Fort Max head.   Although, to be fair, Chromedome is the only other Autobot Headmaster I own at the moment. So he wouldn't have a lot of comrades to hang with anyway.

When the comic came out, I couldn't figure out what the artist (and writer, I guess) was thinking. Let's take a bunch of surplus characters from Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic, and then add a bunch of computers and technology around them! Alien culture!

 

I think at least in the cartoon the Nebulans being green and their clothes gave them a different look as opposed to the humans. Now in the Rebirth Duros, Arcana, and Gort were given a bit of characterization, but not Stylor. On the Decepticon side only Lord Zarak was given time to develop his character, with a little depth to Spasma and Krunk (the Horrorcons), but not much else characterization was given to the rest of the Decepticon Headmasters. I was always under the impression that more episodes had been made for Season 4 (not referring to the horrible so called "season 5" which was reruns) that were then cut into parts to become transformers ads for their new toys pretenders and powermaster.

 

when I had the figure ,sold most of my collection, i would swap the display mode every 2 months.So at 1 point or an other, every mode was was featured

 

Unfortunately Fort Max is the only Autobot Headmaster I own at the moment, but Cerebros is pretty dinky compared to his comrades. If I did own more of the Autobot HMs, I'd probably display them all in vehicle modes with the headmasters themselves standing in a row. At least they're all the same size!

 

Agreed. While the whole point of the G1 cartoon was to sell toys, "The Rebirth" just took that to the extreme and made it a million times worse, trying to shoehorn in fifty new robots in three episodes.

I much prefer the Japanese Headmasters series over The Rebirth, and I'm glad that Shout Factory decided to make the subs with the characters' American names and factions, to make it seem that it was indeed meant to supercede The Rebirth (which is just my opinion). The way the characters were used in HM makes far better use of their toy designs.

 

I think the robots are in control unless it's a major character like Spike or Zarak

 

PRetty much the only name change I don't agree with is changing Fortress to Cerebros, considering what Cerebros was like (a whiny pacifist or a non-entity).

I wonder what they'd done if the headmaster components HAD been given their own names in the anime.  

 

Not exactly. Cerebros was Fortress in the Japanese Headmasters who merged with the battle station to form Fortress Maximus. I don't recall seeing Fortress (who was about the same size as the other Headmasters) remove his head in the series so it would be the equivalent of Spike that was removed from the trio.

 

I don't care who's in control.

Give my Autobots there heads back. Optimus and the Ark Autobots managed in season 1-2.



 

 

not exactly either 

Fortress small bot

 

Thanks. I didn't remember seeing tiny Fortress but as I said, I've only seen it once.

 

This whole thread is just more evidence why the Japanese take on Headmasters is superior.

 

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. Especially if you sat through the entire Headmasters series.

 

I'm referring to the concept of Headmaster-type Transformers. Not the Headmasters story.

(Even still -- iffy though the Headmasters anime was, I found The Rebirth to be about 1000x worse.)

 

your welcome

 

I sat through Headmasters. And Masterforce. And Victory. And Zone. If anything, I liked Victory the least. But it's a tie between whether I liked HM or MF more. I'd say that MF won by a small margin. But grebogoru is correct: HM is infinitely superior to The Rebirth.

 

Yeah, I think I like Victory least of the three, too. And Masterforce the most of the three. And I don't hate Headmasters. But I like Rebirth more than Headmasters.

As rushed as Rebirth was, it's 100 times more true to the tone and spirit of American G1. The old characters are right, and the new characters fit the world of the existing characters. With Headmasters, it's a whole new world... all slightly off... based on Japanese interpretation of American sensibilities.

Headmasters is to Sunbow seasons 1-3 and the movie, as Robotech: the Sentinels is to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. In both cases, the cross-culture sequels do have value as their own thing, but in both cases, there are actual legit sequels produced for their home territory that are much more true to their respective original series.

 

The "Spike" component is apparently called Cerebros in Japan. The more you know  

 

Given that organics tend to be depicted as having more flexibility than Transformers, I like the idea of the human/Nebulon component being able to take on a number of roles in the mental gestalt. They could act as a real-time front-end processor for the Transformer, mediating between the robot's fast-reaction systems and their core personality during combat or other situations requiring quick reactions. They could work as a secondary core during slower moments, allowing the Headmaster team to consider multiple simultaneous viewpoints and argue contradictory approaches. And of course the organic component can be a smaller autonomous telepresence point for the larger robot.

Or course, looking at what can be done with inorganic computers even today, most of this is pure twaddle. You could build a robot with dozens of semi-autonomous 'brains' scattered throughout its body, each able to handle a set of tasks either mental or physical, co-ordinating with each other on a far deeper and more protocol-compatible level than something as translation-delayed as a robot-organic binary bond.

Effectively, imagine something with the deep multi-core compatibility of Predaking, logic of Shockwave, the ability to split identical-personality bits of itself off like Sky Lynx, and the option of delegating one or more brains to take on tasks like weapons aiming, comms, moving, thinking etc. You could have one brain handling speech, another radio comms, a third laser or wired comms, and a fourth making rude comments in sign language. Or one handing physical combat, others on the lookout for environmental advantages, a third set scanning for incoming dangers, a fourth looking at tactics, a fifth strategy, and a sixth factoring in long-term goals. The result could probably shoot an opponent in their career.

 

People only think that because the Japanese audience got something for season 4 instead of almost nothing