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 THE DIGITISER2000 FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE

17/2/2017

12 Comments

 
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Pa-rum-pa-pah-pum! Hey kids - I've been talked into hosting a Retro Comedy Night at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge on March 4th. You'll have the chance to see episode one of Mr Biffo's Found Footage before anybody else, AND witness the comedy stylings of YouTube's Ashens, and a myriad of other comedy greats.

Tickets are just a tenner, and all proceeds are to help pay for immunotherapy treatment to help Matthew Dons
 (aka Karamoon) - who was unexpectedly diagnosed in July 2016 with advanced and aggressive bowel cancer, aged just 36. It'll be a splendid evening of fun and hoots, and you'll also get a chance to mingle with the - ha ha - stars, and have a look around the museum's collection of geeky tat. Please come along.

Go now to the event's Facebook page.


But look: it is time for the letters. If you would like to appear on next week's page, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone - please send your emails for next week to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com
TOMMY BOYD (LUTON AREA)
I know you're not a football person or a sport person, but given that you are a comedy person did you ever listen to the Tommy Boyd show on Talksport? Specifically The Human Zoo, which used to be on at 10pm on Sunday Nights circa the early naughties (Noughties)?

The idea, or excuse, behind it all was that everyone was depressed and angry on Sunday evenings as we all had to go back to school or work the next day, so it was a final chance to vent, blow off, or have a chat about anything.

The calls were unscreened which led to all manner of weirdies, myself included, getting on the air to perform a skit, play a sound clip, sing, parp, emit an ungodly screech, or talk about wrestling. Or tell Tommy that he loved Timmy Mallet.

Naturally, the show featured creative funnies putting in a lot of misplaced effort while others would panic if they were lucky enough to get on and utter some nonsense not normally allowed on the airwaves. It was funny and surprising and a nice accompaniment to Digi, and I always got the impression that it was the sort of thing Digi fans would enjoy.
Andrew Malcolmson

PS: I really want to get Cities Skylines but I'm too cheap and lazy to get a PC to play it on.

PS Part Other: Celeb spotting: I walked past Nicky Wire once and I knew that he knew that I knew him, so he just grinned at me and that was that.
No. I never listened to that. Though... did anyone ever watch the late-80s revival of ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks? I can't remember if it was shown live... but I remember one act - a comedian - who clearly had a terrible attack of stage fright.

He came on pushing a shopping trolley full of props, kept repeating the same one line over and over, holding up a prop every now and then, before quickly hurrying off the stage, clearly close to tears, having botched his big chance at stardom.

For some reason, despite the obviously aborted routine and distress of the performer, they still decided to go to the judges for their verdict. Marti Caine was sympathetic, offering her hope that the guy was okay, and reassuring him that stage fright happens to all performers.

​Then over to an oblivious Cheryl Baker who offered her take: "Yeah, it was't my sense of humour at all..."
APOLLO
​
Despite loving the Wii U, I've never been truly excited about the Switch. UNTIL I got to spend a couple of hours with one, in all its transformations at one of the preview events in Birmingham last weekend, following which, oh man, I have decided it is FLIPPING AMAZING!

The trouble is, you need to handle it in person to see what it can do. Experiences are a difficult thing to market (especially for Nintendo!).

Each to their own, but unexpectedly the thing that excited me most was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, something I thought was utterly redundant for owners of the original, but which utterly grabbed me as a handheld title. (See also Switch 1-2 for tenuous "Udderly" pun.)
Starbuck
Despite being a Negative Nanny - I prefer to think of myself as a realist, whose role in life is to temper the deluded enthusiasm of idiots - I'm actually looking forward to the Switch. There's a lot about it that I think is appealing; the portability, the detachable controllers... Zelda and Mario... y'know - I'm a lifelong Nintendo fan, and I want it to do well.

I've complained about the potential lack of third-party support, but I only really want the first-party games on there anyway. Thing is, third-party support is about ensuring the machine sells sufficiently well to keep it selling, so that it doesn't end up abandoned. I don't want Nintendo going the way of Sega - I actually want Nintendo games on Nintendo machines.

So, ultimately, I want Switch to do well for Nintendo, but I do think some people in the games media are in a bit of a bubble where they think Nintendo can do no wrong, and they're happy to ignore obvious missteps - without taking into consideration that what the vast majority of people want from their consoles is exactly what they're getting on the Xbox One and PS4 already.

Now imagine that... but with Nintendo games, and everything else the Switch offers.
ON THE JOHN
I was hungry the other night so went against my and everyone else's better judgement by calling up Goujon "Joojon" John for a quick fix of posh-chicken-nugget sustenance to keep me going.

Contrary to popular belief, they tasted excellent and not "bad" at all. So either you've got it all wrong, or I was visited by a fake. Goujon Jan perhaps.

Anyway, please find attached a picture. Please rate out of 10.
David Ralph
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Breaded goujons in a sandwich... with ketchup? You're a monster. 0/10. Press reveal to see what I'd rather eat.
REVEAL:
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A roasted drake's glans.
SAPPHIRE AND STEEL
Did you really like gin that much? If so what kind, and were you disappointed that the colour of Bombay Sapphire comes from the bottle and not the gin itself?

What is Fat Sow's voice meant to sound like? Hugs.
Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
I never drank gin at all when we used to go on about it on Digi. It was just a joke - you know, like saying "Death to all Jews", apparently.

I probably went though a bit of a spell in the early-2000s of drinking gin and tonic, while now I barely drink booze at all. Though I did have a few beers on Saturday night, due to peer pressure from some cool kids. I appreciate that this is probably the sort of exciting minutiae of my life you all come here for. 
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ASK A FAVUS
We have a channel over on Discord, come and pop along and chat to people who read Mr Biffo's stuff - including the stuff he forgets to shred in the recycle bin: https://discord.gg/HUmkxWT

Also we have custom emojis including Ron, Ainsley and Mr T - and I will be giving away Ryze: Son of Rome on Steam to the person who claims the key first! Woo! Exciting! 

Can't say fairer than that, Can you?
Favus

For the love of God, will somebody please go over there and keep Favus company? I'm worried about him.
BOWEN OVER BACKWARDS
After the surprising yet pleasant shock that my somewhat passive-aggressive letter filled with borderline self loathing and references to Party of Five got answered last week, I have decided to write to you once again. However, I shall now adapt the contents so it may fit in better with the other notifications.

First, there was this one time I saw Laurence Llwelyn-Bowen, the fellow from Changing Rooms, in Hoopers. No idea why he was there, but I cannot quite remember why I was there either, so who am I to judge?

Video game memories were stirred while reading your tribute to the Gamecube. Mostly this: Remember F-Zero GX? That game was AMAZING. Bastardly unfair Story Mode aside, it had fun and tricky tracks, a custom "car" mode, more weird characters than you would ever want and a wonderfully amazing soundtrack.

If you are unfamiliar with it, I implore you to look up the theme of James McCloud.

​However, apart from that silly mini game in Nintendo World, and including the main man in Smash, Nintendo seem reluctant to return to the F-Zero world. And that's sad.

I have no stories, either about myself or animals, on the subject of defecating to share. I shall not apologise. Have a good day.
Jones of Ipswich

P.S. I take it back. I am very sorry I cannot think of any good stories that involve me taking a dump.
I walked past Linda Barker from Changing Rooms in Euston Station years ago. That's a really interesting thing, yeah?
SWITCHY BACK
Do you think that the Nintendo Switch can succeed without greater 3rd-party support than the Wii U received?

What do you think of so-called 'Walking Simulators?' I really admire parts of Everyone's Gone to the Rapture; the acting, setting and music are brilliant, but I couldn't help but think that all that I was doing was holding forward on the left analogue stick. Do you enjoy this sort of game or do you even consider them to be games at all?
John Whyte
Ugh. No. Not really. I sort of liked Everyone's Gone to the Rapture at first, and then changed my mind - precisely because I started to question whether it was a game at all. For me, if you're going to do a game like that, you need to at least make the world interactive. Give the player some control over it - let them pick stuff up while you're forcing them to listen to your poxy radio play.

As for the Switch having less third-party support... well, I guess it depends on where you set the bar in terms of what could be considered a success. The Nintendo Apologist Brigade is clearly setting it very low, in the seeming belief that Nintendo is happy for the Switch to sell as badly as possible.

Which is ludicrous; Nintendo would love the Switch to outsell the PS4. I mean, it's not going to - it isn't going to come close - but I do think it'll do better than the Wii U, even without third-party backing.

And you can take THAT to the bank!
HE'S FROM BARCELONA
Dear Digitising 200,
I'm trying to write a "funny" letter, so that people will read it and think I am funny and they will think you think I'm funny, but I am not funny so I am writing a very self-aware letter. Which is the best Sonic game? (It's Sonic 2).
Miguel
Yeah, it's probably Sonic 2. A game I nearly finished once, after several hours of play - I was on the final level, and my then-wife unplugged my Mega Drive so she could do some hoovering, probably to make a point. It took a while, but we did eventually get a divorce.
SHOW ME YOUR GUNNS
Although I consider myself a gamer at heart, I haven't really played many games in the last 3 years,  mostly because of time constraints. Although I've realised that being busy almost non-stop means I haven't really missed it. 

This hasn't stopped me enjoying the games related articles and reviews on Digi2000 though. So I was suprised when upon reading your probably accurate, but not overly positive review of the Wii U, that I now want to buy one. 

Something about it appeals to me, maybe I'm just a sucker for the underdog. The Rocky films are my favourite. I even enjoyed the one with Tommy Gunn. 

Also, just to continue the poo stories from last weeks letters page, whilst visiting Knowsley Safari park a few years back I was witness to an elephant producing a fair sized faeces which included a full and complete apple. Immediately on this being deposited another elephant directly behind the first one picked the apple up with his trunk and ate it. 

They both seemed happy enough. Thank you again for the great site. 
Monkey Head
You've reminded me of the time Mr Hairs and I were invited up to Manchester to visit Ocean Software. Ocean had various little subsidiary studios around Manchester, and it was on the way back from one of these - in the back seat of Ocean's lovely PR man Stephen Hey's car - that I suddenly needed an urgent poo.

Frustrating matters, we got stuck in rush hour traffic on the way back, and there was a very real possibility that I was going to have to deposit a loose "bronze" in my underwear. I was in a shockingly bad way, sweating and having to kneel in the footwell, gripping the back of the front seats, while assuring Hairs and Stephen that everything was fine, and that this was just the way I always travelled in cars.

As we eventually approached a Tesco, I suddenly remembered that I'd "forgotten my toothbrush" - and was so desperate to get one, that I fled the car at speed, before the handbrake had even been applied. 

Sorry, Stephen. Phtephen?

CLOTHE-YOU-DO
Mr Biffalo,
You've been hiding behind words for far too long. It's time to show us your evening wear.
Yours sinkerely,
Alpine Sexgarment, Fashion Vlogger
Press reveal to see it.
REVEAL:
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VICTORIOUS
I collect stereo photos, and in a Batch 8 was given last year, this one was lurking. I have no idea why this was taken. It's Victorian, so I guess that explains a lot.
Paul.
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The poor Victorians. Everyone is always having a go at them.
QUINOA PIG
My sincere apologies, I attempted to draw a picture of Master Chief throwing quinoa at a fridge as per your instructions. Unfortunately I seem to have somehow drawn Crash Bandicoot stamping a pack of couscous onto a chest freezer. Quite embarrassing but I'm sure you can understand how this sort of thing can happen.
Spiney O'Sullivan
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That's nice, but it wasn't what I asked for.
​THE EPIC
In your recent Resident Evil review you talked about how it made you extremely ill in VR whereas other games did not.

Some people have suggested that Sony really should either insist that each each game has a demo so that players can check that they can safely play it before buying (Microsoft did that quite well with Xbox Live games on the 360 in case they were shit but I'm not sure if that's still happening).

Either that or setting up a refund system similar to that of Steam since an hour seems plenty of time to check if a game is going to give you the equivalent of an instant hangover without the fun part of the booze.

I would love to try the game in VR, even playing it on a normal TV it's the first game in a very long time that has me thinking about it all the time, wanting to get back to playing it and that strange feeling where I don't want it to end but also look forward to finishing it so I can safely read all the discussion without fear of spoilers.

I think that if VR ever did take off (although it's pretty clear now that it's not really going to, the limited supply of PSVR was just another nail in the coffin in my opinion), RE7 just shows that this really needs to be addressed properly, not to mention in the case of VR-only games.

It's been around long enough now that it doesn't seem like they're going to work out exactly why it happens so to me either demos or a sane refund window seem the only real answer. Expecting players to repeatedly make themselves ill in order to "find their VR legs" just seems absurd.

​Other than the price that's the only thing really putting me off throwing £400 at something that I could potentially find useless, my friend has one, but I don't imagine he'd be too pleased if I kept turning up to test each game (incidentally, he had the exact same problem with Rigs but found RE7 fine). 

Another totally unrelated thing I wanted to ask was sort of related to the nostalgia articles (which I love btw - Kongman by Tomy was my favourite). In the mid-80's my Nana had a game at her house that was a circular train track where one of the carriages had a ball on top that would be "levitated" by what I assume was a small fan, the controls allowing you to move the train back and forth, with a button activating the fan.

There was part of the track where you had to get the ball through hoops of different heights to win points, but that's about the most I can remember. I have it in my head that it was some sort of tie-in with the Terrorhawks TV series but that may only be because at about 8 years old I assumed the "futuristic" balls were those droid things from the show.

I've tried googling it many times and there were certainly games that are very similar (making me think it was maybe a re-branded version of one of them), but I can't find one that looks quite right or has a Terrorhawks theme.

​I'm sure if I saw it I would instantly get the biggest nostalgia blast I've ever experienced so I thought maybe you would have come across it or any readers might know what I'm talking about? Perhaps it's just one of those semi-false memories where my brain has filled in the blanks but I'm 99% sure it was real!
NDrinks
Maybe if you'd spelled Terrahawks right you'd have found it as quickly as I did. And yeah, that is unnecessarily snarky, but that's what you get for writing such a long letter.
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12 Comments
paul
17/2/2017 11:46:33 am

To continue the poop thread from last week, this has surfaced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p8NdhKj51I

It‘s another animal-like toy that craps all over the place.However, this looks like it could be an ah-hoc Dreamies dispenser, which would amuse my cat no end (and probably provide “hoots” for the internets on YouTube).

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Gaming Mill link
17/2/2017 12:48:45 pm

You mentioned seeing some act die on his arse on Opportunity Knocks. You sure it wasn't Duggie Small who won New Faces and died on his arse spectacularly when later he was a guest on Wogan? I'm trying to find a clip but I'm having no luck but I remember seeing some of it at the time whilst cringing badly. I seem to remember he did some bit with a chair whilst he was dressed as Superman.

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Mr Biffo
17/2/2017 01:44:23 pm

Ack, yes. I'm told it was New Faces. I've no idea whether it was Duggie Small - but I don't think he had a chair or a Superman outfit.

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David W
17/2/2017 01:01:16 pm

The Human Zoo does sound like what happens in the Digitiser 2000 comments and letters.

Q: What did Mr. T say when he saw Jimmy Page and Robert Plant outside his house?

A: Stairway from my bins.

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Starbuck
17/2/2017 09:51:26 pm

The greatest joke ever!

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David W
17/2/2017 10:24:49 pm

Please add your own jokes to show appreciation for the classic Digi characters. Ta.

Spiney O'Sullivan
17/2/2017 10:49:40 pm

Q: What did Mr T's mother say to him when he showed up after his sister arrived late for the dinner she was scheduled to have with her mother?

A: Missed her tea! (Mr T)

Chris
17/2/2017 11:27:03 pm

What did the snake say to the other snake?
I cuss you bad.

This isn't a joke, I just miss the snakes.

(whilst I'm here I'd also like to mention that I read the toothbrush story whilst at work and immediately wished I hadn't, I struggled not to laugh and eventually decided I should probably leave the room for sanity reasons.)

NDrinks
17/2/2017 03:33:07 pm

Thank you so much for that answer, I can't believe I couldn't find it because I was spelling it wrong! I have been messing up for years.

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Carlos Nightman
17/2/2017 05:58:42 pm

Kongman? That was one I always wanted, a vertical screwball scramble. Auntie Liz had one. For some reason she always signed her Christmas cards 'Auntie Dig'. Still does.

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Sailor Broon
17/2/2017 06:15:50 pm

Our Nan also had the same Terrahawks game at her house. Perhaps it was legally required of all Nans during the 80s. Could still be.

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Kara Van Park
17/2/2017 06:59:07 pm

It's not the same without Gaming Mill's letter. Last I heard was he was stationed in Denmark, attempting to break the world record for the largest pyramid made entirely from Findus microwave lasagnas.

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