When Cop on the Edge IX: Prelude to Justice was first made, it was the late 90s and DVDs hadn’t really taken off in the way they would inevitably do. More importantly, making DVD copies of your own work at home wasn’t possible without a sizable budget, as DVD burners were only just starting to come out and were incredibly expensive. Therefore, when we made Cop in 1998, and created our first copies in 1999, they were produced on Video CD – a medium that few remember and fewer still actually used.

Video CDs were video discs burnt on standard CDs. They had the same time constraints as regular CDs for runtime (about 70 odd minutes) and they were limited in file capacity, which meant any MPG Video file would run out of space before it would run out of running time on the CD. Still, we ploughed on and produced a large run of double set Video CDs, complete with special features such as the ‘making of’ documentary and the original TV spots. Sadly, Video CDs aren’t particularly good in terms of quality (they’re worse than VHS) and they’re not especially good with reliability either, as many of the original discs no longer work properly.

Luckily, with modern home technology the way it is today, we now have DVD copies of Cop on the Edge too. These DVD copies were produced by Eddie Keaton, who resampled the original Beta master of Cop for the process. The DVD copies have many of the same special features as the original VCDs, complete with some new, DVD exclusive, features.

The new DVD copies include new features such as directors’ commentaries with Darren Jamieson, Eddie Keaton and Marijan von Staufer, as well as a special hidden Easter Egg that you can find by completing a specific sequence on the main menu – the only remaining scenes with original Captain Jack Harris actor, Graham Cox.

You can’t buy this in any shops (but let’s face it, before long you won’t be able to buy any DVDs in any shops because they’ll all have closed down) but you may be able to get a copy of the Cop on the Edge DVD if you enquire on this site, and be prepared to negotiate with Eddie.