g'day people.

Must be ages since last time I made a topic around here, and it makes me happy to see that the community here is still alive ;D

I recently picked up a really nice setup for digitally backing up VHS tapes, and suddenly the interest grew for promotional material and other oddities that were released on VHS.


So I'm just wondering, what type of stuff is floating around out there, slowly dieing away as the analog format of the VHS tapes is aging :'( ?

Personally, back to the NES days, the only stuff I have is a full set of sealed Game Player's tapes, so I guess I'll sometime have to buy a 2nd set to open up to preserve for the future, as I just can't bring myself to strip up the sealed ones I currently have.



Besides those, all I've got is stuff from Snes "mid-90s" and up 'til now.


So, anyone know of any infomercial tapes or any other NES related stuff that might be lurking on some old VHS in the closet ?

I have the 20 minutes or so MaxiVision 30in1 infomercial by American Video Entertainment featuring Hulk Hogan.

Unfortunately I've been unable to properly convert it to digital format, the picture sometimes rolls and the sound is bad... but it exists on DVD now :-)

I've actually had an interest in promo tapes for quite some time and have a nice little collection of NES, SNES and N64 tapes... now if only I could beat myself to converting them to digital format now that I have a DVD/HD recorder :-)

ahah.

Well, I picked up a VHS/DVD recorder hybrid with a direct transfer feature.
Only thing that's a bit sad about it is that it lets itself be bothered by MacroVision, something which fortunately isn't an issue on promotional tapes, but it is a bit annoying that I have to go through multiple complicated steps to backup some of the movies I have that probably never will have a DVD re-release.


But besides that, it's really good, has a built in de-interlacer (DVFX) for the picture ouput to the TV, supports VHS out over component (really sweet), 576p, good tracking control (handled from the remote, which is nice, but I still wish it had a wheel to adjust the tracking instead).


The VHS tapes looks stunning on it, so I'm really happy with it, but the recorded footage drops a tiny tiny bit in quality when comparing the component output VHS playback on it to the playback of a DVD recorded with it. (But you gotta compare multiple still frames to really notice that).

So I guess sometime in the future, I might find myself hooking it up to a HDD recorder that supports component input.


So far, the stuff I've backed up is;

Some Japanese Snes-era tapes (not done yet, huuge pile of stuff)
Various N64 tapes (US/EU)
Some euro GC tapes.
Some random game specific tapes.
And... the entire "CFC" line-up from Capcom (Capcom Friendly Club), just missing the Street Fighter Zero 3 tape.


If it wasn't for the problems I for some reason have with uploading to Google Video, I would upload some of the nice promotional stuff there (I don't feel like splitting into parts to fit with the 100mb/10min limit of Youtube, though, I could fit some of the shorter stuff there).

Hopefully, the Google Video Uploader will be "fixed/updated" sometime in a not too distant future :)

Ofcourse, could always try to find a nice webhost in the future and make my own little player system for my own videos + anyone else who feels like sharing some video game history ;D

Maybe we should trade a little sometime then... and maybe you should borrow my 8 or so gameplayer tapes which I opened up eventhough they were shrinkwrapped :-/

I've actually had a plan for quite some time about making a set of DVDs with old videogame promotional tapes featuring some kickass DVD menus with information about the tapes and such.

I wasn't planning on selling them, but people would have to pay the cost of the DVD's and shipping to be able to receive a set. Unfortunately, being the lazy bum that I am, the project never got off the group except for my attempt with the MaxiVision Infomercial (which is so bad it kicks major ass hehehe)

I would freaking love to see that Maxi commerical, I have always wanted to see it.

I have a couple World Class Service Repair Videos that I have picked up from buy outs of the test centers.  One of them is really cool, and jammed packed with info.  The other one is about marketing and is turbo gay.
~~NGD

Well, I'd gladly take on the task of running things from VHS over to digital storage, if someone could need that and don't have the equipment to do so themselves.
And trading and preserving is always fun.


Fortunately, unless you've moved to another part of the world, I guess the distance between us still isn't very big, right Martin ?

Currently, I'm drowning in work, so I'm not home these days, but I'll be back home by the end of May, I hope.


And the DVD thing sounds like a good idea.
Someone else I know is actually doing somewhat of the same thing, but for a specific game franchise at the moment.

The World Class Service Repair videos sounds like something I would love to see sometime.

Maybe I should put some new energy into the project.... maybe some of you would be interested in "donating" videos for future volumes of the DVD set? either by uploading videos to an FTP (mine) or lending me some videos (which will be returned of course)...

But let's see if I can finish volume 1 first :-)

Well, I'd gladly "donate" to it if I can.
But as of right now, I guess I pretty much don't think I have a single bit of NES stuff besides those Game Player's tapes, which ofcourse would be great if I could borrow an opened set of to backup (preferably shipped nicely packed, incase it gets shipped next to a giant box of super magnets or something like that), or evt. just get them from someone who's already done good quality backups of them :)


However, there are some boxes standing in my office back in Norway right now, so who knows, maybe I'll find some fun inside those ;D

Of course these DVDs would have no relation to NESWORLD as they would violate copyrights :-/

I was thinking about that Martin, good call  ;)

Yeah, that's true.


Though, I suspect there's quite a lot of dead trademarks and non-renewed copyrights amongst the various stuff that's lurking in people's closets.

+ Anything that was meant for public promotional use, advertising purposes and as infomercials, are they even covered by this, isn't those more or less public domain due to their origin and originally intentioned purpose ?

We need a name for the project

Video Game Chronicles Volume 1?

Man it would kick ass to get all those old NES commercials on to a DVD

Especially, if possible, in better quality than the very old tv card captures you can find of stuff on online video game commercial databases, where all videos are usually old captures, re-compressedm, downscaled and watermarked beyond recognition.


As for name, VGC v1?
I think Capcom in Japan had a similiar name on a lineup of various promotional stuff released on DVDs called something like "Capcom Consumer Chronicles" (3 volumes, two for console games and one for arcade, I think)

nah I don't want the commercials which can be found online... things have to be re-captured

Hi-quality re-captures of all sorts of stuff would be excellent.

Guess the fun starts with finding lots of stuff, especially if one wants to fill an entire DVD ;D