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Interview:
MP-43 Megatron (Beast Wars) Developer
Translated & Interpreted by Jeremy Barlow © Soundwave's Oblivion
2022
Interview from Figure King 245 (June 2018)
Developer Interview:
Masterpiece Megatron (Beast Wars)
The definitive version, both in size and gimmick
-Was the scale for Megatron decided upon from the
beginning?
During the development for Convoy, I created a scale chart for all the main
characters. Convoy’s size was used to scale Megatron. Even in the scene
where Convoy throws Megatron, Megatron is overwhelmingly larger.
-When did you decide to release Megatron?
The concept for Megatron was there at the beginning, the challenge was how
quickly it could be realised. Fortunately as Convoy was so well received, we
were able to start work on Megatron earlier than we expected.
-What aspects did you focus on during development?
The key points were to include a voice gimmick, accurately reproduce
Megatron as he was seen in the cartoon and move beyond the norm in terms of
transformation. Currently we are trying to make the Masterpiece figures as
close to the animation as possible as we wanted to include as much speech as
we could. However it is difficult to include a speech gimmick into a
transforming figure unless it’s going to be a large product. In Megatron’s
case he is a large character and his charisma helped popularise the cartoon
so we really wanted to include the speech for the definitive version.
-Is the audio taken from the cartoon? Also do you have
any favourite lines?
No, they are new recordings. We brought both voice actors in, including
Black Widow and NAVI-ko. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the recording
session but I heard everyone had fun. It was a shame to miss out (laughs).
My favourite quote is the recreation of the opening of episode 13 which
starts with the introduction song and Megatron says “Graaahahahaha. I am
Megatron, Emperor of Destruction! Let the Beast Wars begin!!!” The entire
opening song is included. There are over 30 phrases but I wanted to include
them as it reminds you of the cartoon.
-What was the hardest part of the design?
The obvious difference between the original toy and the cartoon model was
the backpack. It was quite impressively placed behind the robot head and we
wanted to reproduce the animated look. We couldn't change the shape of the
dinosaur so we used various methods to try and hide as much of the dinosaur
as we could and place the excess parts on the back. The original toy was
shortened below the knees to transform it from a dinosaur. For the
Masterpiece version we tried to find the right balance between robot mode
and dinosaur mode so they would not look out of place.
-The original Beast Wars toy was a near perfect
version.
That’s right. During development, our policy was the opposite from Dinobot.
For Dinobot we couldn’t achieve cartoon accuracy using the original toys
transformation so we had to start from scratch. However, changing Megatron’s
original transformation did not make any sense so we basically updated it.
-What is a feature you’d like to call out about
Masterpiece Megatron?
The fact you can roll the dinosaur eyes, you can roll them side to side with
your finger. The head is filled with a sound unit so we had to minimise its
design. However as you can move the eyes you can change the facial
expressions and reproduce the blank eyes for robot mode.
-Please tell us what you can about the upcoming
Masterpiece Beast Wars.
We would like to have a complete line up of the main characters from the
show and we'd like to aim for that goal. Thank you.
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