Sorry, but the only reason these people can sell this material on ebay is because people are buying it, ergo people want it.

If the company behind the show isn't going to release the material for sale and just sit on the IP then that's there problem. What sales are they losing out on? Future sales? If no one, anywhere, was even so much as bootlegging then the market would be registering zero interest for the product and they'd have even less reason to publish.

Frankly, unless someone publishes the damn thing I don't have the slightest sympathy for any of the companies or individuals involved. Release it, or stop complaining. Either way, I'm going to find a way to relive my happy memories, and if you're not going to provide that way then I will resort to ebay.

Basically, put up or shut up.

I think that had a lot to do with no matter how easy you make it, some people still don't know left from right

Problem was, as was mentioned in the article, the deadly floor puzzles meant in later series that a lot of the dungeon was just filler until you reached the levels deadly floor puzzle room. Survive that and you'd won the level.

I can still remember the first time someone reached level 3. I was in awe I also have a vague memory of some hughe horror lurking in the background... a spider? I'm pretty sure that's the first time a team won.

Being insanely difficult was what made Knightmare so great... I was sad, even as a child, when I saw that level 1 had become a cakewalk, and level 2 was a pale shadow of its former self. Only level 3 seemed to stay as hard as ever.

The one thing that did improve with time were the clue tables. In the first series it was a complete guess, and if you took the wrong item you were stuffed

As someone who loved KM as a kid, I took a look at the pilot. I'm afraid I wasn't overly impressed.

The team dynamic is gone, now that the dungeoneer can see I wondered what the point of the adviser was. Just another pair of eyes?

Not only that, but KM has gone from cutting edge to retro. Aiming for the complete computer generated effect is a big mistake. Nothing dates faster than computer graphics. KM had backdrops far in advance of anything on your computer screen, but these days it wasn't going to be possible, not on a TV show budget under TV show time constraints. Slap a new costume on an actor... new character! For a computer you need to create, model, skin and animate them. It also left me wondering why I would want to play when it looked like little more than a basic adventure game I could trump with something from my games collection.

The blind navigation, contrary to what some have said, was central to knightmare. The dungeoneer was in control, but the advisers were better informed. The dynamic between the two is what made the game, and that it involved real people meant it could adapt on the fly in a way the new version cannot.

I'd love to see KM come back, updated for the modern world. I'd hoped to see changes which reflected the fact that the dungeoneer can see, but it simply looked like KM, with more graphics, less advisers, with the same old puzzles. You cannot remove one of the central elements and change nothing else to compensate... where was the tension in the jumping element? The axe swings were irregular, the jumps couldn't be misjudged, you simply needed to get the letters right...

I hoped for so much, but it was, I'm afraid to say, a disappointing experience. Sorry.

I've been nostalgic over Knightmare for a while. In my opinion it was the best kid's TV program around then, and probably would be now (I don't like children's TV presenters, didn't like 'em when I was a kid either... except the broom cupboard ), but I've only just found this site.

I read the article from '99 about whether the show got easier. I'm sure this has come up before (and if it has, please link me to the debates) but I'd like to get my view in there

The author focused on the number of winners. IMO this wasn't really an accurate measurement, rather how far a team penetrated the dungeon was a better measure. I liked the early series best, in part because they were in doors, but mainly because it all seemed harder. Simply passing level 1 was a feat in itself, rather than the mandatory stretching your legs it became later on. To me the appeal in knightmare was that so many teams fell so soon, it's what made it interesting! In later levels the teams didn't worry about their item choices, they couldn't get it wrong. Level 1 couldn't be failed. In the beginning level 3 was something mysterious and fearful, but also exciting because it was so rare that anyone reached it. Later on we saw level three all the time... and yes the short-cut idea was a bad one.

Not exactly coherent I'd agree, but Knightmare did become easier. However, as Tim's history article hints at, there were politics going on in the background, and it wouldn't surprise me if pressure from above was as much to blame as the bad idea of reinventing the formula (we liked it just find, no need to tinker ).

If Knightmare is ever released on DVD (the old ones, I've not seen the new ones) I'd be first in line to buy it