The good news is: the docs don't think there'll be any permanent damage to my eye. The bad news is: I now have no valid reason to wear an eyepatch.
I've said it already, but I'm going to say it again anyway - thank you so much to everyone who took the time to write something kind, lovely, and/or supportive in the last couple of days. I'm still reeling from it all, frankly.
I read everything everybody wrote, and apologies if you didn't get a direct reply - one-and-a-half functioning eyeballs, and extreme drowsiness, meant my productivity was down rather in the last few days. Not to mention it was hard to keep up with the sheer number of comments, tweets and whatnot. But it meant so much to all of us at Chez Biffo. You managed to give us something life-affirming in the face of something a bit rubbish. It was pretty profound all told.
Anyway. That's quite enough sincerity. Here's a podcast I did some weeks back with Retro Asylum. You haven't heard it before. It's pretty good.
Now on with the letters. Thrrrrpt!
Have you ever:
- - bungee jumped
- - worked as a chef
- - written for a tabloid newspaper
- - pleasured yourself to a video game character
- - killed a man
- - fallen in love with a building façade
- - worn braces
- - won at the races
- - watched a Dario Argento film
- - baked pottery in a kiln
- - admired a friend's lover too much
- - been to Singapore
- - created a reveal-o that goes too far, and that you could never, ever show?
1) No. And never would.
2) No.
3) No.
4) No!
5) Yes.
6) Yes.
7) Yes.
8) Yes.
9) No.
10) Yes.
11) No.
12) No.
13) Yes. Teletext had a sort of internal mail system, where you could send teletext pages to other users. Mr Hairs and I - as part of an ongoing prank battle with Dave Hunter, who wrote the Planet Sound music section - sent him a page showing a graphic (in every sense of the word) image of a "real Turner the Worm", whose recently-expelled "sick" was dribbling from its "mouth" to form the word "DAVE". You see, Dave sat with his back to a window which peered directly into the Deputy Editor's office, who would've gotten an unobstructed view of the visual the second Dave opened it up...
Somebody just put this through my door then ran off.
Wrist Flapper
I hope that you are feeling better after your attack and that a full recovery is not far away. Please feel free to use some, all or none of the following for the letters page.
- What would you rate as the best direct sequels to games i.e. the same generation of hardware (so modern Doom wouldn't count)?
- The Sonic series is regarded as one of the defining series in computer game history. However, as there have been more bad ones than good ones, is it also an example of one or two games capturing a 'magic' that they can never recreate?
- Several hardware generations have been defined by a genre or game style; I do not feel this has been the case in the PS4 generation, what do you think?
2. Yes. See also Tomb Raider. Though the recent prequels have probably done a fair bit to justify the series' reputation, even if they're not perfect.
3. Arguably - though they pre-date the current generation - the big, Ubisoft-style, open world, map-mopper genre is a relatively new invention, and has come to define this generation.
K2 Seeing another Digi reader's teletext art/homage to Digi of old made me think... Now that we all have access to the magic of teletext creation, what if other similar efforts were to be produced, to form some sort of weekly gallery? You could be like Tony Hart and write your comments beneath them while the familiar theme tune plays in our collective heads. Doo-dee-dee-doo, Dee-dee doo-doo-doo... To this end, I've created my own page, and suggest others could do the same! Stuart |
If Digi were to be made into a game what genre would it be and which characters would be playable?
What are your memories of doing the live Teletext feed/letters for Games Master, would have been for series 4 I believe as I remember someone humorously commenting that their screen was on fire. This being a reference to the Hell theme they were using that year.
Glyn Heaviside
The Games Master live feed thing - if people don't remember - had us turning Digi's pages over to a sort of proto-version of live-Tweeting, using the subtitle feature. They'd send us comments, and we'd quickly type them up, and overlay them atop Games Master.
The main things I remember are:
1) Being annoyed at having to stay late at the office.
2) Dominik Diamond contributing, and having to speak with him on the phone beforehand, for some reason.
3) Getting into trouble for making sarcastic comments during the ad breaks (we ended up being banned for putting up comments during the ads).

I got punched in the face while sitting in stationary traffic the other day. Like Stephen King, I've decided to turn this powerful experience into a horror novel, which I'll probably just make up as I go along, and sell millions, even though the characters in all my books are thinly-veiled versions of myself. Here's the opening paragraph:
"A big man in a small town is something to be. The Dan had no idea what was waiting for him that summer day, a day which began like so many others. He got up, brushed his teeth, and took his car into town to grab a burger.
"He was sitting stationary in traffic when he was punched in the face. By A ZOMBIE!!!!! As the world fell apart in the days, weeks, and months to come, he did the only thing he knew how: he wrote a horror novel based upon his experience..."