Trying this from my phone…

Most of my generation know this as the theme song for the 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie, which is getting a re-release for its 40th anniversary with, apparently, a new chapter. I never saw the original, even though I’m a lifelong Trekker, and Leonard Nimoy is in it. I just never was a Transformers fan. I did hear this song on the radio as it got plenty of airplay back then.

The reason I know this song though, and the reason I’m posting it today, is because of its use in Saints Row 4. The first Saints Row game exists because Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto III on PlayStation, and Xbox wanted a similar gang game, so they commissioned one. GTA III later came to Xbox, and Saints Row came to PlayStation, and all was good. The first two Saints Row games did not stand out much. They didn’t do much that Grand Theft Auto hadn’t already done better.

That changed with the third one. Starting out with a bank robbery where you lift the vault out of the building with a helicopter, to jumping out of a plane and dodging debris on your way down, to invading a rival gang’s penthouse while Kanye West plays, the series had found its niche as a semi-serious parody of the genre it helped pioneer. Saints Row: The Third was a dumb game that never stops fighting for your fun and enjoyment. It ends with a heroic run up a parody of the Statue of Liberty disarming bombs to save best/worst girl Shaundi, to Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero.

So how does Saints Row IV top that? By destroying Earth and putting the Saints in the Matrix while also shamelessly ripping off the plot of Mass Effect 2, of course. And after a few back-and-forth arguments about the difference between a mech robot and power armour, but only featuring the former, you find power armour, and today’s song of the day plays as you fall through a series of chasms populated by deadly lasers and debris.

Sounds like a lot of spoilers, but I’ve left a ton of details out, and there are a bunch of neat things to discover in these games. And they go on sale all the time. Anyway, I just beat the fourth one for the third or fourth time (first time on Xbox, though), so the song and scene were fresh in my mind.