I forgot...what was done to Rattrap in character development is almost criminal. There really was no need to make him more of a scared rat. If there had to be this story arc of where a young character must learn to ballance themselves to finally transform, that should have been part of cheetors development and journey into becoming a better hero...would have made more sense seeing that cheetor was the youngest of the group. Oh well.

So yeah, if you were a fan of rattrap you may not like Beast Machines. Out side of that mistake in writing the show is pretty cool.

 

2014 = where is the BluRay version.

 

I'm looking forward to watching this again.

 

I'm sorry, but for a series produced in 1998/99, not in HD, not in widescreen... what exactly do you think Bluray is going to bring to it? It's still gonna be the same resolution, no matter what format it's on. Like converting a 128kbps MP3 to uncompressed AIFF, Bluray does not "add" quality, resolution or detail that does not exist. You'll be able to watch it in super-super-super-standard def TV quality. The truest-to-life late-90s SD TV quality possible.  

Regarding the release itself, this is really great news. Beast Machines was a very ambitious series, which took a number of risks in storytelling. Where some recent series spent every episode taking one step forward and one step back for a frustrating water-treading effect, Beast Machines happily took two steps forward and three steps back, as things progressively got more complicated and challenging for our heroes, while managing to fit not just one apocalypse, but two. ("I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse.") Characters did deviate away from their previous Beast Wars characterizations, which was probably its biggest "sin", but honestly, get over it, because they needed to shift things around a bit to get the characters where they needed them (Cheetor's leader qualities, Blackarachnia's motivations) in only 26 episodes.

People get confused by Beast Machines, because it was written as science-fiction, rather than Happy Robot War. It's basically the Transformers equivalent of Lost or FlashForward. If you haven't seen it, or it's been a while, put your preconceptions aside, and even your memories of Beast Wars, and re-watch it.

 

But it's Blu-Ray, it has to be better.

 

Well if it was on Bluray they'd be able to use fewer discs, but otherwise this is spot on. If we are going to be mad about a series not getting a BD release, it should be TF: Animated since it was animated in HD and widescreen. The upcoming series set is thankfully in widescreen but it supposedly is lacking in extras including several animated shorts made for the show.

Honestly if that ends up being the case, I'm pretty sure we can all forget about Beast Machines getting anything more than the bare minimum. It kind of seems like Shout Factory has been phoning in their releases lately... 

 

Need this in HD. BM was rad at the time, because it all went down on a dark age Cybertron and NO HUMANS. The Vehicons were cool. Primal was a depressed hippie though, and Nightscream was embarrasing to look at. Stupid hair.

 

Depends on how it was originally created. If it was compressed for television, VHS or DVD release then the Bluray release would allow for an uncompressed, higher quality picture and sound, if remastered from the original source.

 

I LOVE Beast Machines. but i won't double dip from my Rhino dvd unless they go on awesome sale, OR there are really really good special features.

 

When it comes to BW or BM and being released on blu-ray... the only benefits would be less discs and depending on how many episodes per DVD, less to no compression.

Regarding either series in HD... the same rules that apply to an HD remaster of ReBoot also apply here. A true remaster (ala Star Trek TNG, or even better than that given things would be re-rendered, textures probably recreated in HD) would take tons of time (locate all models, audio and other assets from the archives, convert old model format to new and/or create new models that are similar enough to the originals, setup cameras as they were in the show, account for 16:9 if they didn't keep it 4:3 for whatever reason),... and more importantly money.

 

Amazon pre-order link for anyone who'd prefer to order from them:

http://www.amazon.com/Transformers-...qid=1402363370&sr=8-7&keywords=beast+machines

 

Awesome news! So glad to see this finally being released!

 

Got mine today with slipcover.

 

I got mine a couple of weeks ago. Started watching it but haven't had the time to continue past "Mercenary Pursuits."