Knurdz Entertainment's Video Game Media Archive Review

[YoshiM]

I have to admit it: I am a sucker for old commercials. While other people would watch reruns of "Cheers" or whatever Charlie Brown special that they recorded on their VCR back in the day, I typically fast forward to commercials. Not only is it a nostalgia trip to me but it's also an entertaining way to see a part of past culture.

Imagine my excitement when it was announced that Oldergames.Com/Knurdz Entertainment was releasing a DVD containing classic video game ads would be released at CGE. So I stopped at their booth and picked up a copy of "Video Game Media Archives Volume #1: Atari".

The case is a clear plastic standard DVD case with the sleeve printed on a type of perforated card stock using what could be a pretty decent ink printer or a color laser. Fairly attractive to the eye with the description on the back that helps spur the memories of gaming ads past. The disc itself is your standard DVD-R, which gets no qualms from me (it's a small operation-who can afford to have professionally pressed discs?). The disc label is colorful and well centered. Also included inside is a card that thanks you for your support and also mentions about piracy and how it affects Oldergames, the developers, you, etc. Sounds good so far, right? So without further ado, let's pop the disc in.

When my Philips DVD player started playing the disc on my Samsung HDTV, the screen was squished about half-way up the screen. What the hell? I took the disc out and played it in a player upstairs on my standard TV. Came out fine. Hmm. Went downstairs and plopped one of my home movie DVDs in. Played fine. A light bulb appeared over my head as I fiddled with my DVD player's Video controls and turned the Progressive Scan OFF. The picture came out normal. Why this is I have no idea but it kinda irks me as I have to change the settings on my DVD player to view the disc. I could watch it upstairs but it gets pretty dang hot up there. It played fine on my PC using Cyberlink Power DVD, which is where the screen shots I have came from.

The disc starts and you are greeted with a menu that looks something like this:



After seeing the fairly professional looking packaging I was hoping to see a decent menu system. What this looks like to me is a generic template with the general title "Atari" with each chapter titled as the individual file names. The interface, while functional, is amateurish and cheap. It gives the impression, at least to me anyway, that the content was quickly slapped together. The clips are in file name alphabetical order, so you'll get some Lynx commercials mixed in with your Atari VCS ones.

So I press "Play" on my remote and get the content going. Really, that's the REAL point of such a disc is the content. Yeah the whole progressive scan thing is a downer and the interface is pretty basic, but what about the stuff that's inside? The first clip is about Activision. The clip looked a bit blurry but that could be from the age of the tape it might have been taken from. Watching it a bit longer, I get to an image of Pitfall creator David Crane



There's a bit of blockiness in the colors, like the video was compressed. According to my PC, there's only a little over a gigabyte used up. There's 83 commercials and info bits of varying size and the disc isn't even filled-if it was compressed for space I wouldn't know why. So I watched some more. Oh hey, an Alan Alda video and a surprise. Can you guess what it is?



Yep, it's a video pulled right from the web: from atari-history.com. The video originally was pretty compressed and stretched to fill my TV screen it looks worse. In fact you'll find a few entries from various commercial repositories: commercial-archive.com (the "Reinvent the Video Game" Atari 7800 commercial shown on the DVD was given to Commercial Archive by Sean Kelly), X-Entertainment and others. All the videos are of varying quality in image and audio.



I checked the DVD to see if there was some sort of acknowledgment at the end, to give props to the people who originally made these videos available and other than the watermarks at the corners or the splash screens before or after a clip, there was no such thing done. Granted some of the sites I checked didn't say you *couldn't* download and sell the clips I just don't think it was right, especially since a couple of those sites were asking for donations or offered to sell you their videos on CD for a minimal fee.

I WILL admit I might be a bit wet in the assumption that Knurdz just scoured the web and snagged a bunch of videos to sell without asking permission or offering compensation. Thing is, there is no indication on the packaging as to whether or not the clips were from original sources (as in straight from TV to tape to the computer) or just downloaded. If I'm wrong by this assumption, please let me know.

By making the disc available for purchase one kinda gets the impression that you're going to get some sort of consistent quality. To watch one good looking clip to seeing some blocky mess to another where it's blocky AND hard to hear isn't really acceptable in a sales package. There are some neat clips buried in here: a few from Europe, a Japanese commercial, some ads for games I've heard of but never seen on TV.

As it is, I don't think it's a very good product. You kinda get the "sort-of" truth in advertising: yes there's a lot of ads on this disc, yes it's handy to have it in one place and watch them on your TV BUT you've probably seen a lot of them online for free (and you probably already have downloaded some already). Granted I could have asked where the clips came from but I shouldn't have to. Anyone who would buy the disc is probably already web savvy so if Knurdz was upfront ("ads gathered from around the world, from personal video collections to repositories from on the Web"), the buyer might get a clearer understanding of the quality they are getting. At the price of $15 it's just too much for what you get.

[XYXZYZ]

Thanks for the review, I was thinking of picking this up but I can see I already have the sources on my media box.

[rwbivins]

Hello,

Although it hurts to see such a review, I must admit it is a very
honest and well written review. As someone with an extensive
multimedia background I hold our products to a standard that
I feel, as you do, that this release did not hold up to.

Let me start off by saying that if you are unhappy with your
purchase I sincerely apologize and am more than happy to
issue you a full refund for your purchase if you wish to
return your items. You can PM me for our mailing address
and I will work with you to ensure you get a timely refund.

I was in the middle of launching ten new products and entrusted
someone to produce a quality DVD for us who has proven time
and time again that he simply does not care about my standards
I have set for our company. This individual had over two months
to produce something and waited until the 11th hour to do so.

Imagine my personal disgust when this individual showed up
with two different versions of the DVD and sub-par production.

I feel that OlderGames has a reputation to uphold. We have made
big changes in the way we operate as a company and where others
are still releasing prototypes we have been developing, licensing,
and producing NEW titles for these orphaned systems. It is my
personal belief that our company should stand for a level of quality
and this level of quality was not achieved with this release.

It was impossible for me to do this given my personal workload
at the time. Rest assured that if I had been working on this project
things would have been very different: the content, the media,
the menus, the production quality.

My personal commitment to you, and our customers is to make
sure you are happy with your purchases. I will make this right,
and will revamp this product myself, not today or tomorrow, but
before "volume 2". I will stand by this because I will believe in
the quality of it. If you wish to keep your DVD and do not wish
to deal with the hassle of a return then I will make a commitment
to you, and all who purchased this product that I will personally
produce a special "bonus disk" for those who have this product
and will make it freely available to our customers to compensate
for the lack of quality in this product.

From the bottom of my heart and from one collector to another
I share in your disappointment and only hope this has not tarnished
your belief and trust in our company. Please understand that I
am quite serious when I say that this debacle is only a small
bump in an otherwise paved, and smooth road and will not be
replicated by our company anytime soon.

On another note: Thank you for your kind words on the
release artwork. I was responsible for that alone and am
actually considering a re-design of the packaging. My goal
was to have a film reel cascade over the front and I still
feel it's only 80% of the effect I set out to do on the art.

With great regret, and respect for the community,

RW BIVINS - KNURDZ ENTERTAINMENT CEO

[gamegirl79]

I too, was super excited about this DVD and didn't hesitate to purchase it at CGE. In fact, that same night I watched it in my hotel room in Vegas.

Much to my disappointment, everything that YoshiM pointed out in his review is true. I realize the videos are old but the quality of some of them is just plain unacceptable. On one of them I had to turn the sound on the TV all the way up just to hear it. Some of the videos skipped and right in the midde of one of them I was dumped back to the menu screen for some reason.

It's pretty obvious this was a rushed job and that's a shame, because the idea is quite awesome and it should have been done by someone who cared about releasing a quality product. I don't plan to return my copy, but I do hope that Oldergames/Knurdz makes this right in the future.

[itobandito]

To their defense they were playing a demo of the disc at their table. You could tell where the videos came from by watching the video. I asked them if they were from the web and they happily told me yes they were so its not like they are trying to hide the fact. Its a descent product if you don't feel like downloading all the commercials. It is nice to have them in an all on one DVD though. I personally didn't buy the disc because I had most of these from the web anyway.
I am interested to see the redone product though.

[rwbivins]

I don't plan to return my copy, but I do hope that Oldergames/Knurdz makes this right in the future.

I have every intention of doing so.

[gamegirl79]

The fact that they were videos from the web was not an issue for me, however for $15 I expected decent quality which I did not get. The lack of effort in putting this together is quite evident.

I have every intention of doing so.

Thanks. I look forward to it!

[itobandito]

Yeah I completely understand what your saying. I really hope that better versions exist out there.

[YoshiM]

rwbivins,

Thanks for responding to my review!

Like gamegirl79, I'm not going to return my DVD. Even though Volume 1 fell short of expectations, I support your effort in bringing these bits of history to the gaming public in an easy-to-view way. Just responding to my review and voicing your opinion on your own product and offer a future replacement says a lot about your character and that of your company's. Reading this, I definitely have more confidence in Volume 2.