Battle for the Allspark

From Transformers Wiki

Transformers (2007)

Transformers games

Nintendo DS
Online

	Battle for the Allspark

Platforms

Online

Release date

April 27,2007

Battle for the Allspark was an online free-to-play game (and, surprisingly, non-monetized in any way beyond the sales of the2007 Transformers retail game) set in the expanded continuity of the 2007Transformersmovie.

In it, the Autobot/Decepticon conflict had broken out worldwide, and hundreds of players engaged in 1-on-1 battles in 20 world zones. These zones were designated as "Autobot" or "Decepticon" controlled, depending on each faction's win ratio. Tallied cumulatively, this system would determine which side was winning the larger "war". The playable characters were the seven types ofdrone units featured in the retail game.

The game was shutdown in April 14, 2009, when thetransformersgame.com website was updated to promote the upcomingRevenge of the Fallen video game. A few weeks later, said website would getBattle for the Allspark v2, an all-new (and far more stripped down) sequel based around the enemy units of said game. Both the originalBattle for the Allspark and itsv2 are now consideredlost media, with no online archive of their contents being known to exist and very little footage being available on the net.

Gameplay

The red zones mark Decepticon territory!

Players began by creating a unique login. They then chose a faction, a player unit, and assigned a name to that unit. This character would then be connected to that account, and creating a new character would require creating a new account. From there, players moved to a world map which displayed the 20 available combat zones. Players could view how many active units are in each zone, as well as the total win-loss ratio for each zone as well as for the overall game.

Once players chose a zone, they moved to another screen which showed all the players currently within said zone spread out across a grid. From there, players may challenge a member of the opposing faction to a fight by heading to their specific square. This was aided by the inclusion of a chat box that was connected to either the world map or a specific zone, depending on where the player was located - though, of course, as with most public video game chat boxes, most discussions just turned into banter and mutual trash talk rather than cordial invites for duels.

Combat was turn-based, allowing each player to choose one of several attacks (the number of attacks increasing as the player's rank increased), each of which drained a certain amount of the player's energy reserves. Once both players had selected an attack, an initiative roll determined who strikes first. At the beginning of each new round, players regained a certain amount of energy, but if a player's energy reserves were insufficient, the player could not attack. Combat continued until one player either depleted their life reserves or exited the game, thus resulting in their opponents' victory.

Gallery

The world map with a player's profile open.
The zone system.
The battle system.

Ranks

Private — 0-19 wins,3 attacks
Lieutenant — 20-59 wins,4 attacks
Captain — 60 - 119 wins,5 attacks
Major — 120+ wins,6 attacks

Units

i can be your angle.... or yuor devil

Players were able to choose among seven body types, all of them being based on thedrone units which were introduced with the retail game and can belong to either affiliation. Unlike the retail game, they do not have different color schemes based on their faction, but they do retain the different head designs: Autobot-aligned units have a helmet and facemask that vaguely resemblesOptimus Prime, while Decepticon-aligned units have theempurata-like single-lens design.

A "Sector Seven unit" was also planned to be part of the character roster at some point, but ultimately ended up being scrapped.

Reception

More than half of all players were over 20 years of age... Or they were just kids lying about their age to bypass the minimum age requirement, who knows.

By almost any standard,Battle for the Allspark was a resounding success. 6.5 million games were played by almost a million players, with the vast majority of participation taking place after the film hit theaters. Other notable stats include:

As of May 7th, ~25,000 people had registered and fought ~100,000 battles.
As of June 2nd, ~65,000 people had registered and fought ~350,000 battles.
As of Nov 2nd, 2008 ~975,000 people had registered.

The game was apparently abandoned by developers in June 2007 following a survey of the features players would like to see added to the game. Most of those features ended up making their way intoAllSpark Wars, the online tie-in for theNintendo DS game developed by the same group. It received a minor code update on November 21, 2008, the only visible effect of which appeared to be a rendering bug which caused the chatbox to overflow its borders.