Holy crap I have not used this in a while, have I? Well, I wanted to be honest and not simply fill this blog with filler content, nor cover things that have been already covered by Helix Chamber and Dr. Lava. And well, here's some original stuff, eh? I posted on my Twitter fairly recently about finding an old promo disk from 2001, featuring a CD-ROM. This CD-ROM contained promotional content relating to the 2nd generation of Pokemon, and 50.Grind's Gotta Catch Em All Single. If you're a CD maniac, you can find the details of this disk on Discogs here. Before I go into the details of what was on the disk, let me as a brit explain who 50.Grind are. Who were 50.Grind?50.Grind were an English Electronic Rock band ran by Nick Atkinson, under the record label Recognition Records. Weirdly though, outside of Gotta Catch Em All, 50.Grind has virtually no online information. I can't find any albums after Gotta Catch Em All's big splash or...anything. I did my best to track down all the information though, so here's the scoop. 50.Grind were a very "skater kid" kind of band. I mean, look at everything about them. So, it was a very 90s kind of thing, riding on the Pokemon culture that was all over the UK at the time. The anime had reached peak popularity and the 2nd Generation was coming, so it worked like a charm and definitely contributed to the success of the single. 50.Grind gained notoriety after the release of Gotta Catch Em All feat. Pokemon All-Stars, a Nintendo-sanctioned Single. It received positive reception from fans, to the point it reached #57 on the UK Singles Charts and #15 on the Top 2000 on NPO Radio 2 in the Netherlands. It also played on Nickelodeon UK, with a YouTube archive of this being shown here. Although looking into it, I can see some of the Pokemon haters of those days giving some pretty angry reviews. The CD-ROM shows an interview with the band members, with them talking about their favorite Pokemon among other things. One likes Farfetch'd, which is kind of ironic given its evolution didn't make it into the final game. I hope he's happy about Sirfetch'd, though! 50.Grind broke up in 2003. Nick Atkinson would later form Rooster, who would release two albums: Rooster and Circles and Satellites before dissolving in 2007. He would go on to form The Temperance Movement in 2011, a blues rock band, which is active to this day. Their latest album, A Deeper Cut, was released in 2018. The Daily ExpressThe Daily Express is a UK tabloid newspaper owned by Reach PLC and published by Northern and Shell Media. It was founded on the 24th of April 1990 by Sir Arthur Pearson. I find it interesting how Nintendo decided to associate with the Daily Express, as it had recently been sold over to Richard Desmond who owned a porn company and produced OK! Magazine at the time. Regardless, it's an interesting turn of events and definitely goes down in Pokemon's unique history in the UK. These days, the Daily Express is known for its far-right political alignment, support for the Conservatives and controversies. Its most recent controversy was particularly around the European Union and migrants, where they were accused of xenophobic comments. Editor Gary Jones seeks to change the paper's reputation however, with a statement in April 2018 confirming this. I'm here for the Pokemon!Alright, alright! I have found 3 different covers in my online research. There's a CD-ROM, then two CDs. I have the CD-ROM, but not the two CDs, so I won't be able to snag the two variants of the recordings to upload here. The two CDs contained the two different Singles, one edited for promo as Discogs evidences. The CD-ROM contains various advertisements for Pokemon and 50.Grind's content. This includes screensavers, and TV advertisements. There are 4 screensavers. One is 50.Grind's logo, one is Ash and his team from the Johto League series of the anime, then there's two Pokemon Jets. What are Pokemon Jets doing here? What are they? Allow Mama Plague to explain! Pokemon has maintained a partnership with All Nippon Airways since 1996, although since 2016 they've been retired along with all other Boeing 747s. The liveries these used were all retired at the same time in 2006. I did some digging, and the plane matches up with the 1999 Boeing 767-300s that were unveiled in 1999. They were in fact a winning design from a March 1999 competition, which children between the ages of 6 and 12 participated in. The first winner was rolled out in Osaka, and I am assuming this wallpaper is exactly that: the winner, before the design was put on two further planes. The first's registration number is JA8964! I find it kind of funny to see these on a UK disk though...why advertise a Japanese website? It's a mystery! There are also advertisements for Pokemon Stadium 2, Pokemon Crystal and Pokemon 3: The Movie (also known as The Spell of the Unown). These all aired on TV. You can view the Pokemon Stadium 2 ad as I extracted and converted from the disk here. If you convert the game's price with inflation, it would have costed a staggering £81.65. Christ. Given this game was being imported from Japan, there are no differences from the final game, and this remains consistent with the rest. I believe I have seen the Pokemon Crystal ad before somewhere, but the time and place eludes me. It may have been a...Digimon VHS? I'm not sure. It shows Suicune and the Unown from the intro, before a comedic scene about the Unown text, hinting at their lore. £30 actually converts perfectly to £49.99 via inflation, by the way! Lastly, the Pokemon 3: The Movie ad, is the same as the ones on the VHSes of the Indigo League anime. It talks about the Unown being unstoppable and powerful, which frankly made me laugh like a maniac given how they turned out. It's a pretty awesome ad outside of that animation-wise. I remember it being on a "The Little Vampire" VHS at one point. I wanna look at this disk for myself!And you most certainly can! I have uploaded the disk's contents as well as converted media over to Mediafire here.
The videos and wallpapers were converted to mp4 and PNGs respectively for easier file use over the internet, as their file types are...archaic to say the least. The disk contents can be burned to just about any CD-R for use yourself. I would strongly recommend viewing the 50.Grind interview, as it is quite interesting! I did upload the mp4-converted video footage out to YouTube with intent to have it running on this article, but...you can guess what happened. My fault though, I should have known they had the copyright on deck for those ads.
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27/9/2023 04:03:07 am
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About meSo I really, really like researching Prototype Pokemon information. That's about it. I also do things on Smogon, I guess. Archives
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