I haven't seen it. But I value your opinion on these things. Keep up the good work, Pat.

Great video as always and so glad you guys covered this, I must not have been the only one who mentioned it ;-) I agree, it would be way better without the Wata "commercials"... in fact so much so I made an edited versions that removes them completely. Man it's way better now, and actually feels like a documentary about collecting games in the modern era 🕹

This ''documentary'' or should I say infomercial shows everything that's WRONG with retro collecting in this day and age. It's all about the MONEY !!! These F*cking youtube SELL OUTS that are in this WATA commercial should be cancelled ( that's what people do these days right ? 😉 ) and ashamed of themselves ! ( James AVGN learned nothing from that cheetahmen 2 kickstarter fail ) I started collecting for the NES in 1999 and saw the hobby getting rapped by Nintendoage and these so-called Nostalgia fans / collectors like Dain Anderson. And where are they now ? Gone with money in there pockets and games sold. I still have my old NES games and don't buy retro games for insane prices. Take my advice : Buy the retro games you grew up with for nostalgia. The games you got for your birthday and with xmas. If you really want to. For the rest... get yourself a flash or multi cartridge from aliexpress and play all the games you want. If you want to make money you should take advice from Warren Buffett. Don't invest in Bitcoin or retro games Minder tonen

Putting aside the WATA segment. Which I skipped since there was nothing of value to take from of it, I thought the documentary was good. Pretty matter-of-fact. Not cheesy or preachy. It was neat to see the rarer stuff I hadn't seen. The collectors interviewed had insightful and wise things to share about the hobby. Overall a positive experience, but again, without taking into account the WATA plug halfway through.

Thanks for talking about this. I just found out and would like to see the good segments. I've had my fill of WATA and rich dentist collectors from your excellent coverage of them. I will skip those parts.

But but what about the *organic rarity* those plastic shells provide??

If only there was a certain guidebook OR guidebooks! 😂 gotta pick up the SNES copy

Hahahahaha

Now that's a physical release !

@@JBird401 hahahahaha

Make sure you send it to WATA

If WATA grades it a 9.6 or higher, I would be a buyer in at $45k.

those people arent gamers they are tax fraud artists and criminals.

I hear you. It's preservation for the right reasons.

Yeah unfortunately this was being produced while WATA was still on top, and those "in the know" about the industry were being drowned out by all the money

It's still part of history. History is not always show the goodness of everything but also the bad. We cannot just simply erase the bad part of history.

They need to be held accountable for market manipulation

I suppose Deniz would only agree to appear on the condition they do the plug.

The "bang bang" bit gave me the hearthy chuckle I needed, thanks!

@@albedo00 :)

@@albedo00 and now I can't unsee Pat cosplaying as cactus jack

Cannot think of a single blu-ray transport that's incapable of reading a DVD

Go ahead, you know you wanna say it: the founder of WATA is a kahn artist. 😂

All in the service of making collectors salivate like Pavlov’s Dog…

Those archeologists will be like oh so thats why their civilization collapsed.

I used to hate them, but now I keep all the games I get in rental cases as is. It's interesting to me as someone who grew up renting most of the games I played.

I have a copy of Power Rangers the fighting game for the SNES with a Blockbuster security sticker. The cartridge definitely looks like it got rented a lot, but the sticker adds to the story like you said.

Here's my take, you collect video games to PLAY them and enjoy them. I don't understand putting them in plastic.

It's why I really appreciate Digital Eclipse's efforts. Some people call them mere rom dumps, but the amount of extra materials like manual scans, concept art, etc etc makes them an experience. Not to mention being able to legally play Ducktales 2 without having to fork over hundreds of dollars is something I've been waiting decades for. (Also people have figured out how to extract working roms from some of their releases, so this is one of the best ways to get legal roms for emulator use)

lol. lmao even

@@arcadeages3917 lol

Hi Edward, thanks for stopping by. The issues isn't that graded games "needed to be included," but that it was presented in such a one-sided fashion and ignored a lot of facts known at the time in the community. I feel if you are doing a follow-up, it is important that there is information about what happened in the sealed/graded game market with a clear view of the landscape. With that said: 1) Whose decision was it to dedicate a near 25-minute section of your film promoting Wata games and graded games in general? Was that your sole decision or a combination decision of the directors/producers? 2) Was VGA or CGC contacted in a attempt to add to or refute information presented by Deniz and Eric? 3) Was any research done to substantiate value claims made by Eric Naierman, and if not, why? 4) Why was there no pushback in the film to the pro-graded games rhetoric such as "mantra of jealousy" and "organic rarity?". 5) Were other participants in the film made aware that statements like these that would end up in the film? 6) Why was there no real mention or coverage of the various Wata and Heritage Auctions controversies discussed over the years by us on the #CUPodcast, Seth Abramson, Karl Jobst, etc.? Do you feel it wasn't necessary or didn't fit with the theme of the film? 7) Will the second film address these aforementioned issues, the sale of Wata Games, the class-action lawsuit filed against Wata and Deniz, the bursting of the graded/sealed game market bubble, etc.? Will folks like Eric and Deniz be contacted to participate again and see where their stances and investments are at versus when this documentary was filmed? Looking forward to your responses and best of luck in the future.

Hi, I want to apologize for accidentally deleting the director’s reply by while fumbling on my phone post Super Bowl. It was thorough and while I definitely did not agree with 100% of the answers or reasoning, I commend Edward for stating his opinion openly.

@@PatTheNESpunk No worries. Here it is again for transparency. 1. While it may seem like that section was dedicated to Wata, it was really about appealing to and showcasing people who collect sealed games and showing it’s not all “speculators” or “Market manipulators and people collect sealed and or graded games for different reasons. The idea was never to have a pushed narrative at all but let the creators tell us what they thought. It seems most people we interviewed either were not against graded gaming, didn’t care how people wanted to collect or were for it. If anyone had something to say about not liking graded games (Robert) they were showcased. So I know this is long winded but the answer is this section was never set out to be a Wata section but through interviews Wata is mentioned enough. The theme of the whole piece is there is no right or wrong way to collect so the experiences and comments are each presenter’s personal feeling towards each subject. Timeline wise, by the time the Seth or Karl released their videos the movie was already done and if anything outside of allegations come from that, IE Wata loses a Lawsuit or is investigated by a governing body we will of course talk about that but while people get away with Libel and slander often on KZfaq it’s something I we want to stay clear of until there are actual governing sources with substantiated evidence and findings. 3. To answer the question about CGC and VGA. VGA was contacted with no response and CGC was not a thing yet when it came to video games. 4. By the time the doc was ready to come out, similar games with worse grades than Eric’s set record sales on Heritage, Goodwill and Ebay. We also personally know many regular people who throw money around like this on Video games, one particular is just a husband and wife with a small 70’s style house who spent hundreds of thousands per month on video games. Eric also holds the record for the highest ever sold Babe Ruth Card and other collectables and has been on TMZ as well as ESPN CNN etc talking all about his collection with actual journalists. Also having friends who collect comics and cards, the numbers being thrown around for video games are significantly low in comparison to the records in those other collectable fields. While it seems like a lot of money, 1,2, 3 million dollars is not a lot of money anymore. I know people who shoot weddings for a living making more than that in a few months or people in Los Angeles who will spent 200 grand on a vacation. It’s hard to fathom for some people, but rich people operate on a different level. 5. These are his feelings, there isn’t really a way to debunk someone’s personal feelings a l bout something. 6. Participants went to a private premiere before the film was ever released to the public, no concern was ever brought up by anyone except for the safety of Deniz at the premiere. By the premiere the Karl video was released As mentioned before, creators either didn’t care about grading, were for it. The people who didn’t care about grading didn’t care about the Karl video. The people who were for grading are still waiting for something to materialize outside KZfaq and Twitter allegations or also didn’t care. No one in any of the graded game collecting communities I follow in Facebook seem to care about either the Seth or Karl allegations, the only people who seem to care are those who were against graded games to begin with. 7. The idea of the doc was to explore different ways people collect whether that is hardware, software, region. As mentioned none of those controversies were out before the film was finished. There is 1 clip with the Karl controversy highlighted but because everything was already shot it was just B-roll. 8. The second doc we didn’t plan on having any segments about Graded games at all but we may mention it as a “state of collecting now” if by the time it comes out people are still talking about it. We were toying with Whatnot and DKoldies segments for example but by now that is already old news. Believe me, us ourselves have plenty of DMs etc from the anti-graded game community but the overall response to that section has been positive. We are taking comments and criticisms seriously going into part two and trying to stay away from controversy and show people more of the stuff they love like the rental segment which seems to be people’s favorite. While we were limited before because of Covid (and because literally 2 of us made this documentary) this second doc we will be traveling all over the country and even out of country to shoot human interest pieces on people who are in love with Retro games. Deniz and Eric may be contacted but just in the sense of their personal collections, we may do a recap on the state of the market but can’t guarantee their involvements. Again thanks for your honest review. We knew going in graded games in general we’re going to o be a touchy subject, our goal was to have something for everyone and that will continue to be our goal for part 2.

Yep, speculation is certainly not a new or particularly saavy tactic, but like certain ex Presidents, it is the utter lack of subtlety to their entire organization that I find galling; like they’ve really convinced themselves that they are on the level as business professionals? It’s like they’re daring us to punish them…

Black and white TV or a newfangled color TV?

Make sure to include the Cable/Antennae switch box.

It’s not that nostalgia is necessarily bad, but it’s easily manipulated. A misremembered past, weaponized by a marketing exec to get you to pay a premium for retro looking toys/games/etc. A push to consume. A focus on the superficial trappings of an era without the ethical concerns or political background that informed those trappings or media pieces that made such an impression in the first place.

Same issue with vinyl.

@Nyx I've seen enough videos of people getting broken, dirty or defective consoles to for me not to trust them. If the prices were lower, I'd give them a shot.

I personally think it's crazy to criticize how someone reacts to death threats, rather than the person who created the death threats.

To say nothing of the denial behind how they justify their wealth/compensation no doubt…