Gamesmasterlive and GamesMasterHD

[Exoddus]

Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts. I'm currently renovating my house to sell in the next 2 months or so. So I probably wont be around for a very long time soon. As I wont have an internet connection for sometime!

http://www.gamesmasterlive.net

http://www.gamesmasterhd.co.uk/

It sadly looks like these two sites are RIP .

[SeeNoEvil]

http://www.gamesmasterhd.co.uk I was never sure about, I thought the guy was doing HD restorations of every episode (I even offered him all my source material), I was told that the restoration is only of Series 7 Episode 10, the one released on DVD, not the whole thing, which left me a bit confused, plus he never got a handle on spambots posting on his forum making it kinda pointless to post there. I think I even got in contact with him about that, how to stop spammers signing up but nothing seemed to be done?

http://www.gamesmasterlive.net however is a shame, I know it's much harder to run a retro site because basically you've got no new material coming and you're having to make updates & additions from old stuff, which gets more difficult as time goes on and you run out of things to cover. I run an Evil Dead trilogy website which would in theory suffer from the same problem, but I manage to keep it going with updates every week or two.

This place will stay online though, not going anywhere!

[Exoddus]

http://www.gamesmasterhd.co.uk I was never sure about, I thought the guy was doing HD restorations of every episode (I even offered him all my source material), I was told that the restoration is only of Series 7 Episode 10, the one released on DVD, not the whole thing, which left me a bit confused, plus he never got a handle on spambots posting on his forum making it kinda pointless to post there. I think I even got in contact with him about that, how to stop spammers signing up but nothing seemed to be done?

He was restoring Series 7 Episode 10 as it was the only episode on DVD. It's the best quality release of GamesMaster. He wanted to restore it making it HD. Then send off the episode to Future Publishing to either get them to send him the raw GamesMaster footage so he could restore them too. Or convince them to do it and release an official boxset with all the episodes restored.

He was doing a good job. The footage he restored looked really good. I e-mailed him about 3 months ago and never got a reply. So I have no idea what happened to his little project.

http://www.gamesmasterlive.net however is a shame, I know it's much harder to run a retro site because basically you've got no new material coming and you're having to make updates & additions from old stuff, which gets more difficult as time goes on and you run out of things to cover. I run an Evil Dead trilogy website which would in theory suffer from the same problem, but I manage to keep it going with updates every week or two.

I agree and tbh. I didn't think it would be a successful rebirth and sadly I was right.

This place will stay online though, not going anywhere!

That's good to hear! This is the only place for GamesMaster fans left on the web!

[K1ngarth3r]

I was going to make a post about http://www.gamesmasterlive.net I think the original founder pissed to many people off for people to go over and post especially when the same forum that once was is located here!

[SeeNoEvil]

I was going to make a post about http://www.gamesmasterlive.net I think the original founder pissed to many people off for people to go over and post especially when the same forum that once was is located here!

I think most of the original members had stopped posting, and the few other regular posters couldn't bring themselves to start from scratch once the board came back online. I mean Al has said it wasn't his fault, the site was lost due to the poor hosting, although having no backup of the forums is a bit silly, he could have taken the backup and just uploaded it somewhere else. I keep backups of this forum.

[GMLive]

Yep GamesMasterLive is dead in the water and will not be returning I can't be arsed with it all now, it was great launching the site this time 10 years ago and had a lot fun time doing it and made some great gaming buddies but GM is old hat now, what I wont miss is all the cry babies / moaning gits / freeloaders doing me down for not giving them what they want "for free " or failing to get the site back up after the crash because that I really didn't need it was a genuine reason why it crashed and to tell the truth I'm fed up with having to explain it over and over again.

Regards to all those who helped and got GML where it was all those years ago thanks lads! really appreciate the help, Prince, Nam Rood, Furkinace, Hadoken, Gamegirl, Dave, Jack, James, hewland for allowing us to use the images and vids, if I've missed anyone out..well you know who you are .... thanks guys oh and Seenoevil for the marvelous dvd collections...top work there fella!

As for me....well... i'm done!

[K1ngarth3r]

Yep GamesMasterLive is dead in the water and will not be returning I can't be arsed with it all now, it was great launching the site this time 10 years ago and had a lot fun time doing it and made some great gaming buddies but GM is old hat now, what I wont miss is all the cry babies / moaning gits / freeloaders doing me down for not giving them what they want "for free " or failing to get the site back up after the crash because that I really didn't need it was a genuine reason why it crashed and to tell the truth I'm fed up with having to explain it over and over again.

Thanks for the memories, the site was great in it's hey day.

[SeeNoEvil]

Thanks for the memories, the site was great in it's hey day.

I agree, without GamesMasterLive I would never have started the DVD project, or been able to get in contact with the couple of original VHS tape owners who lent their tapes and made the set virtually complete. It was a long slog to get it to the state at which it is, but at least everyone who wants to can download every single episode. That's all built on Al's site being there in the first place

When I first came across GML I think there was only a few episodes around on the internet at the time (the whole of Series 1 from Challenge TV, along with a handful of odd other series' episodes), which is what spurned me on to get something done myself!

It's a shame this is the only place left, and even this is virtually dead, but, well, it's nice to have somewhere to post on Gamesmaster with the a couple of other like-minded fans.

[Roareye]

Hey guys, I never received the email you sent Exoddus, did you send it to roareye@gmail.com? That's my only current email address, has been for years.

The GamesMaster HD project is still very much on, even though the site is currently kaput. I'm working on my media skills and trying to pull together a high quality rig to effectively work video media on. I also happen to be publishing novels now, and am investing in a 4K Raw cinema camera in order to film professional quality trailers and such. So the media work continues.

As far as GM itself is concerned, it's only on a short hiatus. I did do a remaster of the final episode in 1080p, but it wasn't quite as sharp as I'd hoped and I'm struggling with compressing it - I may need to make it a high quality MP4 for Youtube and keep a high-sized AVI for the original lossless file. In actuality the only thing holding that episode back from release is an attempt at mastering a 5.1 surround sound track for it. However this track doesn't work well on Youtube so it's up to you guys if you're happy enough (at least for now) with the original stereo audio? I can easily make the video available online, but I wouldn't consider it the finished version. Despite slightly improved sharpness and much improved colouration, I'd need a LOT more hard drive space to do the full restore I was hoping for.
You guys happy with an improved intermediary file?

The final episode was my focus because it was the best quality image and I wanted to really give it the full beans. However it was always my intent to improve the other episodes too! I've now got my Sega Saturn a VCD card, and it is wired to my PC recorder via RGB - the best possible quality output from a Saturn. However tracking down the Gore Special (My next focus in the series before working on VHS) VCD is impossible - likely for obvious reasons. If anyone has the VCD and would be willing to rip me the ISO, I can make my own duplicate VCD from home with no loss in quality, and there'd be no risk to you of losing your disc.

As for the site itself, I don't think it will come back in that guise. I'll likely have GamesMaster as an add-on to my media site when it gets back on track (Got a little while yet). In the mean time, it seems to make more sense to utilise this place as a forum for the HD project. After all, the spambot issue I could never figure out is catered for :p

Sorry to have kept things back so much. Had a lot doing lately. If you want the intermediary stereo/1080p Final Episode, just say so here and I'll upload to Youtube

[azel]

Hi Roareye, I'd definitely like to see the 1080p episode please. I have 2 original copies of the Gore Special VCD, I can make a copy of it and post it to you. PM me if you're interested.