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THE DIGITISER FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE

18/5/2018

22 Comments

 
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I'm in the Midlands this weekend for Retro Revival - a two-day celebration of gaming nonsense. By the time you read this, advance tickets are probably no longer available, but you'll still be able to get them on the door. I'll be taking the stage - with genuine famous person Iain Lee, for some reason - at 1pm on Saturday.

​I'll be revealing some of the secrets of Digitiser The Show, talking about Iain's role in Mr Biffo's Found Footage, and generally shooting the breeze about old games. Also, Digitiser The Show's Paul Gannon will be in attendance, and we'll hopefully be filming some little bits and pieces. 

Plus! I'm far from the most interesting or important person there. Dave "Yes, That One" Perry will be shooting his new Games Animal TV project, and right after me and Iain you'll be able to watch a panel with THE John Romero. Some of you may recall the Quiz-Me-Do round at Digifest, where contestants were tasked with brushing turtles out of his hair.


But anyway...

If you'd like to appear here, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone, please send your filthy emails to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com
VIRTUAL BOY
Thank you for allowing me continued access to your ‘outlet’, in order to ‘offload’ my ‘missives’. Something videogame-y as there was some aflutter in the comments about “Ninty” last week… 

With the confirmation that Nintendo Switch won’t get a version of the Virtual Console as we know it (at least not outside some bastardised versions of old NES games (just no, no thanks) via the paid online service) …given this fact, I went and repurchased a Wii U specifically for the prestige retro Nintendo content available there. Wii U VC has almost all the Zeldas, nearly all the Marios, Metroids out the wazoo. Coupled with 3DS’s VC catalogue it makes for quite a formidable collection of treasures for gamers of a certain age. 

But hold! Wii U is dead and 3DS is moribund at best, so my question is: if you were Nintendo, Biffo, what would your strategy be, around granting access to your illustrious back catalogue? Even the more questionable output in recent Nintendo history like Skyward Sword, with its misguided motion waggle gubbins and interminable bloat, to me, is a more expertly crafted, “gamerly” experience than the derivative eye-rolling by-the-numbers schlock of that there recent God of War. 
​
What sense do you see, as hypothetical business leader of the Nintendoid Empire, in actively withholding these iconic, important experiences (and all that delicious revenue) from such an eager (to spend) audience?
Eemus

PS: Also, Sir, did you know that your name is P. Rose, like “prose”, as in like what you do for a living! My brain enjoys this fact immensely.

I think it's absurd that they're not giving people the chance to download individual old games on the Switch. It feels to me like it'd be massively popular, particularly given the host hardware. I've no idea what Nintendo thinks the benefit is - presumably, it wants to drive traffic to its subscription service - but I'm not convinced that's something sufficient numbers of people want. 

Yes, I did know the prose thing. Though you've made a terrible error: I no longer make a living writing prose. The prose is what I do for a hobby-with-benefits.
PAPPED
Here is something you might be able to use, Paul. I found it in a second hand shop, in among a bunch of records!
Al Hine
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This is a good sign. I see from my research that Papdale Woods are in the Okney Islands. Which is a surprise, as I thought they were a bleak place with no trees. I've been to the Outer Hebrides a couple of times, and they're stunning. The landscape seems to change entirely every few miles.

​The first time I went, I'd decided that to celebrate my 18th birthday by hitchhiking around Britain. My friend and I eventually ended up on Lewis, sleeping in the remains of a coach on a garage forecourt, in the middle of a storm that was too strong to allow us to "erect" our tents.
WOC ON, TOMMY
Well met, Sir Biffo! 

Well - if your idea of a baseball cap with built in earphones wasn't splendid! It got me thinking - here are my top inventions for proposal to Airfix, Palitoy or other industrial titans.

Bluetooth enabled nasal plugs - smell trolls in Skyrim or boulders in Dig Dug.

Light emitting underpants - collect pant tokens in Ridge Racer. Watch your simulated bum temperature increase in real time.

Ultrasonic contact lenses - feel your eyeballs vibrate as you exit hyperspace in Elite or receive a sharp thud to the retina during a game of Tetris.

You get me?

In good faith,
Jabberwoc
I don't remember coming up with an idea for a baseball cap with built-in earphones. Surely someone's done that already? 
ZOO YOUR PANTS 1
Dear Sex Hammer,

I recently had a family day out to the zoo with my stepson and my conveniently acquired collection of grand children. 

Initially I was disappointed by the experience as the zoo owners had not followed the Metal Gear Solid Five naming system, thus there was no Ostentatious Marmoset or Risible Badger. 

However things did pick up after seeing the lions and bears (all rescue animals, so my usual concerns about animals in captivity were assuaged). 

Anyway I write to ask your advice, while trying to impress one of said grandchildren by petting a small pony the animal bit me, and despite the passage of nearly two weeks I have thus far failed develop any equine related superpowers. Do these powers have an incubation period before they show themselves or have I just been unlucky, like the time I was bitten by a pensioner who failed to transfer any of their powers thus rendering me still shit at bingo and knitting?

Kissy Kissy,
Treacle
My daughter was bitten by a horse many years ago. She was only little, and I was holding her in my arms encouraging her to touch its face. The equine scum then went for her. It was quite harrowing, and the incident has stayed with me to the point that I keep inserting the phrase "bitten by a horse" in scripts, and even invented a game called Bitten By A Horse.

Here's how you play it. A player is selected to turn his back on the rest of the group, who must take turns making a noise which sounds as if they've been bitten by a horse. The chosen player must then attempt to identify which of the other players was the one who made the noise. If they're successful, they swap places.

​I appreciate that this doesn't answer your question, but it is a good family game.
ZOO YOUR PANTS 2
Hello, I am currently enjoying my holiday in New Zealand.  Today I went to a zoo so I have attached some pictures of the animals I saw. I hope you and your readers enjoy them, but if not I really don't care because I'm in New Zealand.
Bye for now.
MrPSB
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Elephant, hippo or rhino... please, which of these is in the second image? It's important.
CUP YOURSELF
There is going to be a World Cup for football soon. Try as I might, I don't really like it much but don't want my mates to think I'm 'soft' or 'a woman' or something. 

I don't even like football games, (especially the one with cars, even though I quite like cars). I like games where you run about shooting at each other, but there doesn't seem to be a world cup for that.

Do you know anything about football? If so, can you give me any pointers?
From Paul in sunny Manchester
I've become quite adept at pretending to like football in order to avoid awkward conversational dead-ends with foreign waiters and cab drivers, who see it as a sort of international "man language". When they ask - as they inevitably do - I pretend to support Watford FC. I'm so convincing that I'm even able to tell them that "FC" stands for "Football Club".

You see, I come from a family who are big into their football, and have picked up just enough residual dialect to get by. Although, the vast majority of my male family members haven't a clue how to speak to me, and seem to view me as some sort of Byronic ponce.

Indeed, I saw my parents yesterday, and my father proposed a solution to my mother's current back problems, which was to ask me to get them some marijuana, because apparently I "must know some drug dealers".

That's not even a joke.
HOOVER DAMN
I’m very much a casual gamer these days, maybe playing about 5 hours a week tops, and then pretty much always Battlefront 2 (yes, yes I’m a terrible person but it still gives me a more satisfying Star Wars fix than any of the recent mediocre films).
 
So tonight it gets to 8 o’clock and I find I have an hour to kill with access to the telly so I’ll have a quick game of BF. An hour later, after a PS4 system update, a BF download and then a BF copy, my PS4 finally deigned that I might have a game. But it’s now too late as there is real life to get on with i.e. write this email.

​Thing is, it did this a couple of weeks ago, and I know when I next get chance to play in a week or so, it'll more than likely do it again. It reminded of me of waiting for Elite to load, but that was 30 years ago using a frigging cassette recorder and even then it was nowhere near as bloody long. How is this progress? (hint: it isn’t).
 
Now I know the nice games people want to add new features and fix bugs in the games and they have to do it some time but it’s putting me off ever switching the damn PS4 on again. I guess I am just one of those people who moans about potholes but then moans when they close the road to fix the potholes. You know, one of THOSE.
 
Anyway, have a great weekend.
 
Regards,
Chris Dyson​
I have to say, the last few games I've played on my PS4 have been a lot better when it comes to the downloads and updates. At least, they appear to have been set up so that you can start playing almost immediately, while bits and pieces - usually the multiplayer side of things - downloads in the background. But yeah... until Far Cry 5 came out, I hadn't touched my PS4 since before Christmas because I couldn't face the interminable wait for an update to download before I could play.

That said, while it might be getting better, it's still not a patch on the Switch. I bought Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze the other day, for some reason, and I was playing it within 30 seconds of putting the cart in the machine. It's a very bog-standard platformer, incidentally.

MR PSB'S POO STORY
Hello Mr Biffo. After I mentioned I'd done a letter on Twitter there were as many as one request for me to do a poo story.  Your readers are disgusting and they shame us all, so here it is.

MR BIFFO AND THE ANTIPODEAN ARSEACHE

Once upon a time there was a very good boy called Mr Biffo.  In fact, Mr Biffo was such a good boy his mummy and daddy arranged for him to go on a holiday which was definitely a reward for his good behaviour and in no way a desperate last-ditch attempt to save their broken spirits caused by his irrepressible toilet enthusiasm. 

Mr Biffo was incredibly excited by the holiday as it was to go to the other side of the world and see how they liked everything being covered in poo for a change.  He got on the aeroplane and when it took off it made his tummy feel all funny so that the insides of his tummy leaked out causing a bio-hazard incident at 40,000ft so the cabin crew had to cordon off half of the plane and everyone had to sit in the other half away from Mr Biffo and the gallon of faecal exuberance that was now sloshing about as the plane turned around to make an emergency landing at the nearest airport.   

After several weeks of this flight plan repeating, Mr Biffo eventually arrived at his destination, and got off the plane along with the crew who then arranged for it to be taken away and burnt.

“Goodness that was an eventful journey!” Mr Biffo exclaimed, not even beginning to cover the Half Of It or acknowledge the lives and airline profit margins he had ruined.  “I wonder what I should do first?”  A gurgle in his tummy answered that question for him, and he sprinted to the nearest toilet.  “I hope the toilets here aren’t any different!” he said, possibly foreshadowing an incident with hilarious consequences. 

Mr Biffo pulled down his pants to go poo, and tried to lift the gurgling stink baby from its cot, when he found he was having difficulty. 

“Oh yes, that’s right, things go down the plughole the other way here!” 

Mr Biffo got off the toilet then placed a hand on either side of the bowl and climbed into a handstand above the toilet. 

“This must be how they do it down here.”

As Mr Biffo pushed, a bubbling mud volcano of bum chocolate emerged and a sulphuric assault on the nasal membranes of everyone in a 3 mile radius began. 

Mr Biffo’s misunderstanding of the Coriolis effect meant every globule of the brown eruption oozed lazily down his flanks, past his face and into the toilet bowl, coating him in a hot brown lava of dung that slowly dried and cracked before another layer built up on top of it.  When the flow from Mount Arseuvius finally subsided, Mr Biffo righted himself and the brown muddy casing he was now in split open, leaving a perfect upside down cast reminiscent of a tuba full of shit, or an upside-down tree.  Full of shit.

Mr Biffo was semi-ashamed about his misunderstanding and stepped outside the bathroom expecting to see a lot of people vomiting and upset by the smell, but everybody was continuing about their business normally. 

He stepped out into the street, which in any normal place in the world would have been cleared as people ran for the hospitals leaving trails of vomit and sadness in their wake, but there was no panic whatsoever. 

Mr Biffo was very confused, and also a little bit disappointed.  He stopped and asked one of the locals, almost in tears, “Please sir, why can nobody here smell my magnificent bum musk?” 

The answer astonished him.  He had actually arrived in Rotorua, New Zealand, and the only thing you need to know about that is that it smells like eggy fart all the time.  I highly recommend going there, but you will have a headache the entire time.  Anyway.

Mr Biffo fell to his knees and screamed to the heavens in joy, he had finally found a place where he could fit in and nobody would comment on his unusual and constant aroma of arse gas.  Then get got deported and sent back to England because while Rotorua does smell of arse gas it isn’t normally covered in shit and the locals didn’t want New Zealand to be turned into Poo Zealand.

The End. 


I hope that will do for now.
MrPSB
There you are, everyone on Twitter. Happy now??
22 Comments
MrPSB
18/5/2018 08:27:43 am

It's a rhino

Reply
DEAN
18/5/2018 09:30:03 am

I totally guessed that!

And that's inspired this great idea for a game: Guess Arse!

What are you doing in New Zealand (the holiday thing sounds like a ruse to me) and will you be going to see the Hobbit houses and the WETA workshop?

Oh yeah, and have you seen any cool Cadbury sweets? Apparently NZ is a test market for their more creative confection!

Reply
MrPSB
18/5/2018 11:02:21 pm

I am going to Weta next week. There are different sweets here. I cannot comment any further on my true purpose here.

John Veness
18/5/2018 09:49:18 am

"Some of you may recall the Quiz-Me-Do round at Digifest, where contestants were tasked with brushing turtles out of his hair."

I do indeed. Show that clip as part of your talk, I dare you!

Reply
Starbuck
21/5/2018 11:49:25 pm

Please. No Quiz-me-do music on Digitiser The Show. PLEASE!

Reply
DEAN
18/5/2018 10:01:36 am

Another Friday - Another letter from Eemus!

I think it's obvious what Nintendo are trying to pull - games as a service.

If 17.99 grants you 12 months access to a growing number of their golden oldies plus online play and cloud saves then who can argue?

Most of their hardcore, probably.

From what I can see the details are a little vague at the moment but these would be my main concerns if I really and truly anymore than just casually cared:

Offline play because the Switch is great for aeroplanes.
SNES, N64 and GC content.
Once up the games all stay up.

I'm not a collector and actually don't give a shit about owning things digitally or physically but I remember reading a thing a while ago where Nintendo said something along the lines of making your downloads more similar to an iTunes experience - in other words you kinda, sorta do own them but not really. Which is a massive improvement from their previous stance on such matters - effectively your console owns them not you.

With that in mind it stands to reason that they'd rather go down the service path - you still don't own shit and they can keep on milking the nostalgia teat.

I disagree that they'd make more money having a traditional Virtual Console and moreover they need a box ticker that at least pays lip service to the likes of Xbox Games Pass and PS Now. And from that POV their service really does shine - it's less than half the price and comes with a growing library of great old Ninety games - it's a veritable no-brainer, Kevin.

Finally, anyone that's been on the Nintendo eShop will have seen just what a fucking state it's in - in fairness none of the online stores from the big 3 are well laid out but it does seem a very popular hole for publishers to defecate their games into. Why would Nintendo want to overshadow that particular revenue stream with their own jobby's when they can use their classics to... as I said above.

Speaking of well laid out menus - it's obvious to me that a big part of the appeal of Netflix over Amazon Prime and NowTV is that it's not a complete total and utter pain in the arse to navigate your way around. Honestly, how fucking hard is it and what's more how come it's not taken more seriously? Honestly, it's like it's amateur hour in arseholeland!

Reply
Picston Shottle
18/5/2018 02:18:52 pm

Switch is indeed the single greatest thing for planes. I gave myself RSI of the wrist on my way to Singapore last year; I played BotW for 15 hours straight. It was a great way to kill a long ass flight dead. And, flying as much as I do, I’ve pretty much exhausted the (admittedly) huge movie library on American Airlines. Which leads me to ask you this: I’m flying in Sunday from Miami to Honolulu (if Honolulu doesn’t melt or explode, that it’s) and it’s a long, long way - what game should I get for the Switch to keep me occupied, that isn’t BotW, Odyssey or Skyrim?

As for the VC...I don’t care what they rename (if they rename it at all) it just as long as they release the old games for sale. See, if they had all the old games on the eShop I’d not have the problem of asking you lot what Switch game I should buy. No, I’d have gone and bought Majora’s Mask, and Ocarina of Time, amd Windwaker. Those three would keep me going for ages. Then I’d start in on Mario and Metroid. It makes no sense not to make these games available. I’m pretty sure that however much it costs to port them they’ll make back easily, and the rest of the revenue is “gravy” since the games have already paid for themselves when they were originally released.

Reply
DEAN
18/5/2018 03:50:32 pm

Hyrule Warriors has just come out, right? And Donkey Kong I think.

I played HW on the Wii U and DK too and they're both this: ok. I'm fucked if I'd want to play either of them for an entire long haul flight, though - get both! Kirby is decentish but it's a bit of a walk in the park and very samey....

Captain Toad looks perfect if you like puzzles but is not out quite yet.... dunno, man, but ultimately everything I just said won't help you!

3/2DS and some Zelda games might be money better spent - A Link Between Worlds is absolutely brilliant and there's plenty more on there to tide you over.

Spiney O’Sullivan
18/5/2018 10:06:26 am

Re: the first letter - Nintendo’s approach to their back catalogue feels insane to me and is deeply frustrating as someone who sort of bought the Switch in the hopes it might become the ultimate handheld and living room Nintendo retro console (in a way it is since most of its games are ones I already couldn’t be bothered with on the Wii U), but not owning content is probably the wave of the future. That said, to me it feels different with games than with music and TV content. I don’t really care about owning them, but with games, I do want permanent access.

(Also Skyward Sword was great, and probably my favourite 3D Zelda after Wind Waker)

Reply
Nick
18/5/2018 10:15:10 am

I've never understood the flak Skyward Sword gets. I really enjoyed it. The art style was beautiful, I'm a sucker for impressionistic/water colour style graphics.

Reply
DEAN
18/5/2018 10:24:18 am

It really did look lovely, I'm with you 100% on that, Nick.

But waving around your arms and all that..... c'mon!

Spiney O’Sullivan
18/5/2018 10:55:30 am

I just wish it had got an HD update on the Wii U instead of Wind Waker, which already held up visually because of its cartoonish simplicity. An HD version of the watercolour world of Skyward Sword would have been incredible.

As for the waggle controls, Skyward Sword was a very rare case of them being used really well. I can’t honestly name many “proper” games that actually benefited from motion controls, but that Sword was really cool.

DEAN
18/5/2018 11:18:15 am

Yes, it did work nicely and a Zelda game about swords like that crossbow one would have been pretty cool. Not a big old proper Zelda game, though. That's for laying back on your couch with one hand intermittently reaching for some crisps

JOKE TIME

Doctor, my willy has turned orange.

Okay, what have you been doing?

Nothing much really, just surfing the internet and eating Wotsits.

MENTALIST
18/5/2018 11:42:58 am

The art in Skyward sword is beautiful, but I felt that it really suffered due to the resolution (and occasionally the frame rate) you had to view it through, especially on a 50+ inch TV.

The motion controls were passable, but it all kind of reminded me of Mario Sunshine. The spray gun is nice enough, but Mario doesn't really need it, does he? I abandoned the game for Skyrim, at the time, and Zelda has hewn significantly closer to the Skyrim template recently, so I feel sort of vindicated there.

I probably ought to go and finish it, since I'm only just more than halfway through (I think). But I've been sort of hoping for a remaster. Although it seems like some sort of Breath of The Wild 2 is quite far along in development, so they won't necessarily need to have a stop-gap Zelda remaster in the meantime.

Nick
18/5/2018 12:56:32 pm

I think it already looks a bit better played through a Wii U. I guess that’s down to the HDMI cable.

I was hoping for a proper Wii U remaster as well. Using the second screen for inventory management makes Zelda games so much better. Cough… Wii U BOTW cough…

DEAN
18/5/2018 10:21:36 am

I get you, Spiney but I think you're right - it does seem inevitable.

Personally I welcome it - it's like that rumour that was going around about iTunes ceasing to trade and it being full-on Apple Music and that's it. I don't see a problem, I mean I think Apple would be brave to do that right now but it's got to be coming.

The most exciting thing that's happened in games in recent memory is the Xbox Game Pass. I know the idea isn't new but the approach is what makes it stand out - they stuck Sea of Thieves up and will be putting on Crackdown 3 etc.

Why pay £50 a pop when for 'a nominal fee' you're granted access to a load of games and can play them for 5 minutes and if you think one's shit then there's no real harm done... off to the next one.

It's like on Netflix - the amount of movies I give up with after 10 mins or on Apple Music - cool, yeah, I've not heard that song for ages and then, 40 secs in... bored now. I'm glad I didn't pay proper money for most of the experiences I have on those things and games, to my mind, are not so different.

Reply
Spiney O’Sullivan
18/5/2018 10:59:24 am

I can accept yet another subscription, but my main questions are around offline play (and to an extent online play, mainly due to the UK’s slightly crap internet infrastructure).

Nintendo utterly ruined Super Mario Run for me/by extension all commuters (realistically the only time you’d play a game that simple for long) by ensuring that it couldn’t be played offline. I wouldn’t trust them not to do something equally annoying here.

DEAN
18/5/2018 11:12:19 am

Absolutely - you're right.

That happened to me with Mario Run and it really pissed me off. It's a fair bet that the same thing will be true here.

One day though none of this will be a problem - the internet will be fit for purpose and everything will wonderful. But that's not this generation.... like USB-C. Apple and now Nintendo are committed to making life a little bit more of an unnecessary faff by being so forward thinking.... but I guess it has to start somewhere.

neil
18/5/2018 11:19:53 am

Fun fact(doubtful), Biffo made the P Rose/prose Joke at the beginning of his first Edge column.

Reply
Paul
18/5/2018 12:47:06 pm

There is an episode of The IT Crowd that covers faking football knowledge, and the inventible problems that can arise.

I also, when having to fake Football allegiance, say “Watford FC” But I then end up saying “I never watch a game because I know they’ll lose”. That’s a bit of a lie, because they don’t these days, but they used to be pretty good at being bottom of some league or other and getting relegated.

Reply
Rob W link
22/5/2018 07:43:21 pm

Paul, Biffo once went on holiday and left us proles in charge of the digi content. This was my piece...I'm very proud of it, even though hardly anyone read it! Anyway, your letter reminded me a bit of it, so after I'd de-misted my eyes, I dug out the link, if you're interested.

https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/reader-feature-the-beautiful-game

Reply
Rufio1980
23/5/2018 01:12:43 pm

I can’t believe it’s taken me till now to realise that I have my very own Biffo poo story. I think there’s space on the back of the bathroom door for it. So that it might give me courage in my times of need.

Reply



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