NOT SEEN FOR 25 YEARS: MORE CLASSIC DIGI UNEARTHED!

It's possible that the first ever Digitiser has been widely seen in recent times. Though by "widely" I mean  "a couple of thousand people". Still, there's a video of it up on YouTube, if you've missed it.

It's fine for what it is.

Here, though, is second edition of Digi ever - a sacred relic which has not been seen for more than 25 years - once again unearthed by teletext archeologist Jason Robertson.

I'm assuming we had most of the first week or so of Digitiser written before we went to air - though I don't quite remember - but there's a sense here that we're still trying to fill pages. 

As before, it's something of a jarring read if you're familiar with the later, more anarchic, tone that we adopted; no Man Diary, no reveal-ohs, silliness kept to a minimum... not even the charts are in place. Furthermore, there are a few wince-inducing moments for myself and Mr Hairs. But anyhow. That's okay. Do your reading of this now. Just start, please.

Huge thanks on behalf of us and Jason to @amylrob1863 for supplying the tape upon which this important historical artefact was splayed.

As with the edition of Digitiser that we showcased last week - day 10 - this one is from a Sunday. Therefore, it features Digi's early weekend line-up, which rather differs from what was established later. The Hot Topic is absent, there's no Old Game: Here, and no round-up.

However, it does give us Digi's first ever feature - a report on our trip to the long-gone Legend Quest Virtual Reality centre in "Nottingham".

Weirdly, I would've assumed that Tim and I visited Legend Quest some time after Digi launched, but clearly we must've gone at the arse-end of 1992, before Teletext went to air. I do know that it was a full day out of the office, which was nice, and no doubt justified by having a juicy feature to run in Digi's first week.

VR was in its first bloom back then, though by no means universally understood, and I recall being excited to try it. I'd had turns on the Virtuality games in arcades, and been more confused than impressed, but the slower pace of Legend Quest worked well.

No idea what we were talking about by mentioning "sad pseudo-VR 3D console games" here - perhaps it's a reference to the Super NES Mode 7 effect. Also, how ironic that we should implore people to remove the cardboard boxes from their heads, given the ubiquity of Google Cardboard headsets in the modern VR market.

Legend Quest kindly gave us a VHS of our adventure, which sadly I no longer have. Also, Tim's car broke down on the way back from Nottingham, which was highly entertaining. 

£4 for 10 minutes? That was a LOT of money back then.

The bullet points are interesting. I believe that we were encouraged to use bullet points in the official Teletext style guide. As with most things we were told to do, it's a practice that we soon started ignoring.

Sorry, people who hate talking on the telephone: no websites back then.

So, Digi's first Game of the Week was a Motley Crue pinball sim. To be fair to us, having given ourselves the impossible task of finding a Game of the Week every week - something we swiftly dropped - there were slim pickings in January 1993. It's quite the claim that it was addictive as Tetris.

And £39.99?! For pinball?!

5/5 for gameplay there. I'm certain that was deserved...

Fact: Smash TV was the first import game I ever played on my Super NES. I picked it up at a games fair in Wembley, along with an NTSC-PAL converter. I bent the pins in my SNES plugging it in the first time, and had to send it off to Nintendo to be fixed. I think it took over a month to get back.

That last paragraph makes a clever joke, which suggests to me that - while the rest of the review was probably my handiwork - it was a Tim addition.

Just one letter on this weekend edition, and it's another made-up one, judging by the fact it's from a member of my own family. We were definitely receiving letters by this point, so I can only assume we'd prepared the letters pages in advance. 

This was definitely written by Tim. I know this because a) It's a PC review, and b) He makes a reference to Magpie presenter Susan Stranks. He's a few years older than me, and Magpie was just a little before my time....

Amusing that we're still at a point where we recommend a "sound card" as being essential to get the most out of a game. Anyhow. There you go. Digi Day 3. Let me know if you enjoy these peeks into the past as part of Digi's 25th anniversary year. A whole bunch more - from spanning the entirety of Digi's tenure - have recently been discovered...

If you have any old VHS tapes, from 1993-2003, please get in touch with Jason Robertson. They might contain old Digis, allowing us to "plug" the "gaps" in the oeuvre.