Brief summary of transformers G1 story (a bit long; the pictures are TV cartoon screenshots) :
Cybertron, the home planet of transformers, was a robot factory for Quintessons (a five-faced immortal alien species). There were two production lines: one military, one civil. The robots were initially just machines that carried out jobs defined by their programs, but at the core of Cybertron, a mysterious supercomputer called Vector Sigma had the capability to grant them self-consciousness, and hence free will and feelings.
Quintessons were ruthless creatures. One of their entertainment programs was to watch robots killing each other in a gladiator fight. They were highly intelligent and extremely good at calculation. However they lack feelings, and hence failed to calculate the consequences of abusing sentient robots. Eventually robots started to fight back, and defeated the giant guardian robots controlled by Quintessons. Quintessons were driven out of Cybertron and escaped to a distant planet.
Cybertron had a time of peace. The civil robots called themselves autobots, while the military ones decepticons. Decepticons liked war and power as it was rooted in their program, and before long they launched a war against autobots. It was the First Cybertronian War. Deceptions won easily (Civil against military, what would you expect?), and autobots became slaves again for many centuries.
Autobots never gave up though. They invented the technique of transformation and enhanced their battle capability. The Second Cybertronian War broke out, and autobots won. Cybertron again had a time of peace for centuries.
But decepticons wouldn’t give up either. They learned the secret of transformation and one day, they created a powerful leader — Megatron. Megatron quickly killed the autobot leader at that time, and the Third Cybertronian War broke out, which lasted millions of years and even reached Earth.
It wasn’t clear when the Autobot Matrix was created, but it was already inside the autobot leader killed by Megatron. Alpha Trion, an ancient autobot, took the Matrix out and kept it for years. One day, an energon warehouse keeper named Orion Pax was fatally wounded by Megatron and sent to Alpha Trion for repair. Alpha Trion re-created Orion’s body with a new design, and Optimus Prime was born. He quickly became the new autobot leader.
Centuries of war depleted the resources on Cybertron. Both autobots and decepticons were desperate to find new sources of energy. Well, they found Earth, a primitive planet without any intelligent species back then. And this is where the first episode of the cartoon started. The above history were told as flashbacks in later episodes.
An autobot group led by Optimus flew towards Earth in their spaceship — the Ark. They were tailed by the decepticon spaceship — the Nemesis, where Megatron and other decepticons planned to hijack the Ark. They had a fight in outer space, and both spaceships crashed on Earth. The Ark crashed into a volcano with everyone damaged and lying around unconsciously. The Nemesis fell to some unknown place as an empty ship.
Four million years later, a volcano eruption accidentally activated the control computer of the Ark. It repaired damaged robots and remodeled them based on vehicles on Earth. Everyone was revived, and a new fight broke out on Earth.
Apparently when they left Cybertron, the planet was essentially in hibernation mode due to the depletion of energy. So when Megatron reconnected with Cybertron, it seemed that nothing much had happened on the planet during the four million years. Megatron left Shockwave (a soldier with infinite loyalty) in charge when he left Cybertron, who after four millions was still waiting for Megatron’s communication. Optimus probably left someone else in charge too, maybe UltraMagnus?
On Earth, the human civilization had appeared. However, human technology was still far behind transformers’, to the point that our military weapons could hardly defeat them. Therefore the cartoon was essentially about the battle between robots. Most of the time humans could do nothing but watch them fight. A few people like Spike and his father became close to autobots and actively participated in some battles, but other than that, humans played a rather minor role in the show. This is in sharp contrast with Michael Bay’s transformers movies, in which US army were running around and taking down decepticons by themselves.
Back to the Transformers, decepticons started looting Earth’s energy and making a lot of energons. They also built a spaceship, loaded it with energons, and planned to fly back to Cybertron to crush autobot resistance on it. While Optimus failed to stop them, Mirage sneaked into the spaceship under invisibility mode. He destroyed the control panel, and the spaceship ended up falling into the ocean. It became an underwater base for decepticons.
Watching the first several fights on Earth, it was rather clear that autobots had disadvantage in battle although they had more people. And unlike in MB’s movies, Bumblebee’s fighting power was basically negligible. Look at the pictures below…he couldn’t even handle Laserbeak or Ravage most of the time. But on the other hand, Bumblebee was a very friendly robot. He was Spikes’ best friend and did have courageous moments despite his lack of strength.
The turning point came when autobots were inspired by ancient Earth creatures and created dinobots. Dinobots were a bit silly (and cute because of that), but they could overpower decepticons with brutal force. For a while they were the stars of the battle field. Later, insecticons came into the show. They were ancient decepticons who arrived at Earth a long time ago, and they evolved to mimic insects on Earth. Insecticons had interesting gimmicks, but didn’t seem as powerful as dinobots.
Another turning point came when constructicons were introduced into the decepticon army. Constructicons were a six-robot team who can combine into a giant robot — Devastator. Devastator ruled the battlefield and no one can beat him in a normal fight. Autobots were commonly tossed around by Devastator like a toy car. Dinobots could put up a good fight against Devastator, but they never won.
After Devastator bullied autobots for many episodes, a new batch of robots showed up, including a giant robot on the autobot side — Omega Supreme. Omega Supreme was a special guardian robot on Cybertron. He had a history with Devastator, which made them sworn enemies. After Omega arrived, the good days of Devastator were officially over. In one episode, Omega showed superior strength over Devastator — they wrestled for only a few seconds before Omega threw Devastator out of the screen.
In another episode later, female autobots were introduced. Honestly I never thought about the sex of transformers before this episode, because robots are supposed to be manufactured, but not born like us, right? Still, the idea of female robots could be interesting. According to the story, female autobots were thought to be extinct, but some of them actually survived the war and formed their own rebel army on Cybertron, led by Alida — Optimus Prime’s girlfriend. Three other female autobots in this episode were girlfriends of Powerglide, Inferno and Ironhide, respectively. Unfortunately, it was the only episode these four girls showed up. In later episodes, Arcee was basically the only active female autobot. Another female autobot was Wreck-gar’s girlfriend, who lived on the planet of waste and was barely memorable. There were no female decepticons in Transformers G1.
As the story continued, more powerful combiners were introduced, including Menasor (formed by Stunticons), Superion (formed by Aerialbots), Bruticus (formed by Combaticons) and Defensor (formed by Protectobots). Devastator became the weakest combiner. The clash between these big guys was really fun to watch.
In 1986, Transformers the Movie came out. A new generation of robots were introduced, while some old robots got killed in the movie. Notably the idol of all transformers fans — Optimus Prime — was killed and replaced by Rodimus Prime. Megatron was re-created into Galvatron. Another arguable idol — Starscream — was killed by Galvatron for betrayal. Rodimus, UltraMagnus and Kup became the new core autobot characters, while Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge were the new core decepticon characters.
In the Rodimus age, the story often took stage on other planets in the universe, but not Earth. Quintessons officially joined the story. They want to eliminate all transformers and take back Cybertron, but at times they teamed up with decepticons to carry out their secret plans. On the humans’ side, besides Spike and his son Daniel, there was a notable new character Phelbona (not very sure about the name) — a strong, beautiful female captain who was the star of a few episodes.
On the robots’ side, new combiners and giant robots emerged, including Predeking (formed by predacons), Sky Lynx, Abominus (formed by terrorcons) and Computron (formed by technobots). But most importantly new titans were introduced — Metroplex and Trypticon. They are huge robots who transform into a fortress or a city, and brought the battle on Earth to a whole new level.
While Galvatron was a strong leader, Rodimus seemed lack of confidence and a little weak, and couldn’t become an idol like Optimus was. But at the same time, Grimlock — the dinobot leader — became a new star. Grimlock was eager to learn, and eventually he became smarter than most autobots. He created and passed his wisdom to a new combiner — Computron. Even after losing his hard-earned wisdom, he saved the universe from Tornedron (Primacron’s another creation after Unicron) by following his animal instinct. Go Grimlock!
Furthermore, Starscream was dead but his ghost showed up (robots have souls too?). He possessed Cyclonus, setup a trap with autobots to ambush Galvatron, and later possessed Scourge to carry out his plan to revive himself. In the end, Unicron revived him, but then he double-crossed Unicron immediately. Well, should we say he never disappointed us?
Talking about the ghost of a robot, there are actually other episodes in Transformers G1 that imply transformers and humans have equivalent consciousness (or souls as some people may call it). In Episode 17 “Autobot Spike” which was much earlier, Spike was heavily injured and unconscious. Wheeljack transferred his consciousness into a robot body, so that he could enjoy some (robot) life before his human body was fully healed!
In Episode 88 “Only Human”, Rodimus, UltraMagnus, Springer and Arcee fell into a trap set by human criminals, and their “brains” were extracted and put into synthesized bodies. And so here they are — four autobots in human body! Guess who’s behind the soul-extraction technology? It’s Cobra Commander!
Well, it seems that in Transformers G1 world, consciousness or soul is assumed to be some kind of field existence that can be transferred between different bodies, robot or human. With this assumption, the existence of Starscream’s ghost becomes reasonable. After all, ghosts come from souls and the type of body doesn’t matter.
Finally, in the episodes where the whole universe was infected by a virus that spread hatred and madness, Optimus Prime was brought back. Again Optimus heroically turned the tide, and saved the universe with the wisdom inside the Matrix. It seemed that the long-lasting war was finally over, as even Galvatron expressed his gratitude towards Optimus. And so this marked the end of Transformers G1 series.
Thank you for reading! You got the power!