Tooning Out: Defenders of Dynatron City

Watch Defenders of Dynatron City in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Defenders of Dynatron City was a LucasArts project that, as far as I can tell, was dead on arrival. It produced a handful of comics, a single animated pilot episode, and a mediocre NES game I could maybe sometimes get to the second level of. I don't know anything about its development beyond those facts, but the reason I didn't completely disregard the property to the dustbin of history was sparked, of all things, by childhood frustration.

As a kid living on Guam, I saw ads for the pilot's special Fox Kids airing a few times, and got super excited because ANIMATED SUPERHEROES I'D NEVER SEEN BEFORE! However, due to the time delays and schedule shuffling inherent in watching TV on a Pacific island in the 1990s, I never actually SAW the pilot, despite looking for it in the local schedules. Many years after the fact, my memories of this annoyance led to me tracking down the show's release on VHS tape (though I can no longer remember where I got it from).

This was probably not worth the effort, but I must admit the non-CG animation in the pilot is surprisingly nice, having been done by the same studio that animated "Heart of Ice" for Batman: The Animated Series. Plus, it was written by Bob Forward, of Beast Wars story editing fame, and features the voices of Gary Owens, Tim Curry and... Whoopi Goldberg? Huh. Anyway, you can watch the whole thing at Veoh.

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v15913870n8xzBbrm

And that, my friends, is more on Defenders of Dynatron City than has been written since 1992.