the game just throws larger amounts of crappy looking bad guys at you for you to kill. At this stage I gave up playing. I think I saw all this game has to offer and I did spend a reasonable amount of time trying to get to the main boss.

The graphics are just plain shit. The backgrounds are repeated and look bland. The enemies – as previously stated – look bland. What can I say? It really is just a generic space shooter; the only thing that sets this game apart is the ability to change your weapons as you progress through the game.

Unfortunately I could not get the music/SFX working for this game. I don’t know why as my Master System convertor has never had this issue in the past. So it must be this game? I know it does have sounds as I YouTubed it to make sure and yes the game does have sound. So imagine how extra dull this game is without any sounds or music.

The controls were pretty decent. But let’s be serious, it’s pretty much up, down, left, right and shoot. How could they fuck that up? My one complaint is that your character moves really slowly when going up and down compared to left and right which makes it a little harder to dodge enemy fire.

This game is a piece of shit, once you reach the first big boss (I don’t know if there are more and I’m not wasting my time to find out) you can pretty much turn the game off knowing that there is literally nothing more to see here. TransBot = ShitBot.

Graphics 6/25 | Soundtrack 0/25 | Game Play 10/25 | Controls 13/25

Overall 29/100 – F-