Review: The Transformers Adventure Game: Defeat the Decepticons

About a year ago, I tried my luck landing a job with a website dedicated to tabletop gaming. One niche I had hopes of focusing on were tabletop games based on licenses over the years, looking back at them and how well they played, how well they utilized their source material, and whether they were worth seeking out for fans of the property today. Things didn’t work out, however, and so while I’m busy with other projects at the moment, I’m running one of my submissions here as a filler article. Hope you enjoy!

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Licensed properties and board games have gone hand in hand for as long as any of us can likely remember. That said, while some games make good use of the licenses they’ve been granted, others are merely cheap excuses to cash in on something popular (or even just something the publisher hopes will be popular).

In 1984, the Warren Company rolled the dice on a new property from Hasbro called “The Transformers,” and so obtained the rights to convert this new multimedia brand into a board game. The result is the cumbersomely titled “The Transformers Adventure Game: Defeat the Decepticons,” or just “The Transformers Adventure Game” for short.

The Transformers Adventure Game was released at the dawn of the franchise, and was likely developed at a point in which there was little to nothing in the way of fiction – specifically, the Marvel Comics book or Sunbow’s animated series — for Hasbro’s robots in disguise. As a result, the game is based purely on the toy line, with many a character looking a bit different from the models used for the comics and cartoon.

The cover of the box features the same packaging art featured on the back of the toy packaging for the first year’s toy releases, giving us some interesting quirks of the still-nascent property, such as Optimus Prime wielding a small pistol instead of his signature rifle, Megatron sporting his preliminary design, or multiple Soundwaves ejecting their cassette minions throughout the vastness of space (“Collect them all! And then collect some more!”). The full design is also featured on the back of the game board, meaning that if nothing else, this might make a nice display piece on your wall, provided you don’t mind the big crease down the middle.

The back of the box not only shows off the contents within, but also sets the stage (try reading it in the voice of Victor Caroli, the narrator from various parts of the franchise, if you really want to get into the proper mood):

“You are OPTIMUS PRIME, Leader of the Autobot forces. MEGATRON, the Decepticon Leader, and his evil companions have captured six of your most trusted allies, the Autobot MINICARS. As OPTIMUS PRIME, your mission is to penetrate deep within the Decepticon’s maze-like headquarters and free the MINICARS. Use strategy, courage and your amazing ability to transform in this TRANSFORMERS adventure to defend the Earth and Defeat the Decepticons!“

Included inside are the game board, 54 cards, 30 Autobot Minicar tokens (five of each character), eight Optimus Prime game pieces (two per player), eight stands for those game pieces, and a pair of dice.

The game board is rather nice, all told. Beyond the main playing area, there is what appears to be some redrawn art of several characters as they appeared on their toy packaging, with Optimus Prime, Sunstreaker, and Ratchet down on the surface of some planet in the lower-right, while Megatron hovers above them menacingly in the upper-left with Ravage and either Laserbeak or Buzzsaw. In a neat touch, the “Draw” spot for the cards feature a planet, while the “Discard” space features another planet being blown to bits from across the board by a blast from Megatron’s fusion cannon.

As for the game pieces themselves, the Minicar tokens each feature colored line art of Brawn, Windcharger, Gears, Huffer, Cliffjumper (my favorite, though that seldom goes well for me), and of course, Bumblebee. Four of the Optimus Prime pawns feature the Autobot leader in the robot mode from his package art, whereas the remaining four feature what may be original art of Optimus’s original White Freightliner WFT-8664T cabover semi-trailer truck alternate mode.

Then there are the 54 game cards, each depicting one of several of the initial lineup of characters from the 1984 launch of the toy line. As you might have guessed by this point, the packaging art for each character is used, and while nicely unobscured by things like backgrounds or logos, you might be able to find the same or better quality of the same images in the 2014 book Legacy: The Art of Transformers Packaging, or even just by looking online.

Setup takes a little bit of time, even beyond the initial assembly of the game pieces, as you’ve got to (well, in theory) set up all 30 Minicar tokens in their appropriate spaces on the board, as well as shuffle the card deck and put that in its appropriate place.

As noted by the premise, the goal of the game is for you (as Optimus Prime) to rescue the captured Mincars lining the board from the Decepticons’ headquarters. The number needed depends on how many players are participating; two have to rescue the whole lot of six, three have to rescue five, and four have to rescue four.

The instructions say that a typical game session should only take about half an hour, and that seems about right after playing it recently. If you have three or four players and want a longer session, of course, you can require everyone to rescue all six different Minicars.

Gameplay is simple: After determining the order by rolling dice (higher goes first), players rolls the dice to determine where they can move along the numbered pathways, each corresponding to a number on the face of a die. So rolling a 6 and a 3 means you can either move along the six pathway and then the three, or vice-versa, while doubles give you one free movement of your choice. Move your way to the spaces where a Minicar token is placed in order to free them until you’ve met the designated quantity.

Of course, it’s not just that simple. Several spaces on the board are covered with burst icons, which mean that you have to draw a card and follow the instructions on their face. Naturally, Decepticon cards will hinder your process in some way while your loyal Autobots will assist you.

That takes care of the “conflict” aspect of the property, but what about the series’ namesake, transformation? When you draw a Decepticon card, you’ll have to swap from Optimus’s robot mode to truck mode, which – for no other reason than “robots are cooler” – moves slower by reducing the number of dice you can roll each turn to one. Find an Autobot card or rescue a Minicar, and you can turn back into robot mode and resume using both dice. Fortunately, between the greater number of Autobot cards and the Minicar tokens, you should be spending more time in robot mode.

All told, it’s a solid enough experience that does well to incorporate the limited elements of the franchise that were available when it launched, but it can be a bit of a slog to get through, depending on your luck. A roll of the die is all it takes to send you completely off-course from your objective, or in some cases, have you move one space only to return to where you started.

While it can be fun to break out on occasion, if only for the novelty, odds are that The Transformers Adventure Game: Defeat the Decepticons was never a game night regular back in the mid-80’s (though younger children within the target demographic of the time might have been more engaged by it). Today, its collection of vintage toy artwork may mean it would be better served as a curio or collectible for avid Transformers fans who remember the glory days of what is now lovingly referred to as “Generation One.”

Score: 3/5

(Note: I really don’t like applying scores to reviews if I can help it, but given the nature of the work I was going for, I included one here anyway.)

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David Oxford is a freelance writer of many varied interests. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.