Megatron (G1)

Megatron is a Decepticon character in the Generation 1 continuity.



Megatron is (sometimes) the founder of the Decepticon uprising, and their most well-known and feared leader. As a young, charismatic combatant in the gladatorial pits, he began to believe in a grand purpose for his race -- it is the Transformers' glorious destiny to rule. He feels great contempt for other Transformers who, he feels, betray their proud heritage by demanding peace and cooperation with weaker life forms.

Megatron will attempt almost anything to achieve his goals, but his schemes are never in any way subtle. This is perhaps due to his arrogance, but his pride is not so strong as to dissuade him from abandoning a battle he is losing. Some would question his sanity, though these few are mostly now dead by his hands.

Animated series
Voice Actor: Frank Welker (US), Seizo Kato (Japan)

Megatron is a Decepticon, one of the lineal descendants of the military hardware robots created by the Quintessons on their factory world of Cybertron. Following a war between the Decepticons and the other robot race, the Autobots, the Decepticons were defeated by the Autobots' invention of transformation, which allowed them the advantange of stealth. The Autobot victory in the war began the Golden Age of Cybertron, but a viper lurked within this paradise, as the Decepticons too eventually developed transformation, eventually leading to the creation of Megatron.

Gathering a small number of troops together, Megatron made a small strike on an outer city, killing the current Autobot leader. However, this event was not made public knowledge, and young robots like the naive Orion Pax still looked up to Megatron and his followers because of their new robot-mode flight powers. However, Pax soon learned the error of his ways when Megatron duped him into allowing him access to Energon warehouses, and Megatron fatally injured him in a scuffle. However, the ancient Autobot, Alpha Trion, reconstructed Pax into a battle hardy configuration - now, he was Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and Megatron's sworn opponent as the civil war erupted again.

Eventually, the war drained Cybertron of most of its energy, necessitating that both factions seek out new worlds and new sources of power. Megatron and his elite forces pursued the Autobots' craft, (referred to as the The Ark in Beast Wars, following the ship's name from the G1 Marvel Comics) in their star cruiser (referred to as the Nemesis in Beast Wars) and attacked and boarded the craft, causing it to crash on a prehistoric planet, entombing all on the ship in emergency stasis as it crashed into a dormant volcano.

Four million years later, a volcanic eruption reactivated the Transformers and the war began again on the energy-rich world they found themselves on; Earth. After their first series of battles, the Autobots believed Megatron and the Decepticons destroyed when their new space cruiser crashed into the Pacific Ocean, but in reality they survived and reconstructed the cruiser to serve as a sub-oceanic staging base and bunker. Megatron re-established contact with Cybertron, and began construction of an intergalactic transport system called a "space bridge," although the early tests nearly resulted in his destruction when he was sucked into the portal and teleported to Cybertron. The technology was eventually stabilised, however, and used in a grand scheme to transport Cybertron through space into Earth's orbit, where the natural disasters its gravity wreaked created tremendous energy that Megatron and the Decepticons gathered. The Earth was saved, however, when Megatron's stockpiles of energy were detonated by the Autobots, the explosion forcing Cybertron out of orbit. Again, however, Megatron was able to cheat death, and was forced to team up with Optimus Prime in order to stop the machinations of his treacherous lieutenant, Starscream.

In his next scheme, Megatron absorbed all the separate powers of the other Decepticons into himself, and challenged Optimus Prime to one-on-one combat. With the added abilities of all his minions, Megatron easily defeated Prime in the battle, but when his deception was revealed, he and his followers were defeated in a group attack.

Over the following years, Megatron's schemes to obtain Earth's energies continued. His assorted plans included various attempts to harness the power of Earth's core, thefts of several unstable energy devices from human scientists, the draining of energy from a time-lost prehistoric island, and partnership with a human politician that allowed him to force the Autobots off of Earth, and actually allowed him to conquer Central City among many, many others.

Eventually, however, Megatron turned his attention away from Earth, and succeeded in completely conquering Cybertron by the Earth year 2005. Learning the Autobots were preparing a strike against the planet, Megatron and the Decepticons intercepted the shuttle sent to Earth to acquire energy to power the raid, and unleashed a mighty assault on Autobot City. In the course of the conflict, word was sent to Optimus Prime, who arrived the following morning after the slaughter and confronted Megatron in another one-on-one struggle. Megatron appeared beaten, but spying a discarded pistol, stalled for time by pleading for mercy as he attempted to reach it. The young Autobot Hot Rod then intervened, tackling Megatron, but the Decepticon was too powerful for him, seizing him and using him as shield as he grabbed the pistol and opened fire on Prime. The wounds were fatal and sent Prime to the grave - but not before he delivered his own final blow to Megatron, seriously damaging him and forcing the Decepticons to flee.

On the return trip to Cybertron, it became necessary to jettison excess mass, or the Decepticons would be unable to reach the planet. The wounded Decepticons were voted out, and set adrift in space, including Megatron. But this was not to be the end for the great slag-maker, as the world-devourer, Unicron, found him and recreated him into Galvatron.

Japanese Manga


After the events of Transformers: The Movie and Five Faces of Darkness, Galvatron attempted to destroy the Autobots with a legion of Megatron clones dubbed "The Megatron Military". Each clone was equipped with its own unique fusion cannon and were capable of combining the blasts into an intense attack. As a unified force, the Megatron Military crushed Rodimus Prime, Arcee, Springer, Blurr and Kup. Their victory was assured until Rodimus managed to deduce that the Megatron Military was being controlled by Galvatron. As it turned out, Galvatron was actually disguised as one of the Megatron clones. Once Rodimus defeated Galvatron, all the Megatron clones lost power and were easily vanquished.

Battlestars: Return of Convoy
(Note: With his transformation into Galvatron, Megatron departed from the animated continuity, until five years later, in the Japanese-exclusive storyline, Battlestars: The Return of Convoy, which, although not animated itself (told instead through one chapter of manga and colour magazine spreads), continues the tale of the cartoon universe.)

In the previous Japanese-exclusive animated series, Headmasters, Galvatron had been apparently destroyed when he was buried on an iceberg. In the Return of Convoy storyline, a new evil force named Dark Nova recovers Galvatron's body, and restores him to life as Super Megatron, pitting him against Star Convoy (the reborn Optimus Prime) and his Autobots. Super Megatron subsequently gets an upgrade to Ultra Megatron, and for the final battle, merges with Dark Nova himself, becoming Star Giant.

Generation 2 Manga


After Battlestars, Megatron appeared to have discarded his evil ways, and he joined with Optimus Prime to form the Cybertron Alliance. However, after human soldiers killed one of his troops, he adopted a new body and began the war anew. After Optimus Prime was fataly wounded by Megatron, Prime used his Reconfiguration Matrix to transform himself into Laser Optimus Prime. The battle raged on for a while until Prime managed to drive the Decepticon forces into retreat.

Marvel Comics
(Note: Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.)

Rising from his beginnings as a gladiator for the city-state of Tarn, Megatron and the Decepticons were the ones who developed transformation first, using it to begin the war against the Autobots, who fought back by mimicking the technology. In time, the war grew so fierce that Cybertron itself was shaken from its orbit, and set adrift in the cosmos. Eventually, four million years ago, the planet fell into the path of an asteroid cluster in the Sol system that threatened to destroy it, and so Optimus Prime led a contingent of his troops in the Ark to reduce the asteroids to rubble, saving Cybertron. The plan was a success, but immediately afterwards, Megatron and his troops attacked, forcing Optimus Prime to crash the Ark into prehistoric Earth.

Four million years later, in 1984, the Transformers were reawakened, and Megatron immediately set about trying to locate a source of fuel for the Decepticons. Unable to ingest common Earth gasoline, the Decepticons kidnapped Sparkplug Witwicky and forced him to develop a conversion process, but this only afforded him the chance to poison their fuel, deactivating them all. The Autobots were not saved, however, as Shockwave then defeated them all and brought the Decepticons back online to serve him - including Megatron. Chafing under his command, Megatron battled Shockwave, but was soundly defeated, forcing him into an alliance with Ratchet, who located and reactivated the Dinobots, who had defeated Shockwave in the past. However, Ratchet loosed them on Megatron, and was willing to sacrifice himself to knock Megatron off a cliff. While Ratchet survived, Megatron disappeared for some time.

Soon, however, Megatron re-emerged, trapped in pistol mode, his higher brain functions disconnected. Used as a weapon by wannabe gangster, Joey Slick, Megatron eventually restored himself, and was impressed enough with Slick for standing up to him that he allowed him to live. But at this point, Megatron was desperately low on fuel, and attacked a coal mine, attempting to locate some, when he eventually completely ran out, and froze in place. He was soon located by Soundwave, who brought him back online, and they subsequently entered into an alliance with the human Donny Finkleberg, who used the alias of "Robot Master" to con humankind into thinking the Transformers worked for him. Shockwave and Megatron entered into a period of shared leadership, but when a two-pronged attack by the Autobots saw Megatron defeated by Omega Supreme, and Shockwave allowing the Autobots to capture the secrets of Devastator, Megatron was able to spin the situation and reclaim his leadership.

In order to attain possession of a new energy-generating device, the hydrothermacline, Megatron battled Optimus Prime in a video game duel, using a cheat code to continue the fight after he had lost. Prime defeated him again, but at the expense of some of the game's characters, and ruled himself the loser because he would not have committed such an act in real life. Prime was destroyed, and Megatron's elation soon turned into paranoia, as he had not killed Prime with his own hands, and believed he could still be alive. Eventually descending into insanity, Megatron boarded the spacebridge to Cybertron and detonated it with his fusion cannon, apparently killing himself.

That would be all the US comics saw of Megatron for quite some time, ''but their sister title in the UK, which produced its own material, interspliced with the US stories, soon brought back the great slag-maker for more adventures. Prior to Megatron's seeming death, there had been a story which had seen both him and Prime transported to Cybertron, where the disembodied local Decepticon leader, Lord Straxus, attempted to possess his body. The attempt failed, but Straxus made another attempt with a specially-crafted clone of Megatron, which was transported to Earth soon after the real Megatron vanished. The clone believed itself to be the real thing - as did the comics' readers, thinking that the spacebridge explosion had transported Megatron elsewhere on Earth - and after a battle with the mechanoid, Centurion, it was salvaged by Shockwave, who brainwashed it and unleashed it on Galvatron, a recreated future version of Megatron who had travelled back in time from the year 2006 and posed a threat to Shockwave's leadership. The clone Megatron, however, saw a possible partner in Galvatron, and the two teamed up to battle Autobots and Decepticons from both present and future in the apocalyptic "Time Wars". Subsequently, the clone returned to Cybertron, where it defeated the ruling Decepticon Triumvirate, but was then confronted with the real Megatron - the Spacebridge explosion had deposited him in the Dead End region of Cybertron, where he had wandered, with no recollection of who he was, until he had saved a Decepticon from Autobots and regained his memories. The clone Megatron susbequently destroyed itself to prevent Straxus, buried inside its mind, from taking over.''

The stage was now set for Megatron's return in the US comics, as he had his Micromaster Sports Car patrol capture the Autobot medic, Ratchet, and forced him to recreate Starscream as a Pretenders). Ratchet did so, but also restored Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee in the same manner, thwarting his scheme. When Megatron then attempted to flee through a trans-time dimensional portal, Ratchet tackled him as his base then exploded around them, apparently killing them both.

Soon after, however, Autobot detective Nightbeat discovered that the explosion had actually blown them through the portal, and he dispatched a probe to pull them back from the gaps between reality. However, when they rematerialised, it was revealed that the explosion had fused the two enemies together, into a hideous, twisted mockery of a being, which ran rampant through the Ark. The half that was Ratchet begged Optimus Prime to kill them, but Prime could not, and had the Micromaster, Fixit, separate their bodies. Unfortunately, Fixit could not separate their minds, as the two discovered when they were reactivated with Nucleon - sharing each other's thoughts, feeling, sensations and sights, Ratchet attempted to break the cycle by crashing the Ark on Earth.

Although thought dead for a year or two, Megatron had actually survived the Ark crash, and had quietly worked to repair it, concealing it beneath the ground (apparently, Ratchet died in the crash, as their shared mind does not come up in the story). Tracking a transforming signal mistakenly believing it was another Transformer, Megatron came across the shape-shifting castle of the terrorist organisation, Cobra, and entered into a bargain with its leader, Cobra Commander, offering him the technology of the Ark in exchange for the new weapons his organisation was developing. Reconstructed into a new tank body, with a powerful rail gun, Megatron defeated a sqaud of Autobots sent to stop him, and then turned on Cobra, capturing the scientist who had developed his gun, Doctor Biggles-Jones, and escaping in the airborne Ark. Following a climactic battle with Fortress Maximus, Megatron then battled and soundly defeated Bludgeon, reclaiming leadership of the Decepticons and stealing the Matrix from Optimus Prime, using it to bring his newest warriors online - only to have his faction bested by the forces of Jhiaxus and his second-generation Cybertronians. Megatron then entered into an alliance with the Autobots to both defeat Starscream, who had seized control of the Decepticon ship, the Warworld, through the power of the Matrix, and stop Jhiaxus. The tale ended with the Autobots and Decepticons uniting.

Another Time And Place
After the end of the G1 comics, the final UK annual printed a text story entitled "Another Time And Place", which followed up on the events of the Ark crash, and saw Bludgeon and his followers locate Megatron's body and revive it with Nucleon, only for him to be defeated by Optimus Prime and Grimlock. This, of course, clashes with the US G2 comic - but it does not clash in with the alternate first issue of the UK G2 comic (other UK G2 issues were simply reprints of US material), in which Megatron simply attributes his new body to human scientists, with no further explanation to contradict the events of "Another Time and Place".

Kid Stuff Talking Story Books Continuity
Voice actor: Earl Hammond(?)

In When Continents Collide, Megatron calls Soundwave a "blundering tape-filled idiot." This is notable because it is hilarious. Also, Megatron totally sounds like "Mumm-Ra" from Thundercats. This version of Megatron also has an odd obsession with drills, mole machines, and other burrowing devices, as he uses them frequently in his plans for energy gathering and conquest.

Dreamwave Comics
Young Megatron was a gladiatorial combatant in the depths of Cybertron’s underworld. As victory upon victory mounted, he began to realize that the games were nothing more than an elaborate attempt by the Cybertronian elders to hide the truth of Cybertron’s history from the masses. When Megatron attempted to gain access to that knowledge through exploration and research, the Cybertronian elders attempted to have him assassinated - a plan that only resulted in stirring up even more discontent among Cybertronians, allowing Megatron to begin recruiting for the Decepticon movement.

Megatron's forces began a civil war of Autobot against Decepticon in order to mask his reactivation of the ancient planetary engines buried beneath Cybertron’s surface. As a result, Cybertron would be transformed into a massive warworld that would cut a swathe of destruction through the galaxy. This plan failed. During a conflict with Optimus Prime, Megatron's lieutenant Starscream activated the planet mechaforming process too soon, resulting in the destruction of the machinery.

Roughly 7.4 million years BCE, Megatron and Optimus Prime disappeared in an early test of the then-unstable Space Bridge matter-transport system. Spending an undisclosed time on the planet Quintessa, Megatron returned with an overwhelming army of lifeless seeker clones, quickly subjugating Cybertron. (This story was never finished due to the closure of Dreamwave.)

Four million years BCE, Cybertron was threatened by a massive approaching asteroid, so Optimus Prime led a contingent of Autobots aboard the Ark to blow the rock to fragments, which were transported away by an orbital Space Bridge network. When this task was completed, Megatron chose this moment to strike, attacking the Ark with his troops. Crippled, the craft flew through one of the Space Bridge portals, and was transported to prehistoric Earth, where it crashed, entombing the occupants in stasis for four million years.

The Autobots and Decepticons were reactivated in 1984, but specific details of the battles were unrecorded until 1999, when a Autobot/Human military alliance succeeded in capturing and deactivating the Decepticons. However, the Ark II spaceship carrying them back to Cybertron exploded shortly after liftoff, and the Transformers were believed destroyed. In actuality, they had been scattered back to Earth, where they lay in stasis lock across the globe for three years. This slumber was brought to an end when Adam Rook (aka Lazarus), a rogue military scientist who had devised a method of controlling Transformers, salvaged many of the fallen Cybertronians and reprogrammed them as mass killing machines, which he then attempted to sell on the black market. Megatron was first to break free of the human's control, overriding the new programming and capturing Lazarus during an auction. Megatron forced Lazarus to watch as he unleashed a technorganic virus designed to transform all of Earth into a new Cybertron. It also served to lure Optimus Prime and the Autobots, also now reactivated, to his location. Megatron, tired of the war, continuously asked Prime to join him. After his first failed attempt, Megatron unleashed Devastator on San Francisco, ensuing in mass slaughter, in an attempt to show Prime the humans were not worth fighting for. However, the selfless sacrifice of several firemen restored Prime's faith in humanity and allowed him and the Autobots to beat back Megatron.

Several months later. Megatron was subliminally summoned to a remote area in Alaska along with the other Earthbound Transformers. There they battled until Megatron's former second-in-command, Shockwave, who had arrived and revealed that in their absence, the war on Cybertron had ended. He arrested Megatron, Prime, and their troops as war criminals. Megatron, weakened by battle, was quickly defeated by Shockwave and loaded aboard his shuttle for return to Cybertron, only to have Starscream seize the opportunity by jettisoning him into space on the return trip. Megatron used the time floating in space to contemplate his existence and the Decepticon goal. Realizing that he had wasted millennia in his feud with Prime, Megatron resolved to once again conquer Cybertron as a means to enhancing the Transformer race and strengthening it from outside threats. It seemed as through he would not live to accomplish this goal, however, as death closed in on him... only for him to be retrieved by the Junkion Wreck-Gar, who took him to the planet Junkion and repaired and re-armed him, only to be killed in return.

Travelling to the Planet Beest, Megatron defeated the exiled Decepticon warlords, the Predacons, and rebuilt them into the mightiest of all combiners, Predaking, to serve as his ace in the hole in his quest to reclaim leadership of the Decepticons. Moving in stealth on Cybertron, Megatron defeated Shockwave, severing his arm and forcing him into servitude. He then returned to Earth to collect the remaining Decepticons under Starscream's command, and to teach Starscream a lesson long in coming.

While it was alluded that Megatron had a grand goal in mind that also included the subjugation of the Quintessons, the remainder of the story has yet to be told due to the closure of Dreamwave. However it has been stated by representatives of IDW publishing, the current holders of the Transformer comic license, that once Dreamwave has exited bankruptcy court, they intend to finish the story.

IDW Generation 1 Comics
Megatron is very powerful, emerging unscathed from a command bunker buried by aerial bombardment and taking two direct hits in the chest from Blitzwing's tank-mode cannon without breaking stride. A single shot from his arm cannon blew a massive hole clean through Skywarp, and he wrecked Blitzwing simply by grabbing his turret-cannon in one hand and swinging him into the ground. He is also very single-minded, disregarding Verity Carlo in favour of gathering data on Starscream's operations and apparently ignoring the presence of Bumblebee and Ratchet at the Nebraska bunker.

Robot Masters
In the exclusive Japanese toyline, Transformers: Robot Masters, whose story began in the timeline of the G1 animated series, but branched off at some point in the twenty-year interim between seasons 2 and 3, Megatron was lost in an undisclosed accident, leaving his time-displaced Beast Wars descendant to take his place as Decepticon leader (the toyline applied the qualifying titles of "G1 Megatron" and "Beast Megatron" to the characters to distinguish them). As events progressed, it was revealed that G1 Megatron's consciousness took possession of the body of a "Convoy" (an Autobot leader) known as Reverse Convoy, leader of the planet Vehicon, via an inter-dimensional uplink to a black hole, and then used it to pose as an ally to the Autobots, only to betray them by revealing himself as the aptly-named "Rebirth Megatron."

Beast Wars
Voice actor: Gary Chalk (US)

The original Megatron made three apperences (four if you count the scene removed from "Nemisis") in the Beast Wars TV series. He first appeared in a flashback in "The Agenda" enscribing a message on the Golden Disk. His second apperence, also from "Agenda", was in the message itself. The Third apperence, in "Master Blaster", Megatron was shown offline in the Ark as Megatron (BW) takes his spark. A fourth apperence, which showed Optimus Primal returning the Decepticon leader's spark to his body, was removed because of time constraints but was included as an easter egg in Rhino's Beast Wars Season 3 box set.

Also, in Hasbro/Kenner's original plans, Beast Wars Megatron (Basic and Ultra forms) was supposed to be Generation 1 Megatron in a new body, which is supported by the tech specs.

Generation 1

 * Megatron
 * Japanese ID number: 16
 * Megatron was released in 1984 as part of the first year of the Transformers line in the United States. It transformed into a Walther P-38 pistol, as seen in the popular 1960s spy television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., with attachments. It was originally released in Takara's Microman toyline as "MC13 Gun Robo - P38 U.N.C.L.E." The Japanese release, however, didn't come with the attachments.


 * Megatron was also redecoed (red became blue, and flat grey was used instead of chrome, one of the Microman decos for the standard P-38) in the Japanese VS-X giftset with Optimus Prime.


 * He was again released in the VS-X deco with Starscream in the Good-Bye Megatron set. This time, he came with his fusion cannon.


 * Galvatron
 * See Galvatron


 * Megatron (Action Master)
 * Megatron returned as an Action Master in 1990. This non-transformable version of Megatron came packaged with the Neutro-Fusion Tank.


 * Reissues
 * In 2001, Megatron was reissued in Japan, and came with all of the American and Japanese accessories. A black redeco (the other standard P-38 Microman deco) was released the same year as a BotCon Japan exclusive.


 * Megatron was again reissued in 2002 in Takara's Transformer Collection series. This release was identical to the previous reissue, but came with the mace used in the episode "More Than Meets the Eye, Part 2", a sheet of Decepticon stickers, and a Decepticon mouse pad.


 * World's Smallest
 * World's Smallest Megatron was released in 2004, coming with only his fusion cannon. His other attachments were planed to be released, but were scraped. A VS-X homage set was also released the same year.

Generation 2
Owing to the inability of Hasbro to re-release the original Megatron toy (in keeping with the usual pattern for early G2 figures) because that toy was a pistol, Megatron was released as a large green tank with electronic sounds and a voice chip.

Megatron was released again the following year as "Hero" Megatron: a smaller, but essentially similar tank. This Megatron was purple and came with a bellows that fired an air-propelled missile.
 * Japanese ID number: TRF-2

Megatron was released in a third form, "Go-Bot" Megatron. This was a minor repaint of the previously released Blowout mold.

In addition to these, Megatron had a few unreleased toys in the G2 line. The first was the Megatron ATB (with Starscream), a recolor of the Dreadwing mold. The Beast Wars II BB and Starscream used the same deco, but had diffrent stickers. A second toy was a recolor of the Hero mold in a grey deco with black camoflauge stripes. The third toy was the flip changer used in 1997 as Machine Wars Megatron and Megaplex (MW).

Machine Wars

 * Megatron
 * This toy was redecoed from an unreleased Generation 2 flipchanger Megatron.
 * Oddly, all on-package art and pictures show Megatron as a grey jet with Megaplex as the blue jet, the opposite of the actual toys. Like most other toys in the line, the boxart was recycled from an earlier figure, in this case from the Predator Falcon.

Robot Masters

 * Reverse Convoy
 * Japanese ID number: RM-24

Titanium
The Titanium Megatron toy was inspired by Dreamwave's first G.I. Joe crossover set in World War II. Since that Megatron's gun form was nonviable as a toy, a "tweaked-out" Maus tank alternate mode was designed. The backstory of the Megatron from the crossover, including references to Cobra, was retained on the package, make it the first US figure ever produced as part of a G.I. Joe / TransFormers crossover.