THE DIGITISER FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE

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

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

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??