Poor level design + weak protagonist = horrific game
In theory, making a platformer where you can shoot enemies with your transformer isn't the worst idea. Making your character die in one hit wasn't uncommon back in this era of games. The controls could even be a little loose when it comes to movement. However, the level design has to hold up its end of the deal, or else, you could end up with a disaster like this game.
Right off the bat, when you press start to play, you have to deal with a flashing red and blue screen, that's lovely. The game tries to hurt your eyes at the very beginning.
Once you start, you notice that this is a traditional side-scroller where you play as Ultra Magnus. And almost immediately, the game throws an enemy at you that flies down and shoots you. The bullet it fires even blends in with the mountain in the background. To any future game designer: don't do this. Let the player take the time to figure out how the controls work. I know this was made in the 80s and in-game tutorials weren't expected, but the devs should have at least known to let the player get used to the controls.
You would think this would be easy. Just jump and shoot, right? Well, the jumping feels like you're in low gravity, and can actually be a pain in the later levels. You can also transform into a truck, but you have to hold down a button to do that, making this a risk that is not worth taking. When you walk and stop, you will notice that you kinda slide for a bit after stopping, like you're Luigi.
However, the level design is certainly not nice like in Mario games.
This game will ask that you react instantly to small enemies coming at you, and your bullets don't have the best collision detection on them. There is a power up that gives you more hits, but enemies drop power-ups at random, so good luck finding that one. After every level, you get some type of boss battle. These are different kinds of lame. You face a gray ball with a glowing blob in it after level 1, and after level 2, you face TWO of those gray balls, woah. Later, you face the Decepticon logo, and that boss gets recycled multiple times. Megatron does show up eventually, but this game is so poorly designed, you will probably not feel a desire to even want to face him.
There are vertical stages, and those find new ways to torture you. As you jump up or try to make your way down, you may bump into enemies that you can't see until it's too late. I feel like this game should have let players take hits by default. The game has a power up to let players take hits, as mentioned earlier, so why not?
The reason is that there just isn't much to this game without its notorious difficulty. Hell, stage 9 takes the game's bullshit to a whole new level. You know those levels in the Super Mario Bros games where you have to go through them in a certain path or else you're stuck in a loop? This game tries something like that with stage 9, but the path is practically impossible to figure out without an internet guide. Instead of looping a small part, you will be stuck repeating the level until you go through the level the right way. On top of that, you also have to get an item, which looks like a gray toy of some sort? Why couldn't they just make it so you grab that item to enable you to reach the boss battle? You know, instead of torturing players with the path it forces you to take, that would be nice.
On top of all of this, the ending most people will see is just text. Players are not told by the game that they have to collect letters that spell out RODIMUS, so the ending most players will get is the one where they're told to get those letters. If you do collect them, you get a different ending where you see Ultra Magnus transform into Rodimus Prime. To get the true ending, you have to beat this game as Rodimus Prime. The true ending is just a "congratulation!" screen, with the little Ultra Magnus sprite standing above the score. That's it.
Little changes could have gone a long way. Let players take hits, don't be harsh on the first levels. Replace the lame shooting sound effect with something cool. Only have boss battles when you have something interesting for the player. Improve the controls. Make transforming useful if you're going to have it in the game. The more I think about it, the more I realize that these aren't "little changes" - but you get the idea.
