These days, video game box artwork is virtually interchangeable. It's all about the logo and branding, which is a horrible, corporate shame.

What's that, idiot? "They do that so the games can stand out on the shelves?"

Is it? Is it now? Is that why they do it? Only, game boxes were once a quarter the size they are today, and STILL managed to feature bright, colourful artwork that leapt out at you, and grabbed your eyeballs and licked them. Now what have you got to say for yourself?

"I'm an idiot."

Yes. Yes you are - and that's why everyone hates you.

For any fan of gaming in the 80s, there's no question that the art of Bob Wakelin, which graced scores of games published by Imagine and Ocean Software (he also did a lot of work for Marvel Comics UK), was leagues ahead of anything else.

Though now semi-retired, Wakelin was once prolific, often turning around up to three designs a week - all of them notably better than 99% of any other game artwork of the time, and 1,000% better than modern cover art.

​Indeed, it's hard to argue against him being a major factor in Ocean's dominance of home computer gaming, as that would be a dull argument to have, and who really cares? Nevertheless, his gorgeous designs often helped to shift many otherwise unremarkable games.

​Here's a brief gallery of some of his finest work.

Ay yi yi! Nintendo has announced this: Super Mario Run has not met expectations.

Good news: The one-thumb smartphone platformer has been downloaded an astonishing 78 million times since its release on the Apple Store last December. Bad news: only four million of those downloads turned into paid players. Though the game's initial world is free to play, the bulk of Super Mario Run costs £9.99 to unlock. By most mobile game standards that might as well be a billion pesos!

The price is clearly an insurmountable barrier in a market where so much of what's on offer - however moistened-by-sick it might be - is free. Super Mario Run? Yeah... Super Mario Gets The Runs more like!!!!!!!

​Nintendo's other mobile efforts have been similarly mixed; Pokemon Go gushed out of the gate to become an insta-phenomenon, reaping more money in its first month than any mobile game before it. Remember how obsessed we all were last summer? Remember how we all drowned trying to catch a Magikarp, and ran into traffic trying to get the attention of a Beedrill? By September 2016, Pokemon Go had lost 79% of its players.

That said, the augmented reality catch 'em up has still earned over $1 billion in its first year, but Nintendo would've no doubt preferred a perennial hit, rather than a flash-in-the-Vileplume.

Nintendo's first smartphone product, Miitomo - a very Nintendo way of doing social media - got off to a phenomenal start. However, within two months just a quarter of those who'd downloaded it were opening the app regularly.

Fire Emblem Heroes - a free-to-play RPG - had a more modest level of hype surrounding its release last month, but with less resting on its shoulders, with less of a high-profile brand, it can be considered more of a success. Unfortunately, Nintendo has appeared to have accepted that success through gritted teeth.

What is it about Nintendo and smartphones? Is it this: that Nintendo smartphone games seem like a good idea in theory, but in practice feel weird because they're not on a Nintendo-branded machine? Or is it something else entirely? Is it to do with, y'know, stuff an ting?

Miss me? I'm back - and just in time for the triggering of Article 50! Toot toot! Question: is it called "Triggering" because of Trigger from Only Fools And Horses, who was an idiot? Funnily enough, I've just been in Europe for my biennial pilgrimage. Who knows; maybe it'll be the last one I'm able to do? 

Every two years, I travel to the arse-end of The Netherlands, where I spend three nights in a Dutch Centre Parcs listening to Marillion, with people from some 40-odd countries. There are three gigs in a massive tent, the entire camp is taken over by 3,000 fans, and everywhere you go Marillion is blaring out of a speaker.

For three whole days. 

Learning that such a thing even exists has potentially brought you out in weeping sores, but you no doubt know already that I wear my Marillion fandom on my sleeve. The mockery this usually invites rarely gets under my skin these days. I mean, you probably have a completely wrong idea of what Marillion are like... while also being exactly right at the same time. What can I say? I think they're great, and you think they're an easy target. In a way... we're both right.

Astonishingly, over the years we've somehow convinced a number of non-fans to come along to the Marillion Weekend. All have had a brilliant time and returned for more. There's an atmosphere that is difficult to describe, but must be what it feels like to support a football team and stand in the terraces. The atmosphere, the camaraderie... it's infectious, even to non-supporters. 

Without being able to experience it first-hand, this probably sounds like a real big nightmare to you, but to a Marillion fan it's something approaching Nirvana (not the socially acceptable grunge band fronted by a dirty drug boy - the place). After all, it's an entire weekend where we can feel normal for once in our blighted lives.

And being Marillion fans, my friends and I spend a lot of our Marillion Weekends complaining about the band Marillion, sharing our wildly different opinions on certain songs or albums, and moaning about setlists.

​You know: like how all video game fans ever seem to do is moan about video games and attack one another.

I wasn't going to write about the whole JonTron thing, but then I started thinking about it in relation to me and Digitiser.

In case you don't know him, Jonathan Jafari - "JonTron" - is a YouTuber or "Internet personality". He rose to fame as the creator of the Let's Play series Game Grumps. He has over three million subscribers on YouTube, and in the past week or so became the latest high-profile Let's Play-er to become embroiled in a white supremacy storm.

Jafari first made the error of defending a US politician's controversial remarks on immigration - "Wow, how scandalous, Steve King doesn't want his country invaded by people who have contempt for his culture and people! NAZI!!!" - continued to dig himself into a deeper hole during a two-hour live stream ("If they assimilated, they would enter the gene pool, eventually."), and then released an apology video which sought to explain his comments and reset his reputation.

Didn't really work.

TROLL WITH IT
PewDiePie, meanwhile, has continued to troll the media - following what has now been revealed as a rather manipulative and insincere "explanation" for his own Nazi-based whimsy (featuring copious crocodile tears, in a textbook example of the Karpman Drama Triangle) - with yet further references to Nazism. He so funneeeee!

Meanwhile, Colin Moriarty, a founder member of Kinda Funny - a collection of "Internet personalities" comprised of former IGN staffers - quit the group recently in the wake of an allegedly sexist tweet, and has now taken to Patreon to fund a series of weekly videos which "delve deep into the issues of our time, not to mention the issues of long ago". Whatever those might be. How to deal with the bubonic plague, perhaps? How to get lice out of your codpiece? 

​Currently, Moriarty stands to make nearly $40,000 a month off this venture. Thanks to the generosity of 173 of you, and a handful of PayPal donors, I make just over $1,000 off mine - or about £400 after VAT and tax and fees. Not including what I fork out for it for web hosting and games and stuff. I'm deeply grateful for it, but... y'know... just sayin'. Maybe I'm not racist enough.

So: what's going on? Why are all the gaming YouTubers suddenly acting all, like, offensive and that? Why are they being dicks? And why am I writing about it again?

​Well... I suppose because I wonder whether - had the Internet been around when I was first doing the original Digitiser - I'd have ended up as one of those dicks too. 

Back when playing games online first became a thing, I resisted it for a long, long time. Well, sort of. In the Digitiser office we'd sometimes go online to play a certain multiplayer RPG - a multi-user dungeon, I suppose - with the express intention of not taking it seriously and annoying the other players...

For some reason, this seemed to annoy many of the other players, but I had a great time on there. Unfortunately, when it came to, say, 1999's Quake III Arena, I just didn't see the appeal in shooting at strangers. I bought into the hype and excitement, but when I played it... I couldn't see the appeal. It baffled me what people saw in playing against strangers, and to a certain degree it still does.

Up until then, it had always been about the split-screen multiplayer; Goldeneye, or Perfect Dark, or Mario Kart, or Micro Machines, or... y'know. Stuff you could play with mates, in the same room, at the same time.

I couldn't fathom why anybody would go on to that new-fangled Internet thing to play games against people they didn't know. Where were the hoots to be had? It felt to me as if it was merely about proving something to yourself - an early indication of that tedious "git gud" mentality, which seems to have vomited all over modern gaming like an adolescent immediately following their first pint of lager.

I didn't really get into online shooters in a big way until the Xbox 360. For a while, a bunch of my mates and I all had a 360, and playing the most recent Halo or Call of Duty became a way of socialising between the gaps in our busy lives. I knew I was never that good, but that wasn't the point; none of us were. 

​When my more casual gamer friends drifted away, and I was left with a more hardcore gamer mate or two to play with online, I also ended up finding more enjoyable ways to spend my time than being continually shot by snickering teenagers or adults who really needed to take a long hard look at themselves. 

​There have been exceptions - last year, I enjoyed Overwatch and The Division - but I've never wanted (or, more to the point, needed) to git gud.

Yes, yes. We all want a new F-Zero, a new Pikmin, a new Metroid, a new Super Smash Bros and that. This is a given. And, providing the Switch doesn't tank like a Sherman, we'll probably get them.

And yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes - we all want Nintendo to create brand new games... but one of the things which sets the company apart is its heritage. For some reason, though, there are certain iconic Nintendo games which have been all but ignored.

Breath of the Wild has shown how Nintendo can capture its early magic in a way which brings a franchise bang up to date. ​Here are some long-dead Nintendo classics which need to be dragged before the Switch's flattering spotlight.

Everybody who grew up in the 80s had heard of the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. Indeed, the latter was considered such a British success story that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher presented one as a gift to the Prime Minister of Japan, as an example of Britain's technological prowess.

No doubt he laughed when he saw the rubber keys and the colour clash graphics, then climbed into a big robotic exoskeleton and kicked it into a whale's face.

Regardless, the much loved Spectrum offered an affordable entry point to home computing, and unexpectedly gave birth to the British games industry as we know it today.

However, success wasn't always on the cards for Sinclair founder Sir Clive Sinclair. Either side of the Spectrum, his fortunes were somewhat more mixed. Here's a loose timeline of the lesser known endeavours of this singular genius and staunch supporter of the lapdancing industry.

The more time I spend with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the more I notice its imperfections. There are lots of little niggles - I've got issues with the way saves work, with the camera and aiming, how easy it is to accidentally crouch or use your zoom scope in the middle of a battle, and how a completely left-field style of play will be thrown at you without warning (yeah, I'm looking at you, occasional tilt-sensor Shrine puzzles).

It's inevitable, of course; even in the most idyllic relationship, there'll be things which wind you up about your partner. By the same token, when things are great in every other respect you'll be able to overlook the things which don't work. It's when the fundamentals are broken - love, trust, respect - that it's harder not to sweat the small stuff.

However, my biggest stumbling block when it comes to BotW feels personal, rather than a flaw of the game - because I'm most likely in a minority regarding it. It's about me. It's my issue to overcome or accept, rather than demand that the game change its behaviour. And that issue is this issue: I hate the bosses.

Furthermore, I've come to accept that I've always hated bosses in games. It's only because I love so much of BotW that I've come to realise just how much I hate them. I've realised just what I'm prepared to put up with to revel in the good. But... man... it has been touch-and-go at times.

In shoot 'em ups, platform games, survival horror... the second that big, end-of-level, end-of-chapter, monster, or spaceship, or egg-shaped scientist appears... it has always acted like a brick wall to my enjoyment. I don't enjoy any aspect of a boss, beyond - maybe - its aesthetic qualities. They're something I have to suffer through in order to get to the stuff I really buy a game for. 

And, in the latest Zelda, in at least one instance, I was suffering through a boss FOR DAYS.

Of all the potential wonders offered by Virtual Reality, it was inevitable that the smut-peddlars would get in on the act sooner or later. Inevitably, given that VR has yet to break through to the mainstream, the nature of adult VR is already taking on something of a more high-tech flavour.

Unfortunately, judging from the adult VR technology currently available, these seem more of a barrier to erotic pleasure than a brave new horizon. Then again; each to their own. If you get your kicks from being electrocuted by a faulty palpation pad, or enjoy having your genitals battered or ripped off by a pneumatic fist, then that's your prerogative.

Here's a selection of some of the adult Virtual Reality tech currently available. Suffice to say, some of this article might be considered a little NSFW. Certainly, you'd have to answer some awkward questions if you're caught reading it...

Guest Review by Super Bad Advice

While channel-hopping once, I saw a bit of a documentary on snipers. Apparently, once they find a good spot they’ll often just wee themselves so they can stay put for hours on end rather than sneak off to find a loo and risk losing their vantage point.
 
Worse still, modern snipers often wear adult nappies to deal with this very problem. This leads me to believe snipers (a) have a lot of awkward conversations when out at the shops getting pant supplies, and (b) stink real bad.
 
However, such a strange combo of ice-cold professional killing and voluntary incontinence all ties in nicely with this review, as Sniper Elite 4 itself is an unusual mix of the very authentic and really quite silly.

The first time I'd heard mention of the PlayStation was in 1993, at the launch of The 7th Guest. Virgin Interactive had hired a stately home for the launch of its big budget interactive horror movie, and invited everyone who was anyone in early-90s games journalism to step forth and prostrate themselves before its pre-rendered tedium.

Also: Mr Biffo and Mr Hairs from Teletext's Digitiser magazine. 

Unlike some game launch parties, which all rather blend into a morass of free nibbles and c-list celebrities, the night remains tenacious in the memory for several reasons:

1. We all had name plates at the banqueting table, and I was due to be seated next to Jane "Mrs Jonathan Ross" Goldman (she never turned up).
2. The evening played out like one of those murder mystery dinners - actors hamming it up during the meal, to the incredulity of the assembled games journalists, who merely wanted to enjoy the free drink and complain about how they could be doing something else and how terrible their jobs were and moan moan moan moan drink moan drink.
3. One of the rooms was full of dolls and raw meat, and some of the dolls had raw meat in them.
4. Hitting my head really, really, really hard when I passed through a fireplace which connected two rooms.
5. Someone from Virgin proclaiming boldly that "When the history of gaming is written, The 7th Guest will have a chapter all to itself." Ha ha.
6. That same fellow revealing that the game was in development for Nintendo's Play Station.

Yes: Nintendo's Play Station; the CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES which Nintendo was rumoured to have been developing with Sony. Alas, Nintendo dropped the project when its bosses took a closer look at the small print of the deal, and realised that Sony would essentially retain control of all Play Station software publishing. 

Nintendo instead spent some time developing a CD-ROM device with Philips, before cancelling that as well, and moving forwards with its Nintendo 64 (although not before Mario and Zelda had embarrassed themselves on Philips' ill-fated CD-i device). Sony, meanwhile, forged ahead alone, dropping the space between the words Play and Station, while announcing that this PlayStation would be a brand new, standalone games system.

Oddly, I didn't realise the significance of this at the time. I mean, Sony just made personal stereos. What did they know about games?