As the title says, in the show does Backpack ever use the gun that's included with the toy? I don't think I ever saw him use it but I was wondering if someone knew for sure.
Hmm, perhaps it was a late addition, or maybe the animaters simply left it out. IIRC First Aid / Gunner rarely uses his attachments, Backgild never uses his gun either, Exillion never used his rifle, Starscream never used his blaster, Roadstorm I think didn't employ his rifle, etc. It's a pattern. Gonzo must have opted to not use the handguns for whatever reason. Who knows why, though.
Actually Exillion uses it in episode 19 when Lamdbullet & Gasket try to steal the Planet Cup. It's also shown at least twice sitting on his rooftop in vehicule mode in other episodes. As for Screamer, he uses it at least twice to fire missiles in vehicule mode, but never uses it in robot mode
And I saw Back Gild holding his gun in one scene, don't remember which episode but he never fired it and it was only shown for like a second. My guess for characters not using there guns is that gun battles are just boring. Energon's fight scenes were so boring, just both sides firing back and forth at each other, rarely ever hitting.
That indeed is true. Galaxy Force did fix things by making the combat more focused on special attacks, rather than simply stand, shoot, backstep, shoot, fly around, shoot, Powerlink, shoot, hit. Gun battles can work really well, look at Trigun or Gungrave. Thing is, they need proper direction and pace. Even so, when done every episode, they start to lack momentum because there are only so many awesome set pieces. Energon had a few cool ones, the battle at the mine in episode 3 was one, but I think they used them all up too soon.
Too many keys were involved for a blaster to compete with. Would be like G1 Megs putting down his arm cannon to use a pistol in a tank fight. Seems like he would've atleast used it once though in a combined blast attack. Like Prime using all his guns just to take down Thundercracker.
