Video Games without all the boring bits

FACE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE vs GAME CHARACTERS

31/7/2015

The worlds of gaming and Hollywood have never been closer. Big movie actors now lend their voices to games, and Hollywood is constantly plundering the game-o-sphere for inspiration - or, in the case of the recent Adam Sandler movie, Pixels - a lack of inspiration.

But something gaming really lacks is its own big celebrities. If only there was some way to imagine our games characters were being played by the biggest superstars in the world...

Well, now there is. In lieu of using our own eyes and brain, we fed the faces of ten gaming icons into the face-recognition software at Face++ to see which celebrity they most closely resemble. The results were, at best, profoundly pointless.

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ROUND-UP: With Paul McCartney

30/7/2015

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Calm down, everyone! Early-1960s Paul "Mucco" McCartney here. THUMBS UP! I've just stepped out of a recording session with the other members of The Bea-tles - Jack Lemmon, Jorge Horhey, Bingo, Stringo, Tringo and Blobe. Bleeurrrrgh! Bleh-bleh-bluerrrrrgh!!!!

Sorry about that. THUMBS UP! We've just been making our new record - The Brown Album. It includes such songs as Eight Poos a Week, Spend a Penny Lane, The Long and Winding Poo, Love Me Poo, She Loves Poo, Hey: Pooed, Help!, and We Can Work It Out.

Alright - so that's not very sophisticated humour, and it's like something a 5 year-old would think up, but what are you gonna do?

Here's a list of everything you might've missed on Digitiser2000 over the last few weeks. Enjoy... enjoy... enjoy... THUMBS-UP! Bleeeueerrrrrrrgh! Bleeuerrrrrgh-blehhh-bluerrrrrrrrrgh!

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THE DIGI2000 INDIE GAME TITLE-O-MATIC

30/7/2015

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We live in an age where almost anyone can make a game – from the smallest child, to the touchiest idiot. With software such as GameMaker and Twine it’s easier than ever to make a game and release it on Steam.

In fact, the second hardest part of being a modern independent games developer (after fielding abuse on social media, of course) is coming up with a title for your masterpiece.

Which is where Digitiser2000 comes in.

If you’ve ever dreamed of creating your own deeply personal indie game, why not generate a title first - using our Indie Game Title-O-Matic – and then simply build a game around it? It’s as easy as 1… 2… 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10…!

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IF VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS WERE SPOONS

29/7/2015

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Like us, you've probably often found yourself wondering what your favourite video game characters would look like if they were spoons. It's a question that has troubled gamers for as long as there have been video games. But it is a question that has remained unanswered... until now.

Let us finally draw a line beneath the wondering, and solve the mystery once and for all: just what would video game characters look like if they were spoons?

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Q&A - NICK "FRAK!" PELLING

29/7/2015

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Words by Adam "Mr Cheese" Keeble

At the dawn of time there was like dinosaurs and cavemen and stuff. A few days later there was a BBC Micro home computer and with that, we come full circle back to olden days via a game called Frak!.

Created by Nick Pelling (though in programming circles he was known as Orlando or Orlando M. Pilchard - his real name was something of a secret) Frak! was just one of many BBC classics that made the ‘80’s so lovely. It was a simple platformer, but the cartoon graphics were like nothing seen before on the Beeb. And the music… well, if you played the game we are confident the song from the first level is going to be stuck in your head all day. Haha! The adventures of Trogg sure were lovely.

Digitiser caught up with the jovial, nay cheeky, Pelling, and literally threw questions at him until he bled (answered them).

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THE MAN'S DADDY'S NEWEST JOKES

28/7/2015

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Hello. I'm a popular comedian called The Man's Daddy. I dare say some of you have watched me on one of those modern comedy panel shows, such as Eat Out of Ten Cats, Haven't I Got Some News Compares 2U, and QI For The Straight Guy.

Unfortunately, I don't like appearing on these sorts of shows, so in lieu of cracking any topical funnies, I prefer to clamber onto the desk, squat on my haunches, and rub my hands together. Oh well. It doesn't matter, I suppose. At least I go on them, which is more than I can say for most people.

Here are some jokes that I've just written. They only took about three minutes to do, and I forgot to read them back. Never mind. They're probably fine. Well, bye then. Yeah... bye.

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DIGITISER: RETURN TO THE PAST

27/7/2015

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Believe it or not, Digitiser2000 isn't the only version of the thing called Digitiser to have existed on the Internet. Long, long ago, when the thing called Digitiser ran on a thing called Teletext, there was a watered-down version of it on the official Teletext website.

Including features that ran originally on Teletext, there were also a number of web-only exclusives which, we were alarmed to realise, wouldn't have looked out of place on Digitiser2000.

Among these was a bizarre point-and-click driving game called Rabid Racers, and a series of articles featuring the sinister "Space Gents".

Alarmingly, we note that this website went live almost 20 years ago, and looks about as sophisticated as the current Digitiser2000. If you wish to make yourself feel old (and who doesn't?) you can find a snapshot of the old Digitiser website here.

(Thanks to @russty_russ for pointing it out)

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5 VIDEO GAME BREAKFAST CEREALS

27/7/2015

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What do you have for breakfast? We like to enjoy strips of cooked pig body, and mushed-up pig meat shoved inside a bit of intestine, plus fried fungus, something that came out of a hen's anus, and a glass of white, wet stuff that's been squirted out of a cow's boob. Mmm... delicious.

And yet... we would much rather be eating tiny effigies of our favourite video game characters. In fact, not so long ago, it was actually possible to do this.

Don't believe us? Just take a look at the ensuing and really important list.

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REVIEW: JOURNEY (PS4)

26/7/2015

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Journey was first released on the PS3 in 2012, and immediately started being written about in ways that described it more like a transcendent, quasi-spiritual experience than a game.

We were intrigued, but - ultimately - got put off by those reviews. They sold it as the gaming equivalent of a New Age crystal shop - a pachuli-scented dreamcatcher of a game, soundtracked by whale song and the palliative burble of indoor mist fountains that look like miniature Thai temples.

This wasn't just a game: this was meditation, a profound and esoteric personal voyage into who we are, a luminous sound bowl ceremony that tapped into the souls of our ancestors, and spoke to the celestial, spiritual being that incubates at the heart of our inner vortex, ready to be unleashed into the cosmos, eclipsing the oppressive physical realm for the enormity of the macrocosmic cloudwibble. In short: it seemed to be a game for hippies.

Unfortunately, now that Journey has made it to the PS4 - buffed and scrubbed to run at 60fps (not that we can ever really tell the difference, to be honest) - and we've played it, we realise that it's virtually impossible to write about in any other way.

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10 VINTAGE COMPUTER ADS

24/7/2015

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Of course, these days, marketing is all viral. If you want your product to sell you just bribe some fresh-faced narcissist on YouTube - too young to know better - to plug your product to their 15 million+ subscribers (who are similarly too young/stupid to understand what's happening) and you're away.

Not so long ago, the world was different. Products had to rely on things called "adverts" for promotion. Here are ten of these so-called "adverts" from a more innocent and less self-absorbed age, when computers were strictly the domain of proper nerds.

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LIVING IN JAPAN – AND WHY IT ISN'T AS WEIRD AS PEOPLE THINK (OK, IT IS A BIT WEIRD)

23/7/2015

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Reader feature
by JUSTIN EGLI

Ah, Japan. A magical land of fairies and robots and Nintendo flavoured chocolate and Pikachu's used panties sold in vending machines.

For decades, Japan has been portrayed by the western media as a surreal playground: a cross between Disneyland, a bowl of ramen and a big bag of speed. The truth is, once you've lived here for a while, Japan starts to feel normal – it's the rest if the world that seems weird. In many respects Japan is more conservative than a lot of countries around the world.

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THE APP TREE: THE BEST NEW APPS FOR YOUR PHONE

22/7/2015

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I'm The Flaccid Tramp. Your first reaction to my name is probably one of amusement, but the fact is there's nothing funny about either homelessness or erectile dysfunction. Yeah - that's right: I'm homeless AND flaccid. Not so funny now, is it? It's bad enough sleeping in a bush, without the knowledge that I couldn't even get it up, if the opportunity arose.

Not that it ever really does, because I've not had a shower in months. Seriously - 'down there' stinks like an old ham that's been fished out of a stagnant canal. There's nothing funny about that really, is there? I have a terrible life.

Anyway, for some reason I've been asked to introduce this feature listing the newest and best apps for your smartphones. I don't own a smartphone of course. I'm homeless, poor, and can't maintain my own arousal. Bet you feel terrible for laughing at me now.

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10 DISTURBING POKEMON COSPLAYS

21/7/2015

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What works when drawn doesn't necessarily work when rendered in real life. There's a reason why the movie X-Men wear black leather rather than the yellow and blue spandex of their comic book counterparts... and that reason is the reason we just mentioned: they'd look, at best, ridiculous. At worst, they'd simultaneously be stupid and terrifying.

Case in point: cosplay. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes there's just a little too much flesh on show by people who have too little shame. With that in mind, here are ten distressing and ill-considered Pokemon cosplayers who never got the memo. You know: the memo which read "Don't do that".

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REVIEW: GOD OF WAR 3 REMASTERED (PS4)

20/7/2015

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It's timely that a game about Greek mythology should be released (technically, re-released) now, with Greece fighting its own battle against the gods of European financial regulation and austerity.

Digitiser2000's Mr Biffo went to Athens some years ago, where he visited the Acropolis. Alas, the early signs of the country's current woes were all too apparent even then.

The people were lovely, but they desperately needed to do something about their organisation and infrastructure. Getting into the ancient site was akin to a particularly contentious rugby scrum, and once you got through the gate there were scrawny wild dogs roaming all over the place.

Imagine that at one of our tourist attractions, like Madame Tussauds. Would roaming packs of savage hounds improve a wax museum? It's unlikely, though if they were feral it might add a certain frisson of excitement. Admittedly, the threat of getting rabies while you posed next to a glass-eyed effigy of lovely Harry Styles might bring in a rougher, extreme sports sort of a crowd, but it might also thin out the tourists a bit.

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<<Previous

FACE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE vs GAME CHARACTERS

ROUND-UP: With Paul McCartney

THE DIGI2000 INDIE GAME TITLE-O-MATIC

IF VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS WERE SPOONS

Q&A - NICK "FRAK!" PELLING

THE MAN'S DADDY'S NEWEST JOKES

TOP 10 VIDEO GAME SUNSETS

DIGITISER: RETURN TO THE PAST

5 VIDEO GAME BREAKFAST CEREALS

REVIEW: JOURNEY (PS4)

10 VINTAGE COMPUTER ADS

LIVING IN JAPAN – AND WHY IT ISN'T AS WEIRD AS PEOPLE THINK (OK, IT IS A BIT WEIRD)

THE APP TREE: THE BEST NEW APPS FOR YOUR PHONE

10 DISTURBING POKEMON COSPLAYS

REVIEW: GOD OF WAR 3 REMASTERED (PS4)

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