GamesMaster fan & UK forum user Jack got in contact at the end of May 2020, asking about transferring a number of BetaCamSP tapes, which may have contained broadcast quality GamesMaster Series 2 material. He had borrowed the a set of twelve tapes from an acquaintance called Simon Dunstan some years earlier. Simon along with Chris Mills, ran Real Time Graphics at the time. They produced all the TV show's graphics for Series 1-3. So, Jack found only some of the tapes would play in the Sony J30 VTR he was using, and he had trouble capturing the ones that did, and he didn't take it any further at the time and returned the tapes. Jack wasn't sure if Simon had further material in storage, even complete series high-quality sets.

Confident I could make a go of it, I spoke to Simon myself, and he said that the twelve tapes he loaned Jack, was all that he had. He used to work for a video graphics company, and rather than having complete series, there were just some copies of bits & pieces he had made for himself and his then-showreel. He kindly dropped the tapes off to me on June 1, 2020. Upon opening the shoe box the tapes were in, there was a strong smell of mould. While I had heard this could happen, I'd never tried to work with tapes in such poor condition before, so I did some quick research on what to do. I left the tapes out of their cases to air and dry out. Mould normally means the tapes have been allowed to get damp while they were being stored, and once this happens, it will inevitably resuly in damage that is almost impossible to repair. Upon inspecting the tapes, I also discovered why half of the tapes wouldn't play for Jack, the reels of tape in a number of them had snapped. As I test, I trimmed the ends of the tape and reconnected them with tape in the hope that they might still play, and it seemed resonable that they would. Almost a month later July 3, I was happy enough the mould smell had all but gone, and the transfers would be the best they were ever likely to be. I hired a Sony J3 VTR from a local company to transfer the tapes for a total of £132.00, to use over that weekend. Jack and I paid half each. This was just before I decided to buy my own player; a J30SDI for furture projects as I'd hired this player a few times now and managed to source one on eBay for £260; around twice the hire price, but at least it was mine. So I sorted the twelve tapes from likely best to worst condition, leaving any tapes still with visible (now-dried) mould, and the snapped tape-tapes to last. I transferred the four labelled Gamesmaster episodes, then two tapes labelled graphics showreels all fine. Tape 7 in the queue was labelled 'Atari Teenage Riot', which was an additional tape the guy had asked me to transfer for him personally. That tape was immediately ejected by the player. I took the cassette apart, there was a fair bit of white mould inside and the tape had stuck itself to the metal rollers which the tape feeds around, so I freed that off, and tried again, but the tape immediately tore. I reeled off a few feet to be sure it wasn't stuck to itself on the reels, and reconnected the tape. I managed to capture 32secs of the music video before the tape tore again. I gave up on that one, since I knew any further tape I reeled off, would be destroying the thing I was trying to capture.

I didn't even get that far with the remaining five tapes. The few I actually managed to get into the VTR; every one that had snapped first time round when Jack was trying to transfer them, immediately snapped again once I had repaired and tried to play them. I couldn't even reconnect some, as even reeling off tens of meters of tape it was still tearing as it was coming off the reel, like a roll of Sellotape with a nick in the reel, it peels/tears off every time it gets to that bit, but in this case it was mould compromising the tape, and it's all the way though to the centre. The mould tends to get in between the layers of tape and bond them together so the tape tears as it's coming off the reel.

A tape that has been chewed up by a VCR, even a 10th generation copy in terrible quality can still usually be transferred, but once a tape has been so compromised by mould, that the physical tape itself is falling apart and cannot feed though a VCR without immediately and constantly disintegrating & tearing, there is realistically nothing that can be done to transfer it, even if I were to pay a video restoration company a pile of money, I can't realistically see that there is much else that they could do either.

In the end, I managed to transfer one complete as-broadcast GamesMaster episode (E17 - Cathy Dennis), one as-broadcast episode with a few minutes missing at the beginning due to tape damage (E01 - Tony Slattery), one episode consisting a complete set of live audience inserts only (E08 - Kristian Schmid), and one with a 4min as-broadcast section of E01 - Tony Slattery. The other three tapes consisted of two graphics showreels' dated in 1995, both with very brief flashes of GamesMaster animation in among other material, but nothing of note, and one section of the 'Atari Teenage Riot' music video; again not GamesMaster related. The quality ranges from sharp broadcast quality, to 2nd/3rd generation duplicates looking somewhat grainy, along with some light mould tape damage here and there. That said, the footage is still a good step above the existing VHS quality episodes.

Tape 01 (00:24:38) - Gamesmaster II Prog 8 (05-04-93) ~ Which is actually E17: Cathy Dennis
Tape 02 (00:20:45) - Gamesmaster II Prog 1 (19-03-93) ~ Which is actually E01: Tony Slattery
Tape 03 (00:15:12) - Gamesmaster II Show 8 Inserts (19-03-93) ~ Which is actually E08: Kristian Schmid
Tape 04 (00:03:54) - Gamesmaster II Show 1 Inserts (19-03-93) ~ Which is actually E01: Tony Slattery
Tape 05 (00:03:42) - Real Time Graphics, Graphics Showreel 96 (13-02-96)
Tape 06 (00:04:01) - Real Time Graphics, 1995 Showreel (28-07-95)
Tape 07 (00:00:33) - Atari Teenage Riot, Undamaged Section (1993)
You can see photos of the tapes which could not be transferred at all, due to tape damage below. Each one has been opened to show the problem. Note the white spots & patches of mould on the tape reels, and the loose/snapped tape. I assembled the footage, such as it was, into a playable DVD, using a stock VHS style menu I've used on a number of transfer projects. Simon was sent a copy of the DVD, along with the uncompressed AVI capture files, and said I could dispose of the tapes as I saw fit. I'll be keeping them for the moment just in case. While the end result isn't as I might have hoped, it was still a project worth pursuing on the hope of getting something more. We had hoped that one or more of the tapes labelled as 'Graphics Dumps' would have contained raw computer animation from the show, but unfortuately these were among the untransferable tapes so couldn't even be checked. The high quality opening & closing Gamesmaster credits may still prove useful in terms of raw material for artwork and such. If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.