Insert 300 Joke Here
Madman Entertainment is an Australian company that distributes anime and manga to Australia and New Zealand, and are also the official distributor of several locally authored Transformers DVD sets. Their sets are typified by an enthusiastic array of extras and exclusive features (which are often a little on the dodgy side).
They have released DVDs of:
Generation One[]
- Transformers: The Movie — Released in 2003 featuring a reversible cover that has exclusive art by Don Figueroa, a creation of the cover gallery; theatrical trailer; Transformers TV commercials; cast and crew bios and The Touch music video by Stan Bush. It should be noted that the video quality on the original Madman release of the movie is decidedly worse than most other DVD versions released. The special features also suffer from quality problems -- they look bloody terrible. Stan Bush's "The Touch" in particular is very yellow, looking like it was transferred from a 7th generation VCR copy. Remember when we said before that the Madman special features were enthusiastic but dodgy? Well, that's what we meant, mate.
- Transformers: Generation One Seasons 1 to 4 — Broken into 6 boxsets, featuring artwork from Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye profile books; the five public service announcements; Atari's Transformers game trailers; a commentary track with voice director Wally Burr; all of the interviews from Rhino's US Generation One DVDs and a few new interviews for Madman. These sets used the original broadcast masters also used by Maverick Entertainment licensed from TV Loonland, which results in a less sharp and colourful image quality compared to Rhino's release but on the plus side does not contain the many animation errors that plagued Rhino's. Oddly, these sets do use Rhino's 5.1 audio soundtrack, complete with the added-in sound effects. And unfortunately, the first two boxsets feature Madman's extremely rough attempt to cut out commercial bumpers, yet after the third boxset, they started showing bumpers.
- The Best of Transformers (Generation One) — A two DVD set featuring 10 episodes of Generation One as voted by Australian fans featuring the IDW 'I Want YOU' Optimus Prime cover.
- Transformers: The Movie Special Edition — Released in 2007, the cover art is from IDW's adaptation of the animated movie, and features slightly different extras, including the previously available The Touch music video. Perhaps the greatest difference between this release and the US Sony release is that the Scramble City feature retains the original Japanese audio, with subtitles.
- Transformers: Generation One Complete Collection — Released to take advantage of the nostalgia and interest generated by the live action movie, this set is packaged in a box similar to the Generation One Optimus Prime's toy packaging and features the Generation One boxart images of both Optimus Prime & Megatron, with the disc cases stored in a metal tin. The DVD cases feature IDW incentive cover art by Guido Guidi; an exclusive mini-comic set in 2001 before the animated movie written by Simon Furman, illustrated by Nick Roche and Josh Burcham; as well as a piece of artwork featuring Optimus Prime's Matrix chamber also illustrated by Roche and Burcham. The discs are identical to Madman's previous Generation One release.
- Transformers: The Headmasters Collection — Released in November 2007, this DVD set features all-new cover art by Guido Guidi and a "making of the cover" gallery; an introductory booklet with episode guide; character art galleries; Seibertron.com Headmasters toy galleries; Japanese toy commercials and the English dub of the series alongside the original Japanese audio and English subtitles. It is quite similar to Metrodome's Takara collection Headmasters DVDs, even duplicating the subtitle errors present in that version. However, this set lacks the audio commentary by Chris McFeely.
- Transformers: Super God Masterforce Collection — Released in February 2008, this DVD set features all-new cover art by Guido Guidi and a "making of the cover" gallery; an introductory booklet with episode guide; character art galleries; Masterforce toy galleries and Japanese toy commercials. This set is again quite similar to Metrodome's Masterforce DVDs, though lacking the Chris McFreely audio commentaries it does include the English dub of the series on select episodes alongside the original Japanese audio and English subtitles.
- Much like Metrodome's release of Masterforce, Madman advertised this set as being region free, but in reality it is encoded in Region 4.
- Transformers: Victory Collection - Released in May 2008, this set is again quite similar to Metrodome's Victory DVDs (as usual lacking McFreely's audio commentaries), it does include the English dub of the series alongside the original Japanese audio.
- Its special features include all new cover art by that awesome bloke E.J. Su; an introductory booklet with episode guide; box art galleries; toy galleries of Victory and Zone toys (with pictures from Seibertron.com and transformerstoys.co.uk) and Japanese toy commercials (which are all for Zone toys, and include what appears to be an industry pitch reel used to demonstrate the toys to retailers). Transformers: Zone is also included as a special feature, as well as scans of the TV Magazine Zone story pages available via DVD-ROM (As translated by Hydra and Jeff Stein for Black Gears and the Allspark.com). In keeping with Madman's dodgy enthusiasm there's a bunch of seemingly random (sometimes translated, sometimes not) scans of Manga and story-page material for Battlestars and Operation: Combination included in the set as well.
Beast Wars[]
- Beast Wars Seasons 1 to 3 — Released in 2006, and broken into 3 boxsets with the first ever Beast Wars DVD commentary tracks featuring Ben Yee, story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio on all three sets. Commentary tracks by Simon Furman, Gary Chalk, Scott McNeil, Alec Willows and Mainframe directors and animators are available in Season 3. Other features include all-new interviews with some of the aforementioned cast members and David Kaye; an lengthy interview conducted by Ben Yee with the story editors; animation tests and early CGI models; various international introduction sequences and Seibertron.com Beast Wars toy galleries. Additionally, as Mainframe is a PAL production house and Australia uses PAL, there is no (or at least less) loss in visual quality on the DVD transfer compared to Rhino's release of Beast Wars.
- The features on the sets, in keeping with Madman's enthusiastic but low-budget approach get better on each set. The first set's commentary tracks feature some of the worst audio ever used on a DVD commentary -- with the voices barely audible and sometimes completely drowned out by traffic noises. The other sets are not quite so bad, with the third the most polished (and rich) in special features.
Notes[]
- According to an interview on Seibertron.com with Generation One voice actor Frank Welker, a representative of Madman gave Mr. Welker a pre-release version of the Generation One Complete Collection DVD set in the hopes of securing an interview to be included on the final version of the set. This did not evidently pan out as the disc content is the same as Madman's 2004 Generation One releases.