Many, if not all, of these other cars were featured as well, though the remaining details escape me as to which was used for which:ġ969 Corvette Dragster Twin Turbo (owner Steve Keech pictured):Ģ007 GMC Sierra SLT Turbo Diesel (with owner Shawn Koss and Mr. This 2005 Porsche Carrera GT was used for Bumblebee:Ī 2003 Hummer H2 was used for Optimus Prime (owner John Corcoran pictured): Optimus Prime no longer needed to be a tractor trailer, nor Bumblebee a Camaro or Volkswagen, so we chose the basis of these characters’ vehicle modes mainly on the character of some of these auditions that Watson was providing. One of Watson’s specialties is recording cars, and once we contacted him, the man was out with a portable recorder auditioning several models for us right away to see what we think would work for each of the Cybertronian vehicle classes in the game. So funny how you can miss the mark sometimes! Wu to the Rescueĭespite the fact that the Transformers’ vehicular modes were now going to be very different from their Earth-born disguises, including hovering being a key feature, we wanted to keep the vehicles’ sound grounded in reality, which meant we needed better source.Įven though we would have loved to seek out and record several vehicles on our own to gather this material, due to our condensed development cycle for the game, we decided to work with another industry professional that seemed to have quite a few connections in the vehicle arena – Watson Wu. Sure enough, that sound became the basis for the tank class and remains relatively untouched since that initial day. When I was sure I was done, I played it for some of the guys and the first thing Mike said was, “that’s cool, but it sounds more like a tank”.Ī… tank? Here I was focusing on trying to get something zippy-sounding for a smaller sci-fi car and it ended up being this heavy-sounding vehicle instead. It was multiple looping tracks, meticulously-crossfaded together at differing speeds, heavily processed with varying degrees of MondoMod, MetaFlanger and Enigma (three Waves plug-ins that I finally got to “dust off” after years of neglect). The first vehicle form I tackled was the class that was to represent Bumblebee in the game. With the robots no longer needing the ability to transform into human-designed vehicles for disguise purposes as they did on Earth, this opened up the sonic palette quite a bit to experiment with what it might sound like for these Cybertronian citizens to zip around in their own vehicle form, aligned with their own advanced civilization and technology. Instead, the focus would be on the Transformers’ home world, Cybertron, as we jumped into the story of what happened before coming to Earth, an area not thoroughly-covered by Hasbro’s existing canon. However, we soon learned that the story of the game wasn’t going to take place on Earth at all. Still, I prided myself on getting all sorts of tractor trailer squeaks and hisses ready for Optimus Prime and muscle car engine audio ready for Bumblebee. At least much that’s usable from a game standpoint. As anyone who’s done this knows, there isn’t much to work with. Fun times indeed!Īs the vehicle technology behind the “Bourne” game’s Mini Cooper was being expanded and improved to make a vehicle mode viable for Transformers combat and transportation, I began editing all of the best vehicle source we had from the overused commercial libraries most sound people are familiar with out there. Much of that was in anticipation of creating a whole new soundscape of material that didn’t exist much in our libraries with the prior game titles we had worked on. In the very beginning, we weren’t sure what the story was going to be, but that didn’t stop us from jumping in and recording a new library’s worth of material in a few short weeks. Finally I had the chance to work in the science fiction genre, something I’d always wanted to do. When Activision handed down the “Transformers” mantle to us after “The Bourne Conspiracy” was released, we knew this was going to be quite a bit different than anything the studio had done before…and FUN. The battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons has raged on for decades now, with seemingly no end in sight, and we still line up to see it, be it new toy line, game, and movie releases. “Transformers” is a mega-hit franchise for Hasbro with a huge fan base fueled by cartoons that beckoned to us in our formative years during the 80’s.
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