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Geoffrey Golden's avatar

I buy VHS tapes that were specifically meant for a VHS release. I love VHS board games, promotional tapes, and educational videos, because I feel like I’m experiencing the media the way it was originally meant to be experienced.

So, for example, I don’t need a VHS copy of Cruel Intentions, but a VHS promo for Cruel Intentions where the cast sexually manipulates the viewer, a video store owner, into stocking Cruel Intentions at their store? I’d pay a surprising amount of money for that, apparently!

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William F. Edwards's avatar

I had fun getting past the challenge. Design wise I found it a little strange since I could only narrow down most of the blanks to a 50/50, but word three could only be lyin' which meant it had to be full. You can solve the whole puzzle off of word three alone without bothering to fill the other blanks, but without that I don't think I could have solved it in the first place.

Tried out all the endings as usual. I see we both hate Free Guy based on the foul ending, if you hadn't I would have joked about not being able to see it being a good thing. Got forced to see it by family and was vindicated in my assessment of it as a movie about video games written by people who know nothing about video games. The use of the # in the name also got me chuckling.

I'm in the generation that's just young enough to have experienced the twilight of DVDs. My family still has a decent DVD collection, though now we pretty much only pull out the White Christmas DVD around a certain holiday. We used to have this neat portable DVD player too.

Personally I'm a fan of physical media, it can't be taken away from you. Also I miss a lot of the stuff that went into DVDs. The design of the menu, the names for different scenes in the scene select, the bonus features, it's a lost world some people today don't even know existed.

DVDs were my introduction to old TV shows like Get Smart, Green Acres, and Gilligan's Island, I remember the Get Smart DVDs had optional commentary from 99's actress. I also remember loving the bonus features for Lion King 1/2. There was this choose your own adventure thing where you went on safari with Timon and Pumbaa, I had a lot of fun with it.

I didn't watch the movie itself, but looking at the details for the Jungle Cruise movie on Disney+ made me a little happy because I saw the extras section included DVD style extras. Also I just found out that Lion King 1/2 also has some of its DVD extras on Disney+, including the choose your own adventure safari. Though they're missing the gameshow extra, but if I'd had to pick I'd save the CYOA safari over Lion King Jeopardy too.

(EDIT: Spoke too soon, it's not the CYOA adventure they have on Disney+, it's a different educational bonus feature. NOOOOOOOO!)

This has me pondering, is there some sort of group or website dedicated to preserving these DVD extras? I'm mainly familiar with video game preservation, but it seems to me that these extras are in need of similar efforts. Also DVD based board games, I had a Lilo & Stitch one based on the animated series.

As an ironic side note, right now my personal media preservation quest actually revolves around digital media. Nintendo is taking down the online stores for their old consoles so I'm trying to get stuff only available there while I still can.

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