That time Disney (almost) made their own Bandersnatch

"Imagine you're Disney CEO Michael Eisner" as a Defunctland watcher, I recoiled

It's been 3 years, I don't feel like Bandersnatch made lasting effects....am I wrong?

Robert Cauliflower, this is a legitimately excellent video

now im imagining someone making a creepypasta game that takes place on a DVD menu

between this and defunctland there is no escape from michael eisner

Bandersnatch immediately made me think of all those FMV games from the 90s. Game devs got drunk on power when they suddenly had a CD worth of space to put a whole game on.

From what I remember, the DVD of 'Emperor's New Groove' had a game similar to this and, looking it up on the fandom wiki, it seems to have come out at least 1 year before that Tarzan DVD (May 1st, 2001)

I worked in DVD special features development with a specialization in DVD-Video games. I specifically worked on the Madagascar DVD game example you show in the video!  The company I worked with made DVD Video games for dozens of titles for all of the major studios. Lots of interesting things were possible, and DVD menus had robust game scripting capabilities, but compatibility was constantly an issue.

Coming off of your more recent editorials, I was not expecting a BDG Unhinged style breakdown of a dvd special feature of a straight to home video Disney show. I'm really really glad I subscribed.

This is definitely my 3rd favorite video essay on Bandersnatch-esque DVD features for jungle-related Disney properties.

If you want to talk to someone who worked on the Tarzan DVD extras at Disney, you'll want to ask animators who used to work at Disney Australia, which is where the direct-to-video animation for Disney moved after Eisner shut down the animation studio in Orlando. The animation industry has a lot of churn, so you could easily find someone who is no longer at Disney. I say this three years later and have no idea if it'll be worth looking into but as an animation fan i really appreciated your coverage of this forgotten piece of Disney alternative media.

the art of DVD menu design is one of those lost things that makes you think “huh i guess someone would have to devote their time to designing and making that”

Its been nearly a Year good to have u back Bobby.

I'm starting to think this bold prediction won't shake out

Ah I wish these did take off. But then again, visual novels still exist. They do these things a lot. And disney had adventure games on their dvds I remember this! The Kimmy Schmitt and Carmen Sandiego ones were nice though!

I remember when I was a kid my neighbour had a copy of 2 fast 2 furious where you could choose the cars they drove! It completely blew my mind when that kid showed me a scene where vin diesel drove one car and then he went back and chose the other car and vin diesel hopped in the other car!!!

Man the video is cool and about something I've never known about, but interactive fiction has existed way before that, the first Macromedia based "games" were very much on that same choose your own adventure style. Btw, tip from the future, nobody cares about Bandersnatch that much in 2022, although probably the concept will crop up again sometime in the next 5 years to be forgotten, and people will claim it's revolutionary yet again.

Considering your more recent work, I'm loving the theatre kid energy here 🤣

Boss Baby Season 1, Episode 4 truly is a banger and thank you for having the courage to say it

“This video sponsored by my mom and dad’s house” is hilarious lol