I was away when Horacegate really kicked off. You know the one I'm talking about. For a week or so, pretty much the whole of the UK retro gaming community seemed united against a common enemy.

You probably don't need me to recap it all here - and it had so many twists and turns that I struggled to keep abreast of it, in all honesty. But I felt I wanted to at least acknowledge what transpired, and sorry if I'm a bit late to the party.

From what I gather, the short version of it is this: one Paul Andrews, via his company Subvert Ltd, exercised his alleged ownership of the ZX Spectrum character Horace to instigate copyright strikes on YouTube videos produced by Digitiser The Show co-host Octav1us, as well as plush toys made by friend-of-Digi Retro Princess.

There's more to it than that, of course, with Andrews - already a notorious figure in retro gaming circles - attempting to justify his side of the story.

As some of you will know, I got married last year, and we chose to delay our honeymoon until Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge had opened.

My wife, bless her, isn't a die-hard like I am - I mean, she enjoys the films well enough, and I think she has absorbed some of my fandom by osmosis - but she knew that if I was ever going to be able to afford a visit we'd need an excuse to go without the kids. Delaying the honeymoon seemed like the best option.

Sorry, kids, but if it helps you feel better, we felt guilty the whole time, and we nearly died!

Happy now?!?

I make no apologies for being a Star Wars fan. It hit me, like so many, right at that perfect formative age, and I know I'm not exactly unusual in that respect. 

While I don't blindly adore everything Star Wars, I do despair at times at the amount of entitled grief it gets from supposed fans. I'm able to enjoy it on multiple levels; the artistry, the imagination, the world-building... that unique blend of grounded, high-tech, grittiness and mythical fantasy.

​I enjoy how Star Wars is made now by fans for fans; even when decisions are taken which aren't greeted with unanimous positivity, I love how it feels as if it's being made with passion by those who care.

When Galaxy's Edge was announced, it was for me, and many of my ilk, the promise of something we'd yearned for since childhood; being able to truly become part of the Star Wars universe, rather than just running around in a Parka jacket pretending to be Han Solo on Hoth, or waving a stick about and making lightsaber noises. 

Ashens joins Gannon and Biffo for this scary, spooky, not-Halloween episode of Digitiser, which just happens to feature pumpkins, our very own seance, and our attempts to make a demon worthy of Hollywood!

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This very special visit to the Digi Lab sees Biffo, Gannon and Ashens attempting to make elephant's toothpaste, and introduces an experimental new character to the show - Beanus!

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I bought my Mega Drive through the Special Reserve mail-order catalogue, for £189 in 1990. It came strapped to Altered Beast, and with it I also ordered Super Thunder Blade. To be honest, neither game was much cop, and nor were the next couple I bought; EA'S risible Budokan and Sword of Sodan (more like "Sods of Sod-off").

Based upon these travesties, there was strong evidence that Sega's Mega Drive, the successor to my beloved Master System, was a proverbial "dirty son". Had I not already spent a great deal of money that I didn't have on it, it's highly likely I'd have propelled the thing into the nearest dog toilet.

It wasn't until I picked up Revenge of Shinobi and Castle of Illusion that I started to think purchasing the Mega Drive might've been worth it. Broadly, they both marked a turning point, and from then onwards *most* of what I bought for the console justified the initial outlay.

Truth is, the Mega Drive always had a much higher tat-to-good ratio than its eventual rival, the Super NES. Sega, by its own admission, was far more relaxed about quality, preferring a noisy, edgy, catalogue where quantity filled the trousers.

During the years of the great 16-bit console wars, this approach obscured many - myself included - to the fact that there were many genuinely great Mega Drive games, It's only now, with the benefit of several decades of hindsight, that Sega's 16-bit homunculoid has become sort of universally beloved, bitter divisions, and frustration with Sega's policies, seeming so unimportant in an era where not a day can unfurl without some new gaming drama.

Given this renaissance, it's inevitable that Sega has finally gotten around to pumping out a proper Mega Drive Mini, in the vein of Nintendo's NES and Super NES nostalg-o-replicas. And get this: it costs just £69 - the rudest price, which also happened to be the exact same RRP Virtua Racing sold for when it was released for the Mega Drive in 1994. 

In the Digitiser science lab this week, Biffo and Gannon open a mysterious box - containing all the dry ice they could ever need for a series of exciting and dangerous experiments!

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Hey - who remembers when I did a big, self-indulgent, blog post about being bored of writing about video games, and then the very next day I wrote about video games? No-one - you don't remember, because it's happening now. Yes: right now!

You're reading it as it happens.

Perhaps in the days, weeks, months, and decades to come... you'll look back upon this time, nod to yourself, scurry to 'n' fro across the dirty tunnel where you live like a pig, and mutter: "Yes... yes, that is a memory that I am having..."

In 1995 I bought my first PC purely to play Star Wars: Dark Forces, and it was the best money I ever spent. I was hooked on first-person shooters - or "Doom clones" as your grandmother used to call them - and a Doom clone that cosplayed as Star Wars was irresistible.

I loved Dark Forces in a way that was extreme and unseemly, and the relatively bland mercenary Kyle Katarn was a solid addition to the Star Wars pantheon. Much more so than that smug, shoulder-padded, strutter Dash Render from Shadows of the Empire. 

Honestly, who dresses like that? He looked like he was wearing a padded cell.

Apologies to those of you who read this site hoping to read stuff about video games, and keep clicking to find instead these kind of personal blog posts about me figuring out the direction of all things Digitiser.

We're coming up on five years since I brought Mr Biffo and Digitiser out of retirement, and it feels like it's time to shake things up in a dramatic way. 

I'm going away at the end of next week for a bit, so there'll be a little break in service for a while. That's probably good, and the right time for it. I think we all need it. 

Some of you will have noticed that I've announced that the Digitiser videos are dropping down to one a week. I'd just had a feeling in my gut that the audience was struggling to keep up with two a week... and this was confirmed by a couple of polls I did over the weekend. Overwhelmingly, most people wanted less. 

I know a few of you are disappointed, but it's going to give me more time to work on the edits, and "plus" the eps a bit. What that means... I don't yet know, but it feels like we're just getting started with them.

What's more, I've now got a clearer sense of direction, which is what I've been searching for of late.