In one version of the Beast Wars- well, they never happened! The Axalon critically damaged the Darksyde in space before it could engage its transwarp drive. The Axalon reported the successful attack to Maximal Command and detected no life signs within. As the Maximals returned to space exploration, the drifting Darksyde came across Unicron. He extracted the nearly-dead Predacons and reformatted them. Megatron was reconfigured into Galavratron, a fearsome multi-changer who possessed dragon, snapper turtle and beetle alt modes. His underlings were similarly reformatted into Jetstorm, Tankor, and Thrustor, their personalities utterly overwritten in his service; later, the re-emergence of Thrustor's original identity caused quite a shock!
Galavratron demanded to know why he had been resuscitated into such a strange form. Unicron replied with a grim order: he would send the "Predacrons" back into time and destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership in the distant past. Galavratron departed on his newly-rebuilt ship, the Malevolence, to enact the plan: "Target: 1984".