Fortress Maximus/Primax 984.17 Alpha


 * Fortress Maximus is an Autobot Headmaster in the Generation 1 continuity.



Fortress Maximus is a warrior who can truly be said to fight for peace. While he is a powerful soldier and a good commander, all he truly wishes for is an end to the war that had plagued the Transformers for so long. Nonetheless, he never lets this effect his efficiency in battle, remaining one of the Autobots' most valuable warriors, Headmaster or otherwise.

Maximus is a Headmaster. Due to his immense size, his own head transforms into a 'normal'-sized robot, Cerebros. Cerebros, in turn, is bonded to and controlled by the human known as Spike Witwicky.

In addition to both Cerebros and Spike, Fort Max has other companions: his rarely-seen ancillary partner-robot Cog, formed from the vehicles "Gasket" and "Grommet".

American animated continuity

 * Voice Actor: Stephen Keener



When the Hive of Nebulos had developed the massive Transformer Scorponok in 2007, Spike found that his only available resources to combat the threat were the Hive's older technology and the pacifist Autobot Cerebros. Spike used the technology to create an Autobot giant, at the same time re-engineering Cerebros to become the new robot's head, and to take Spike himself as his own head (Cerebros seemed to get little say in these matters). The giant, named Fortress Maximus, blasted off for Cybertron, where he expectedly fought (and won) against Scorponok. After Maximus/Cerebros and Spike saved Cybertron and Earth from the Hive and the Decepticons, Optimus Prime sent them back to Nebulos as its guardians.

Fortress Maximus seemed to have no sentience of his own in the English TV series. In fact, for the most part, even Cerebros' will seemed to be pushed aside so Spike could run the whole thing himself. Spike's a bit selfish.

Japanese animated continuity
Voice Actor: Ikuya Sawaki

(The Japanese series ignored the above events, as they did everything in the English "The Rebirth" episodes.)

Headmasters
In this story, Headmasters were not the binary-bonded forms of Transformers and organic beings. Instead, human-sized Transformers had long ago left Cybertron and established themselves on the planet Master. To best survive there, they built large bodies that they could transform to become the heads of. The leader of the Autobot faction on Master was named Fortress. Fortress took the Headmaster process one step further: Fortress Maximus was the combined and transformed form of Fortress and the Battleship Maximus. Fortress would sometimes run the battleship while sitting on the bridge transformed into a giant head.

Super-God Masterforce
Fortress was seen briefly and indistinctly as he introduced his brother, Grand Maximus.

Marvel Comics continuity
In 1986, unit commander Fortress Maximus became so sick of the war that he decided to leave it. He didn't care if it made him a coward or not, he simply believed that the war would go on regardless of whether or not he was in it. Taking a number of Autobots with him, he retreated to the peaceful planet of Nebulos.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before mistakes were made and Maximus' group found themselves at odds with the local human populace. Maximus 'proved' their peaceful intentions by marching up to the Nebulan capital, and discarding the group's weapons. When that didn't work, he did the next logical thing and pulled his head off. Four other Autobots had to resort to this grotesque stunt before Galen, head of the Nebulan World-Watchers, was convinced they weren't a threat.

Eventually, Galen himself ended up becoming the head of Fortress Maximus, as both the Nebulan and Autobot underwent the binary-bonding process to become a Headmaster. Fortress Maximus remained the leader of the Nebulan Autbots for the rest of their battles there, eventually abandoning the planet to support his stranded comrades on Earth. During the transport, Fortress Maximus underwent a number of treatments to alter his size considerably, increasing himself from a city-sized behemoth to a slightly larger city-sized behemoth. With these changes, he could save a lot of time in combat by simply stepping on Decepticons instead of having to actually fight them.

Of course, with his larger scale, Fort Max needed a new head (Galen still being stuck at roughly human-size). For this reason, a new Autbot was created to serve as a secondary stage between Galen and Maximus: named "Cerebros", this robot would allow Galen to control it in the standard Headmaster fashion while transforming itself into the larger head of Fortress Maximus.

(It should be noted that Cerebros shows no sign of having any will or soul of his own: he seems to exist purely as a drone body that Galen controls in order to form the new Fortress Maximus' head. This may mean that Cerebros was in fact one of the first Transtectors, as opposed to an actual living Transformer.)

Sadly, while fighting to rescue Buster Witwicky's previously-unmentioned older brother Spike, Galen was killed in battle. Spike quickly took up the mantle of Fortress Maximus, undergoing the binary bond himself and soon becoming one of the unofficial leaders of the Autobots (Grimlock being the other and Optimus Prime being dead at the time).

Spike and Fortress Maximus would go on to have a very tumultuous relationship, fighting both the Decepticons and, at times, each other, as Spike constantly expressed his displeasure at being the large Autobot's partner. On more than one occasion, Spike would try to go his own way, but time and time again the Decepticons would pose some sort of threat to the planet so immense that he would have to join with Fortress Maximus to combat it.

After the other Autobots and Decepticons left Earth to battle Unicron, Spike and Fort Max remained on Earth to safeguard the planet. Thus, when the remains of the Ark fell from orbit and crashed in the northern tundra of Canada, and Galvatron emerged from the wreckage to wreak havoc, it fell to Fortress Maximus to stop him. Despite his success in that mission, it was actually Megatron who would prove to be the undoing of this giant warrior: when the reborn and reconditioned Decepticon leader stole the Ark and used it as his personal flagship, Spike and Max took it upon themselves to stop him. Brutally beaten in combat with an upgraded and super-charged Megatron, the pair dragged themselves to the heart of the ship and threw themselves into the anti-matter containment unit at the core of its power supply, killing both of them. To add further insult to their sacrifice, it was a complete waste of effort: every other Transformer who was on board, including Megatron, managed to survive the destruction of the ship and lived to fight another day.

Dreamwave comics continuity
Maximus was first seen in a Matrix-induced vision of future Nebulos by Optimus Prime in the War Within era.

Later in the same era, Fortress Maximus and Ultra Magnus were struggling to hold the Autobot forces on Cybertron together.

Generation 1

 * Fortress Maximus (Headmaster Base, 1987)
 * Japanese ID number: C-114


 * The largest Transformers toy from Generation 1, Fortress Maximus has multiple altmode configurations. The US instructions show a compact "city" mode, and a more splayed-out "impenetrable fortress" mode.  For Japan, the "fortress" mode was replaced with a "starship" mode, which was effectively the fortress turned 180 degrees and the robot legs pointed forward rather than down.


 * In all modes, Maximus has a wide array of pop-out (non-firing) guns and gimmicks. His left leg hides a small prison cell, plus has a swing-out cannon/helipad.  His right leg has a small storage compartment.  His torso has a gear-activated spinner for the detachable radar array accessory,  a "control socket" for Cerebros' "communcations tower" mode, and a working elevator that can lift small toys up to his central ramp to be launched in his altmodes.  (The crank for this elevator ends up in a very unfortunate position in robot mode.)  Each arm had a long ramp on the back with sliding launchers for small vehicles.


 * His robot-mode head is formed by Cerebros, who does not actually need Spike to attach to the upper body. He came with both Headmaster units, plus the Gasket and Grommet mini-vehicles.


 * The Japanese release of Fortress Maximus came with a pair of swords; one for Fortress, a large one for Maximus. It is currently unknown if the swords were originally planned for the Hasbro version but dropped for price or safety concerns, or if they were a Takara-initiated addition to their release of the toy.


 * This mold was used to make Grand Maximus, Robots in Disguise Fortress Maximus, and Robot Masters' "Cybertron City".


 * Fortress Maximus (TF Jr, 1987)
 * Japanese ID number: C-114


 * A smaller rendering of the character, scaled down to regular Transformer size, and with only one head. This toy lacks the city mode.

Merchandise

 * Fortress Maximus was a larger "build-a-bot" from the third "Act" of the Super Collection Figure PVC line; one piece of him was packaged in each of the six clear pieces in a case of twelve. Like the regular PVCs, he was available both in full-color or colorless-clear versions.


 * The Fort Max PVC was revisited for Hasbro's Heroes of Cybertron line, again as a pack-in, one part in each of the six releases of wave four. This version was cast entirely in clear-blue plastic then painted over, save a small spot on his head to give his a "light-pipe" glowing-eyes effect.
 * Torso : Dirge
 * Head & sword: Perceptor
 * Left arm: Powermaster Gigatron
 * Right arm: Wheeljack
 * Left leg: Autobot Jazz
 * Right leg : Autobot Espionage Team (Bumblebee & Spike)

Trivia

 * 'Fortress Maximus' was likely a considered name for the character that eventually became Metroplex in Generation 1. The comic adaptation of the 1986 Movie even refers to Autobot City as 'Fortress Maximus'' in a caption.


 * Fortress Maximus was the first toy to be released with a bona-fide Earthling figure. All of the other Headmasters' companions were from Nebulos. (Although Maximus' tech specs refer to 'the Nebulan leader, Spike', the general consensus is that it was supposed to be the popular figure from TV and other media, who is almost certainly an Earthling.)


 * In the comic series, Fortress Maximus was originally small enough that a human alone could become his head. Later, he was increased in size so that the Cerebros robot was needed to complete the transformation. Yet, when Spike prepares to join with him for their final battle, there is no sign of Cerebros and Fort Max is shown to be no larger than Megatron. Was he reduced back to his original, smaller, size? If so, when? And why would they bother to shrink a headless corpse, let alone re-work Spike's armour so that he no longer needed Cerebros? He had been retired for years by that point.


 * In America, Fortress Maximus is seven distinct flavors of awesome, while in Japan he is only 3 kinds of awesome.