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10 GROSSLY UNDERRATED PLAYSTATION GAMES

11/5/2017

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Given its success, there were a lot of games released for the original PlayStation. Everyone wanted a bite of its sweet cherry pie.

Sometimes, however, it feels as if the likes of Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Tekken, Ridge Racer, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid et al overshadow everything else. What's more, so many PlayStation games seemed to be finding their way in a new 3D world, trying to understand the rules and make the technology work for them. In short: they have aged badly.

But that isn't the whole story. In truth, while it may not be my favourite console ever, the PlayStation was home to a lot of brilliant games which got swamped by the high-rollers. Lots of inspired J-RPGs, lots of splendid side-scrolling shooters, and many games which went against the grain did something entirely new.

Here are just ten of these ripe "plums".

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10 REASONS THE PLAYSTAtION WAS OVERRATED

10/5/2017

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The PlayStation then. Undoubtedly an important and popular console, but also... also... a really horrible one. Sorry... but it needs to be said. Don't give me that face; you know it to be true.

Being there, as a games journalist at the launch of the machine - at seeing a brand new epoch unfurling before my eyes - was a weird experience, not least because I never got the fuss.

The PlayStation always felt like a triumph of marketing and PR more than anything. It succeeded in branding, at making a games console a must-have lifestyle item, at ushering in the future of gaming - and it was 3D. Sony's messaging crushed everything in its path, like a corporate behemoth wearing a couple of steam engines for shoes.

There were lots of good games on the PS1 to be sure, but many of the system's alleged "classics" sailed through on a wave of euphoric hype. Furthermore, they have aged poorly - far worse than most Mega Drive and Super NES games.

It was a time when everything became polygons, and the technology simply wasn't advanced enough to do justice to the vision of its creators. Throw into that a godawful joypad, and you had a lot of games that were, frankly, difficult to play, and even more horrible to look at it.

In the interests of casting a revealing light onto history, here are ten overrated PS1 titles.

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THE MOST AWKWARD ARCADE GAME ADS EVER

9/5/2017

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Before it became better known for upsetting Hideo Kojima (who, frankly, missed a trick when he didn't call his new company "Hideo Games") Konami was a big deal in the arcades.

Scramble, Contra, Sunset Riders, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... to be honest, the list is longer than either of us would want me to lazily cut-and-paste here.

Unfortunately, during the 80s, Konami chose to sell their arcade machines to potential buyers with some of the most awkward and regressive promotional flyers ever conceived. Here's a bunch of them. Brace for big hair and stone-washed jeans!

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2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - THE ANIMATED SERIES

8/5/2017

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If you're not one of the backers of Mr Biffo's Found Footage, let me tell you this: the series has been pushed back until September, and will then follow with a new ep every week for five weeks.

This new schedule allows everyone to get their summer holiday out of the way before we hold our premiere/launch party. Additionally, it gives me more time to finish the series, and film some new sequences which will be even more ambitious than the lunacy we've already attempted.

I'll keep the teasers and clips coming between now and September, but in the meantime here's one completed sequence for you to enjoy: the long-lost pilot episode of 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Animated Series.

Please share the word where you can, and subscribe to the Digitiser2000 YouTube channel to ensure you don't miss out on more of this sort of thing.

If you've not yet seen it, here's Ep 1: The Awakening.
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LOOKING BACK AT ALIEN WAR - by Mr Biffo

8/5/2017

25 Comments

 
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I'm a bit nervous. Another year, another Alien movie. Reviews for Alien: Covenant landed last night, and they're mixed, to say the least.

How many times have those of us who love this franchise - more the potential of this franchise - been burned by it? Alas, there have been just two great, profoundly influential, Alien movies, one interesting-but-disappointing one, one thoroughly bizarre instalment, and two movies which mixed the mythology with Predator and were straight-to-video wretched.

Oh, and - of course - Prometheus; a curious and well-meaning attempt at asking the big questions about our place in the universe, but which merely came across as a bit stupid. You know: like a boozed-up pub bore lecturing you on his theories about Darwinism, while you're distracted by the pork scratching crumbs in his beard wisps, and waiting for him to fall off his chair.

There have been numerous comics and video games which have done a better job of fulfilling the potential of Alien than the way it has been treated cinematically; the movie equivalent of winning the lottery, and then spending every last penny building the world's biggest bouncy castle in your back garden, inviting your family over to have a go on it, and then, while they're taking off their shoes, you start hacking at the castle with a garden fork.

"Ha ha! I burst you!"

However, there's one mostly forgotten expansion of Alien which remains as beloved by me as those first two movies; Alien War, a "total reality" experience that ran in the basement of London's Trocadero Centre for almost three intense years.

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THE DIGITISER2000 FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE

5/5/2017

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Astonishingly, I discovered this week that some of my Twitter followers were unaware that Digitiser2000 had a YouTube channel, and that some of them hadn't even seen my Found Footage episodes. You know: despite me harping on about it for the best part of a year, and fretting that I was pushing it too much, and getting on everyone's nerves.

This sorry state of affairs cannot continue. As it stands, we have a paltry 2,043 subscribers on YouTube. If that can get up to 2,100 this weekend I'll release a brand new Found Footage teaser clip.

​Spread the word. Subscribe if you haven't already; it's the only way to be certain you won't miss anything in the run-up to the series' full debut this summer.

And now? On with those 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

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10 ARCADE GAMES AND THE MEMORIES THEY STIR UP

3/5/2017

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Do you ever hear a song, or smell something, and are taken back to a specific time and a place? I find it fascinating how certain memories latch onto certain external sources, while others just fall away into an abyss of nothing.

Video games have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and the first games I ever played were in the arcades. I thought it'd be an interesting experiment to pick ten significant arcade games, and see what memories they trigger.

You might like to do the same.

Or you could just borrow my memories, and pass them off as your own. C'mon, daddy - let's go!

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THE 10 BEST AMIGA GAMES ACCORDING TO MR BIFFO

2/5/2017

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Okay, so I was an Atari ST boy. But - c'mon - of course I'd have rather had an Amiga. I'm not an idiot; I knew it was the better machine. Somehow, of course, history records that I accidentally became a games journalist in the 1990s, and proceeded to upset all of Britain's Amiga owners.

You see, Digitiser's predecessor on Oracle, FX, had covered the Amiga pretty extensively. However, Mr Hairs and I had never been games journalists before, and we didn't really know what the ruddy Henry we were doing. Something had to give, and that something was the format which was coming to the end of its life. You know: in favour of the sexy new consoles which were clearly less of a faff than games that came on floppy disks. 

Of course, we were proved right ultimately; shortly after we started covering the Amiga, following months of incessant complaints from Amiga owners that we were "bias" - some of whom were so furious that they wrote to our bosses and the television watchdogs in an attempt to get us fired - everything went badly wrong for Commodore.

Never mind, eh. Revenge is a dish best served with a side dish of knowing you were right all along.

The funny thing is... all those complaints meant that I ended up being an Amiga owner, albeit through my job. To shut them up, we managed to get an Amiga off our bosses - possibly the only hardware they ever paid for - and we started reviewing Amiga games.

Consequently, contrary to belief, I played a lot of Amiga games. I also borrowed a lot of the back catalogue from Amiga-owning mates, including my Digitiser colleague Mr Cheese. I might not have the affection for the machine that I do for certain other systems - not least because my experience of the Amiga has been coloured by the wrath of Britain's Amiga-owning zealots - but... yeah... there were A LOT of great Amiga games. There. I said it. Happy now?

​You bunch of wretched spods.


Here are my ten favourites. Oh... and don't go complaining that Dune 2 isn't in this list. I never played Dune 2. Also: no Shadow of the Beast, because it was a textbook example of style over substance. 

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10 OF THE MOST BIZARRE 3DO TITLES EVER

1/5/2017

13 Comments

 
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The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was a console without a home. Essentially nothing more than a series of technical specifications licensed by The 3DO Company to hardware firms, it tried to introduce a new approach to console manufacturing. Of course, it failed horribly - not least because the system was priced out of the reach of most gamers.

However, unlike certain failed systems of the 1990s - I'm looking at you, Atari Jaguar - the 3DO was unique in having an identity all of its own. In fact, I'd argue that there has never been a machine with such a variety of bizarro games, all of which seemed like they were part of the same catalogue. 

It felt as if the 3DO's games were exploring the boundaries of what CD-ROM could offer, and though these experiments were only successful sporadically, they did result in some of the most uniquely weird-ass games of all time.

And now? Why... now here be ten of them.

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REVIEW: MARIO KART 8 DELUXE - SWITCH

1/5/2017

24 Comments

 
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Confession time: I've not played a Mario Kart game in years. Except... get this... I actually have! I merely thought I hadn't. What a twist in the narrative, eh?

Also: I was a ghost all along. 

In going back over the series, I've realised that it was pretty much only Mario Kart Wii that I skipped altogether. I mean, obviously I bought it... but I made the mistake of buying it with that awful steering wheel thing. You know: the one you slotted the Wiimote into, which made it feel like you were a 5 year-old waving a paper plate around.

"Brrm brrm! I'm a car driver now!"

I hated the experience so much that it put me off the game altogether.

I'd even forgotten that I'd bought the various handheld instalments. I guess, for whatever reason, my stupid brain couldn't handle the notion that I'd played as many as eight Mario Karts. Regardless, ever since Mario Kart 64, the series stopped having an impact on me. In short: I hadn't truly loved a Mario Kart since the original.

Part of my problem is that much of the entertainment I got from that Super NES classic derived from the balloon-bursting battle mode. Making the series all polygonal buggered that up for me; you couldn't see your opponents until they were right on top of you, because the arenas were all sprawling and multi-levelled. How we'd chortle upon seeing a mate whizz past on the other side of a low wall, but not being able to get to them. 

Tainted by all this, of course I skipped Mario Kart 8 when it first came out on the Wii U. Now that I've played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, however, I accept that might've been a mistake. ​You see... it's really good. Like, really, really good. In fact, it had much the same effect on me as Breath of the Wild - plastering a massive, soppy, grin across my face.

It's basically the video game version of that ruddy Faceapp thing that's currently clogging up social media.

Oh look: It's Hitler as a grinning baby! LOL; Doctor Crippen is really smiling in this one! And here we have Pol Pot as a teenage girl! ROFFLES!!!!

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