Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: The Immersive Experience, to give this theatrical event its full, unwieldy, title, is based upon the 1978 album of the almost-same name. Which was based upon HG Wells' 1898 novel about invading Martian tripods, that also gave birth to TV series, movies, and video games.

For those of a certain age, or with parents of a certain age anyway, Wayne's disco-rock-prog opera was an iconic record - from the glorious paintings in the accompanying booklet, to the Martians' musical cry of "Uuuulaaaaaaaa!", to Richard Burton's famous narration.

The album casts a long shadow in more ways than one; Wayne found time to compose the theme to TV-AM, but a full-fledged follow-up didn't happen until 1992. Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of Spartacus might've featured Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Fish from Marillion, but it didn't have the same impact, on account of it ending up like a sentient toilet's idea of what a human musical record might sound like.

Since then, the septuagenarian, mysteriously dark-haired, Wayne has mostly focused on tennis, for some reason, and touring productions of The War of the Worlds. I saw one of these a few years back, starring The X-Factor champion Shane Ward. Despite liking the album, I found that the show struck a queasy balance between rock concert and musical theatre. 

Nonetheless, when I read that Wayne was working with immersive theatre company Dotdotdot on an  interpretation of the The World of the Worlds - that would put the audience inside the action - it sounded like it'd be right up my dingy, Victorian, alley.

I'd been to Dotdotdot's previous immersive show, Somnai, which showed promise, and thus, on Saturday night, I found myself fleeing from Tripods and caught in a much-needed cuddle with a terrified soldier. 

Here's how that happened.

There have been several eras in gaming history which I regard as transitional.

In short; a generation where the host hardware couldn't quite keep up with the imagination of the games' creators. Don't get me wrong; the early-80s of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 is my era - it's when I fell in love with games. Nonetheless, when I go back to play many of those games now, it's like trying to squash a duvet into a walnut.

I actually find the likes of Pong, and many earlier Atari 2600 games, far more playable than the vast majority of Speccy games - and I say that as somebody whose fondest gaming memories are all of that era. 

When the NES and Master System took off, and the Atari ST and Amiga were released, it was the start of a golden era when games revelled in their 2D-ness, improving all the time across the 16-bit console era. Then CD-ROM happened, and it all went a bit wrong again. Developers experimented with interactive movies, and struggled to understand the best way to make 3D polygons work.

Go back and play something like Night Trap and it's horrible. Worse still, the original Tomb Raider simply doesn't hold up outside of the context of its era. Likewise Nintendo's Starfox.

It's why so many indie games default to that 16-bit golden age, with the flat pixels; the games of that time still hold up today, when so many either side do not.

And that is why it's so brave of Back In 1995 to evoke the spirit of the first PlayStation, a system which - for all its importance in the history of gaming - played host to some incredibly ugly games.  

I've spoken before about how I was never big into pirated games as a kid. Maybe I'm just better than everyone else, or maybe I like looking down my nose at people, or maybe I'm just burdened with an overabundance of empathy, but piracy never sat right with me.

Actually, maybe it's just that I like to comfort myself with the thought of all my former schoolmates going to Hell when they die - if they haven't already...

​LOL!!!!!!

I'm not going to lie; of course I've played emulated games, but only when there was no alternative. There have been so many lost, obscure, games that I never thought I'd get to play in any sort of official capacity, it felt like I wasn't doing any harm. You know: like eating some chips out of a bin.

But now... step forwards Antstream.

Streaming is the future of gaming, but Antstream also believes it's the past; this new service, which went live to backers yesterday, is a retro gaming streaming service, featuring hundreds of officially-licensed old games - some more esoteric than others.

I can feel it... I'm becoming a VR convert. With its lack of wires, and almost complete lack of motion sickness, the Oculus Quest is proving to be the hardware that finally convinces me that VR can take off. I mean, it's actually a bit scary how much I'm enjoying it. I actually get excited to play on it, and that hasn't happened to me with games in a very long time. 

CUT TO 10 YEARS LATER:

A bloated and sickly-looking Mr Biffo is strapped into a VR bodysuit and helmet, cleaning his groin with an empty crisp packet on the end of a pencil.

Here are 13 apps that you should consider getting for the Quest. Why 13 and not a nice round number? I would've done more, but I need to go upstairs for a poo!

I'm going to state this upfront; I've got a really bad back.

That has nothing to do with Vader Immortal, but everything to do with how I'm getting on with my Oculus Quest. Several hours on the thing yesterday, playing the likes of Superhot and Space Pirate Trainer - both of which required a degree of ducking and weaving - has buggered up my coccyx. 

Oh, the joys of middle-aged gaming in the 21st Century. Also: ha ha - "buggered up my coccyx"!!!

For all the pain I'm in - and it's quite a lot of pain, but I don't need your sympathy thanks (I take my dopamine in a different form) - it's testament to the immersive qualities of the Quest that I didn't even notice I was actually doing some sort of exercise.

Albeit by moving my body in a way that it clearly didn't want to be moved.

"Oh, why's he whinging about his back? Just get to the review FFS."

It hurts, alright?!?! Plus, wiping my bottom later is going to be a painful chore.

Furthermore, I'm most surprised that I'm able to use the headset for extended periods without getting nauseous. Even my wife played on it at length last night, and usually she only has to turn the page of a magazine to get motion sickness.

​Fortunately, most of Vader Immortal Episode 1 is relatively sedate - a creepy, atmospheric, interactive slow-burn, that we're being told is now an official part of the increasingly overwhelming Star Wars canon - and you're able to get through the first part of this three-part series in one sitting/standing.

I've not been shy of expressing that I think virtual reality is flawed at its very core.

It doesn't matter how good it gets, the fundamental idea prevents it from ever becoming the society-consuming technology we've seen in so many sci-fi dystopias. 

It's like... I dunno... inventing a dog dirt flavour ice cream; You can keep improving the flavour to make it more authentically dog dirt-tasting, but if people don't want to eat dog dirt-flavoured things then it's unlikely there's much you can do to change their minds.

Not even if, on some level, they're impressed that somebody has a) Had the audacity to make and sell a dog dirt-flavoured treat, and b) Managed to so accurately simulate the taste and texture.

That, for me, is why I've sort of been a VR-sceptic; even if they can solve my motion sickness, that doesn't change needing a space in my house where I'm not going to knock things over, or be filmed secretly by my amused family, who can then show me the video so that I can go into a 24-hour depression and start looking up liposuction clinics.

A product that makes me vomit AND a figure of fun AND insecure about my body? Sign me up!!!!?!!!

But anyway...

Biffo and Gannon have a look at the Retro Electro miniature replica Sega Mega Drive, and take a terrifying diversion into the supernatural...

Yes: you read that right. Shakedown: Hawaii, the sort-of-sequel to Retro City Rampage, is also available for the PS Vita. Why? Nobody knows.

It doesn't matter.

​I've never been to Hawaii. I mean, why would I have been? It's really far away.

I have seen Lilo & Stitch, however, which is set in Hawaii, probably, so I feel like I've been there. Unfortunately, this still makes it hard to assess the authenticity of the Hawaii depicted in Shakedown: Hawaii. It mostly looks like your usual top-down city, but with a few more beaches and palm trees and that. 

Trying to research some context for the game didn't help much either. I found out that leprosy used to be a bit of a thing there, snakes and billboards are banned, and the island of Oahu boasts the largest "pineapple maze" in the world. Impressive, given we all know how much competition there is for that particular world record!!!!!?!!!!!!

Also, there are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet, which is why the Hawaii's state fish, the "Humuhumunukunukuapuaʿa", reads like the result of somebody falling asleep on their keyboard.

In the latest Digitiser Mini, Biffo and Gannon review their latest terrible compilation console purchases, and discover a treasure trove of bizarre, bootleg, games - including Mario 14 and Sonic the Hedgehog for the NES!

You enter the shimmering receiving chamber of Captain Beebledeeble, architect of all reality.

"I am the Captain, the eerie guy who invented fish," he belches, while scuttling around and around his throne like a bloated hen.

You pull the shaved coconut from your satchel, aim at his tumescent, clammy, head... and miss - hitting him instead in the abdomen, causing him to double over, and emit an abrupt blow-off which echoes around the marble chamber.

So embarrassed is he of this spasmodic emission, that you are banished from The Kingdom Of Matter, forced to wander The Netherland - an aberrant, twisting, ephemeral continent which exists somewhere on the gusset twixt life and death - accompanied by a rancid, talking, bird of paradise called William Sod, searching for the parts of apocryphal golden washing machine, known only as Swirly Boi-7.

Now...

None of that happens in Days Gone, but I couldn't think of a way to hook you into this review by recounting what actually happens, because almost everything in Days Gone is stuff you've seen dozens of times before in film, TV, and many other games.

It's a zombie story. It's an open world game set around mountains and forests. And yes: as you've probably guessed, you do spend an inordinate amount of time looking for bottles and rags and shit that you can craft into Molotov cocktails. 

The Bitmap Brothers were among the first "rock star" games developers - an image they chose to cultivate, with photographs of them in sunglasses and denim jackets, fannying around next to helicopters.

From 1988 to 2001 they released a string of diverse games - from the arcade shooting of Xenon and Xenon 2 to the futuristic sports of the Speedball series - becoming best known for their distinct visual style... which was all sort chunky and shiny, with no deep blacks... Look, I know that's a terrible description of it, but you try coming up with something better. 

Truthfully... I loved what The Bitmaps' games looked like, but always found them a bit wanting in the gameplay department. They were too tough, too fiddly; often a case of style over substance. Still, you know what people are like; they just want good looking games that have been made by some men in sunglasses who fanny around near helicopters, pretending to be cool.

And here we are in 2019; one of The Bitmaps' most heralded Amiga/ST games - Gods - is back to be reevaluated in the harsh, unflattering, light of the 21st Century. 

It's weird how your memory plays tricks. A couple of years ago my dad and I drove past what I'd always believed had been my aunt and uncle's old home.

I mentioned this to my dad, asking him when it was that they'd moved out, and he didn't know what I was talking about. I was taken aback; I'd had the most vivid memory of being in that house - it has a very distinct red front door (actually a side-door)... but... no. Apparently my aunt and uncle had never lived there, nobody we knew ever lived there, yet somehow I remember walking through that red front door... I remember the layout inside... but - according to both my parents - I've never been inside. 

Reincarnation? Uh.... Based upon experience elsewhere, it's more likely my mind had basically done its own thing, irrespective of reality. 

I mean, take the Nintendo 64. I've got two sort of conflicting, incompatible, memories - actually, more like feelings - about it.

The first of these is that I enjoyed a lot of games on the N64; Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, Waverace 64... The other memory is that I didn't like the N64, that it's my least-favourite Nintendo console, that the joypad was horrible, and the graphics blurry and indistinct. I had this belief challenged recently when I went back to have a crack Mario Kart 64 on the original hardware, and was rendered aghast by how well it played.

It gets weirder still; I never played Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. And also... I definitely did play Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

The former is a conviction that I've held onto for the past 22 years. I remember the reviews generally praising it, while criticising the fog/limited draw distance which shrouded its levels... but was pretty certain I never had any first-hand memory of all that.

And yet... I must've done, because I've been playing this re-release of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on the Switch, and I'm having all these Manchurian candidate-style flashbacks to the first time I must've played it. So... I dunno.

​Conclusion: brains are idiots, and you should never trust the veracity of anything anybody ever says.

You want some heresy? I'll give you heresy! I'll shove that heresy right down your fat, greasy, neck: Yoshi's Island was considerably better than Super Mario World. 

Despite being subtitled Super Mario World 2. it somehow never gets the recognition I truly believe it deserves. It remains the Super NES game I've played more than any other in the years since; the one I always return to. 

See, Super Mario World, brilliant as it was, lacked Yoshi's Island's gorgeous, hand-drawn, visuals, as well as its sheer weight of ideas. Most single stages in Yoshi would introduce a gameplay element which entire other games would've been based around, before throwing it aside and moving on. 

​And talking of throwing... what's the deal with Yoshi and the eggs? He eats enemies, and then lays an egg, and then uses the eggs as projectile weapons? What's the deal with that? Is there another animal in nature that uses its own reproductive system as a form of defence?

Do hens kick their eggs into the faces of foxes, or try to smother them with their cloaca? Do frogs drown predators in their own frogspawn? Do marsupials stick their wet young onto their fists, and use them as makeshift boxing gloves?

I appreciate that I may be overthinking this.

In the 80s - with popular culture violating my still-brewing brain with the message that a nuclear holocaust could happen at any minute - most of my nightmares were about nuclear war. Between Frankie's Two Tribes, Threads, The Day After, The Terminator, When The Wind Blows, Protect And Survive et al, it's no exaggeration to say that I lost count of the times I woke up shrieking and ululating in terror. It seemed like an inevitability. 

What do kids even have nightmares about these days? Brexit, probably. Or not having enough credit on their phone. Or their latest ASMR slime video being demonetised.

Oddly, I always survived my post-apocalyptic dreams. It was never the dying that scared me, but living on having lost everything familiar. Interestingly, Far Cry New Dawn plays entirely on this fundamental fear by revisiting the familiar world of Far Cry 5, 17 years after the events of its mushroom cloud-shaped climax (one of three possible endings).

In the new-look Hope County, your goal is to reestablish civilisation... but your efforts are threatened by The Highwayman, a band of biker leather-wearing goons, governed by a pair of psychotic twin sisters. Though you won't need to have played FC5 to understand what's going on, it surprised me that it's much more of a direct sequel than I'd anticipated. 

This isn't the first time Ubisoft have done something like this, of course. Far Cry 3 led to the Blood Dragon expansion, a glorious, 1980s VHS-tinged, cyber-noir shooter. New Dawn isn't quite as bold with its aesthetics, but instead offers a full-sized game, which reuses and remixes elements of Far Cry 5 to surprisingly decent effect.