Sniff sniff... sniff...

...What's that smell? Sniff... sniff... sniff-sniff.

Smells like... sniiiiiiffffffffffff!

Why, of course - it's balls!

Here are 17 ball-crazy loons who simply can't get enough of that wonderful ball smell. 

Hey, sir! Hey! There's a new book about the medium of teletext.

Teletext in Europe: From The Analogue to the Digital Era is written by Hallvard Moe and Hilde van den Bulck. I don't know who those people are I'm afraid; they could be Europe's foremost serial killers, for all I know (and with names like those, who could blame them?).

I've not read it, mind, even though I do think a book about teletext is long overdue. Frankly though, if that cover is anything to go by, Teletext in Europe is dryer than a vulture's chuff, and if you've got any interest in teletext whatsoever, you should go and join the Teletext Facebook Group (and Digi's one while you're at it).

​You should also follow Jason Robertson on Twitter. He's doing an heroic job of recovering old editions of Teletext - including Digitiser - from ancient VHS tapes. Also follow the Teletext R podcast, which covers all things teletext-y in amusing fashion (I'll be appearing on the next edition; probably one of the most enjoyable and ridiculous podcasts I've ever recorded). Other teletext-related folk include @illarterate (and his website Teletext Art), @that_other_carl, and @russty_russ - they're all keeping the flame alive with their teletext ponderings and artwork. 

But enough about those unsavoury lushes and their pixellated necromancy: here's what I have managed to recall about teletext that isn't to do with Digitiser. 

Of all the characters the Zelda series has produced, Tingle must surely rank as the most peculiar and ill-conceived. 

Described as a "35 year-old man who is obsessed with 'forest fairies'", he's a prancing, tight-fitting green bodysuit-and-red-underpants-wearing, oddball, with a Flavor Flav clock around his neck. Yet somehow, this hasn't discouraged people from cosplaying as the whimsical imbecile.

With Zelda turning 30 years old this week - almost as old as Tingle himself - what better way to celebrate than with a gallery of 14 ill-conceived Tingle costumes?

Given that most Assassin's Creed fans are sporting a pelvic prolapse from the diminishing returns of the sprawling time-travel(ish) saga, Ubisoft has wisely decided to skip a bona-fide AC game this year.

Indeed, there are rumours that from now on, there'll be but one Assassin's Creed game every two years; just enough time to almost forget how similar each of those games are.

Given that this year will see the release of an actual Assassin's Creed movie, starring Michael "Fassbender", it's a bold - but nevertheless painfully necessary - strategy. There's only so much Doing Exactly The Same Thing that a market can handle.

Frankly, I've admired the last couple of AC games, but I don't know how much I've enjoyed them. They always felt like a bit of a slog, and Black Flag is the only Creed game I've ever really loved. But hang on a moment... If Assassin's Creed is going biennial, how come there's this anthology of three semi-new Assassin's Creed games? I'll tell you how: because Assassin's Creed fans will "biennial-d" rubbish!!!!!!

​Ha ha ha. Do you see?

Microsoft has revealed new details of its Hololens device, at the latest TED conference.

The company's hololens creator, Alex "Have a Nap" Kipman, promised big things for the technology, hissing "We will look back at this decade as being like cavemen in terms of technology."

​Developer units will go on sale this spring for around £2,000, but what sort of experience will the Hololens be able to offer, once it's available to plebs like us?

​Here are ten ways you'll be able to use these much-heralded Augmented Reality goggles - which some have cruelly dubbed "Kipman's Folly".

What happened to mobile gaming? Well, on paper... nothing happened. 

We're repeatedly told that mobile is - by market share - the largest games platform in the world. Last year, in terms of the digital market, PC had a $36.3 billion share, mobile games made $24.7 billion, and consoles took home just $3.6 billion. Indeed, so lucrative is mobile gaming that Nintendo's next big release is a mobile app - Miitomo, due out next month.

Not a game as such, Miitomo is a social app, that: "brings out a side of you your friends have never seen before! How? By making a Mii of yourself that's your personal go-between! Ever wonder what fun details make you...YOU? Your Mii will find out by asking you questions about yourself!

"Want your friends to know all about these little insights into your likes, dislikes, or just what you're thinking lately? Your Mii will go visit your friends' Mii characters and tell them! Then your Mii will ask your friends for fun details about them...and tell YOU everything. Your friends' Mii characters will also visit you when you play!"

If that sounds like the sort of thing that appeals, you can pre-register for it now. But get this: Nintendo has confirmed that it'll be doing the dirtiest thing imaginable... and including microtransactions. 

​Going into shops is awful.

First, there's the queuing. Second, there's the social anxiety of having to talk to the people who work in the shop. Third, there's the indignity of having your debit card refused, due to last night's eBay splurge. Fourth, there's every chance you might catch a virus.

​If only vending machines could give you anything you needed...

Well - apparently they can. As this gallery of the world's most extreme vending machines attests.

​The self-publishing listicle from earlier this week was too much fun not to do it all over again.

So we're doing it all over again.

Here's another trawl through the bizarre/poorly sub-edited underbelly of so-called vanity publishing.

Brace yourselves... as several of these book titles aren't entirely safe for work... Unless you work in a very liberal environment, that is. 

Since Digitiser2000 launched, almost all of our review copies have been bought out of our sponsor fund, apart from one or two that I borrowed, and a few I got given when I was a judge for the BAFTA Games Awards.

Even the hardware we've reviewed came out of that fund, so you don't have to do a lot of maths to realise that - with big games costing £50 - we don't make much of a profit from Digi (and we've not yet broken even from the current batch of t-shirts, incidentally...).

But that's ok. Because, you see, something I've avoided doing since starting this site is contacting PR people for review copies - chiefly because I don't want to be beholden to those difficult conversations when I don't like one of their games. Well... so much for that.

As I get older, I find myself increasingly out of touch with the world. Or rather, more specifically, I feel out of touch with society.

I despair at the structure of government, the ludicrous concessions we make to celebrity, the obsession with physical beauty over achievement or decency of character, the sheer lack of empathy towards our fellow man.

I despise the power structure of our world, how those with money, with fame, with beauty, with ability, or a job title with "manager" in it, are considered to be worth more than the rest of us. I cannot express my rage regarding wars fought over territory, or for corporate gain. I hate how powerless I feel to change anything, beneath a barrage of political lies that the vast majority of us lap up because we're so scared and angry all the time..

I hate how the bigger you are, the more influence you wield. How - in a country of 320 million people - Donald Trump, a man who looks and sounds about as intelligent as a donut with sinus problems balancing a Weetabix, can be front-runner to become leader, while his opponents include a gun-loving patriot whose brother and father have already been president, and a robot woman whose sleazy human husband was also The Leader of the Free World.
 
And how nobody ever stops to ask whether that feels fair or balanced.

The Street Fighter series is one of the most contradictory in all of gaming.

While on the one hand it is responsible for some of the most well-recognised iconography this industry has ever produced, it's also the sort of franchise that can be debilitating and off-putting to newcomers and more casual gamers.

​I suppose I fall somewhere between the two: I've never been very good at Street Fighter. The button combinations were not considered for the likes of someone whose hands have all the manual dexterity of a bunch of 'furts sellotaped to a ham.

Fortunately, few of my mates were ever very good either. Its subtleties were lost on us, and that meant that we were always fairly evenly matched. Although I tended to be slightly better than most of them, which is the really important thing here.

In short: I've very much enjoyed the series, while never quite being able to escape the sense that I'm not entirely welcome at the party, or avoid the furtive glances which suggest I'm dancing a bit too close to the buffet. 

I've complained about my irritation with RPG fantasy tropes before. The sub-Tolkien default of adventurers on quests, fighting elves and orcs and ghosts, feels like it has been stretched to twanging point.

​Even with a game as polished and engorged as The Witcher III or Dragon Age Inquisition, I found it impossible not to question whether the genre had exhausted its potential. It just feels like it's recycling the same musty cliches again and again and again, like it's stuck in The Vermillion Vortex of Chronorb - Destroyer of The Time Wastes.

Indeed, it's a genre that is ripe for parody. The sort of parody, in fact, that you might expect to get from something called RPG Tycoon. Well... prepare to be disappointed.

Anyone can publish anything these days. Let's face it, in this age of crowd-funding and internet print-on-demand, even a lunatic can pump out any old rubbish and call themselves an author or games journalist.

And that's just as well, given that the publishing industry is now almost completely geared towards celebrity kiss-and-tells, TV tie-ins, and selling the movie rights to teen franchise books set in dystopian futures.

Plenty of self-published works are great - and to find out, why not become one of our Patreon donors, to get yourself a copy of our own Man's Daddy Joke Book? - but some of them... well... they're beyond parody.

These covers, and the accompanying blurb, are 100% genuine: even the one that mentions "flexible yeomen".