Japanese online store Hobby Search has new images of the recently reissued Transformers Encore Soundblaster and Transformers Encore Twincast.

Soundblaster comes with an Orange RatBat and a Red/Blue Rumble figure whilst TwinCast comes with an Orange Ravage and a Black Steeljaw.

You can see Soundblaster here and Twincast here

DVD Talk have a review of the Transformers Prime Series Blu-Ray disks

Video & Audio Quality
Presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio, this 1080p transfer of Transformers Prime: Season One is excellent but not perfect. To be fair, a few small problems are inherently due to the source material, including mild aliasing and jagged edges. Mild compression artifacts can also been spotted along the way, which seems like more of an authoring issue than anything else. Either way, what's here is largely impressive, as the image is typically razor sharp with vivid, striking colors and strong black levels. So while there's room for improvement, I'd imagine that most fans of Prime will be pleased.

The audio is a touch more consistent, as each episode arrives with your choice of DTS-HD 5.1 or LPCM 2.0 mixes. The former creates an enveloping and dynamic soundstage from start to finish, often filled with plenty of surround activity once the action heats up. A bit more low end would've helped to sell some of the action, as well as some added "punch" for the gunfire. Dialogue is crisp and the score is also well-represented with no obvious sync issues. Overall, fans won't find much to complain about here, as this ambitious audio presentation is leaps and bounds above most animated TV shows.

Bonus Features
Unlike the show itself, almost all of these bonus features seem to be aimed directly at older fans. The bulk of these are 14 Audio Commentaries that largely focus on episodes from Discs 1 and 4; more often than not, they do an excellent job of covering all the bases. Featured participants include several producers, a number of representatives from Hasbro, animation and art directors, composer Brian Tyler, several directors and writers, a handful of voice actors (including Peter Cullen and Ernie Hudson) and...Bumblebee, just to name a few. These are generally fun and informative audio commentaries... which is good news, because the remaining bonus features don't dig quite as deep.

Disc 4 houses the remaining extras, which lead off with a promotional Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (11:03). It's short and not especially enlightening, though I enjoyed seeing a handful of voice actors do their thing. Also here is a slightly more in-depth Toy Featurette that focuses on Prime's characters and how they selected the roster (16:30), as well as a ridiculously short Teaser for Season 2 (0:20). Like the episodes, these bonus features are presented in 1080p and do not include optional subtitles.

Also included in this "Limited Edition" package is a softcover Graphic Novel that serves as a Prime prequel of sorts. It's a nice little bonus and quite substantial at 96 pages, but I'm assuming that later releases of this boxed set will omit the book (although I'm guessing it'll still be available separately).

Takara-Tomy is rolling out the promotion for Transformers Prime, which sees its mainline release in Japan next month. And in their usual grand tradition, it's a Micron Campaign! Starting tomorrow, 25 February, the clear green version of Cyclonus' Nightstick Targetmaster named Vector Oracle will be given away in Toys R Us Japan with any purchase of Transformers items totalling more than 3,000 yen. He's a limited edition of 4,000 pieces.

Next up with the reservation of Transformers Prime Arms Micron Optimus Prime at participating retailers is Firebolt! A black and gray version of Power Core Combiners Pinpoint, who came with Leadfoot, he is a perfect complement to the recently released United Rodimus Convoy

Hasbro Hong Kong have posted some images of the Cybertron Con Exclusive Dark of the Moon Optimus Prime Universal Studios Edition on their Facebook page. This special piece uses the Japanese version of Voyager Optimus Prime and comes with a special version of the MechTech Trailer advertising Transformers the Ride.

The Auto Aseembly website has been updated with the annoucement of a Transformers video game tournament for the 2012 show.

As part of our expanded Game Zone for Auto Assembly 2012, we will be running not one but THREE video games tournaments throughout the weekend at the convention this year. They will be running all weekend and will be open to all attendees and are completely free to enter. All you will need to do is come along to our Game Zone at any time during the weekend and as long as the games are running, one of our team will take your details and set you up in one or more of our competitions and you could be in with a chance of winning some great prizes, courtesy of www.transformersvideogames.co.uk

As we said, there will be three tournaments running all weekend, each focusing on a different game

Hasbro are now taking names for the 2012 Hall of Fame

In 2010, Hasbro inducted humans and robots from the worlds of toys, entertainment and CYBERTRON into the inaugural class of its TRANSFORMERS Hall of Fame, honoring more than 25 years of “robots in disguise” action. Now in its third year, Hasbro is once again turning to fans to help finalize the 2012 robot inductee class.

?Hasbro’s internal panel of judges has chosen three iconic characters to induct into the TRANFORMERS Hall of Fame in 2012—Heroic AUTOBOTS JAZZ and GRIMLOCK, as well as evil DECEPTICON SHOCKWAVE. But we need your help to determine this year's fourth robot inductee!

Check back on Transformers.com later in March to cast your vote for the “Fans Choice” TRANSFORMERS robot to be inducted into the 2012 class.??

The winning character will be announced at the TRANSFORMERS Hall of Fame ceremony on Saturday, April 28 at BOTCON, the Official TRANSFORMERS Convention in Dallas, TX.??

The TRANSFORMERS Hall of Fame was created to honor those influential in building the iconic entertainment brand, as well as the actual “ROBOTS IN DISGUISE.” The inaugural induction ceremony was held at BotCon 2010. TRANSFORMERS influentials Bob Budiansky, Peter Cullen, Hideaki Yoke, and Kohjin Ohno were members of the inaugural class, along with five notable robot characters that are a part of TRANSFORMERS lore. The previous robot honorees (who are ineligible for the fan-voted slot in this year's ceremony) are:

OPTIMUS PRIME
BUMBLEBEE
MEGATRON
STARSCREAM
DINOBOT
IRONHIDE
RATCHET
SOUNDWAVE
WASPINATOR

Roll Out Roll Call 2012 guest Jim Sorenson has recently updated his blog The Diciples of Boltax with an explantion of the Cybertronian Optical Code, a language he made up for the Allspark Almanac

Thanks to the tireless Chris McFeely, his Annotated AllSpark Almanac Addendum is now updated!  Boy, that's a lotta alliteration!

http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/digipedia/annotated_addendum.html

The exciting bit for me is that he cracked my C.O.C., a new cipher I made up just for him, more or less.  Didn't figure out that clue, eh?  Cybertronian Optical Code, from the episode Decepticon Air!   I figured I'd make it not too tricky, so it's a simple variation on Morse code, with circles for dots and half-circles for dashes.  To make it slightly harder, I rotated the half-circles around at random, but the orientation is meaningless except to separate upper from lowercase letters.

If anyone is interested, you can download Cybertronian Optical Code here.

Roll Out Roll Call 2012 guest Jim Sorenson has recently updated his blog The Diciples of Boltax with the transforamtion sequence of Lander from Transformers Masterforce.

Welcome back, true believers!  Another edition of The Ark Addendum, extra model sheets not in The Complete Ark, my 416 page tome of Transformers character models.

This week's offering is another transformation sequence from Masterforce.  I give you: Lander!  I find the last picture in the sequence especially nice, what with the clouds and the mountains.  For a pretty simple toy, he they sure make his Transform seem dynamic.

Here are much more new pictures from the Transformers Prime Entertainment Pack 2.

Source: NTF-Archive.de

The third of our Transformers Beast Wars II Episode Image Galleries is now online,  this time focusing on Episode 3 - Big Horn's Rage

In this episode BigHorn sees red, in more ways than one.  BigHorn's inner animal instincts are kicked off when he sees red objects (the writers got his beast mode confused with a bull, when he is really a bison).  Big Horn also reveals his secret attack, much to the surprise of his Cybertron friends and dismay of the Destrons

Mastermind Creations have shown off a prototype image of their Knight Morpher KM-05 Air Screech toy, based on the Transformers Hearts of Steel Starscream design.

Check out their Facebook page

The second of our Beast Wars II Cartoon image galleries is now online.  This time we take a look at episode 2 - White Lion Run!.

In this Episode Lio Convoy re-tells of how he survived the crash on to Planet Gaea thanks to a native White Lion.  Meanwhile Galvatron and the Destrons stumble across a super computer which trans-scans the Decepticons into vehicles from the Planet's past.

An NDA deadline seems to have passed as various video game websites were updated yesteday with videos of Transformers Fall of Cybertron.

IGN - shows some great new footage and also talks about some of the design decisions

Inside Gamer - interview with the man overseeing Transformers Fall of Cybertron, Matt Tieger

Kotaku - includes sound clips of Jazz and Vortex

Amazon.com has listed a new pre-order for Transformers: Robots in Disguise Volume 1. The trade is priced at $19.99 and scheduled to release on July 31st. Unfortunately the cover art has not been revealed yet.

Volume 1 of IDW's other Transformers ongoing title Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye is also available for pre-order and scheduled to release on June 26th.

TFW2005 member Hollywood Hoist found the The Transformers Bot-Shots three-packs that were revealed at Toy Fair earlier this month at a Toys"R"Us location in Washington. The Decepticon set features Nemesis Prime, Megatron, and a translucent Acid Storm. The Autobot set features Sentinel Prime, Prowl, and Bumblebee.