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THE DIGITISER FRIDAY THE 13th LETTERS PAGE

13/4/2018

16 Comments

 
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How do you do, fellow kids? Are you waiting on me to reply to an email, Kickstarter message, Facebook message, or Tweet? Well, keep on waiting, everyone, because I'm currently faced with an enormous backlog (poo joke?).

Getting more than double the number of backers for Digitiser The Show compared to Found Footage seems to have resulted in a sort of critical mass in terms of people wishing to contact me about different things. I've spent the past week feeling horribly overwhelmed by it all.

​Mercifully, I'm starting to come out the other side of the exhaustion and mental knot I'd tied myself into, but it may be a while before I'm back up to full speed.

Anyhow, a surprising number of you - despite my relentless spamming - seemed to have missed the fact I was running a Kickstarter, and realised too late to support it. I will, once the donations have been collected for the Kickstarter - and some of you STILL need to update your payment details, so please do so as currently we're several grand down from what was pledged) - set up some sort of method for you to contribute.


Oh, and I might do a live stream on Sunday night if I'm feeling up to it. If I do, what would you prefer to see: scrolling beat 'em ups, or creepy Japanese "sexy" games?

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
"DEBEETS" OF RAGE
Hey, a little debate has raged recently between myself and a friend over what types of game we should be supporting in the modern gaming era, and I turn to you for a definitive answer.
 
It all started with the release of Sea of Thieves which seems to be one of the most Marmite games of recent times. I love it to bits, and have sunk way more hours into it than I probably should since its launch; voyaging regularly and making a fair amount of loot per run as a result.

Anyway, the debate began when this friend tried it for the first time and was spawn killed, therefore missing the tutorial (what little of it there is needed). Needless to say the game was immediately trash,  and this is the worst kind of game ever and we should not be supporting this rubbish.
 
So on to the question: what games SHOULD we support? I hate the idea of companies repeatedly milking the COD/Battlefield/Assassin’s Creed cow yearly (or for some now, every other year), whilst games that try to break boundaries or push new gameplay mechanics are sidelined, taunted, or relegated to the “indie” category where they can often be missed.

​I also detest the remaster laziness that we all face now and completely disagree that this opens up old games to a new market. There are plenty of ways to play old titles and I feel that this is simply a way for companies to milk old games to new or nostalgic players.
 
What do you think? New games only? New IPs and new mechanics? Support the yearly COD and FIFA tripe?
 
HELP!
Steve
Hmm. One of my least favourite words is "should", because there is very little in life that anybody "should" ever do. That said, I get where you're coming from, but also... without meaning any offence, it's kind of against a lot of what I feel about the sort of territoriality and tribalism that gamers often stumble into. Support the sort of stuff you like, and ignore everything else. That should be enough surely?

I mean, I quite like my annual triple-A instalments. I'm a trifle bored of Call of Duty's formula admittedly, but I think Assassin's Creed benefitted hugely for having had a year off. Far Cry 5 - the game I'm playing the most of at the moment - is very similar to its predecessors, but that's kind of all I need from it. 

There are a few retro-inspired indie games on the horizon, however, which have me tentatively excited. I'm really looking forward to Tanglewood, Streets of Red and Raging Justice. But I'm also playing an enormous amount of obscure retro games that I missed first time around.

​So... in short... dunno.
GEORGE CLONE-Y
With Nintendo churning out clones of their older systems every couple of years, and various 8-bit home computers seeing the clone treatment, it feels like only a matter of time before we see another wave of these systems. 

Are there any clone systems you’d like to see? As much as I’d like to see an Amstrad CPC clone, I can only imagine it would be done poorly and wouldn’t do a good job of showing off the systems potential.

​Best to just stick with the Raspberry Pi and a Motorola Lapdock to create the laptop form factor. 
Matt 
This is a good question! I'd very much like every single old console and computer to be recreated in tiny form. So long as the hardware is up to the task (which, thanks to the useless joystick, the C64 Mini isn't), I think they're a nice thing to collect.

Ones I really want are a teeny-tiny Mega Drive (not one of those retro systems that are already available; a proper replica) and Dreamcast, a proper teeny-tiny Spectrum, and - brace yourselves - a mini Amiga. No, really. I do.
HOMEWORKER
I have recently had the opportunity to work from home on occasion, and find myself wracked by guilt and doing more than I feel I should. As a much more seasoned work-from-home-guy, can you please suggest appropriate ways of shirking the day job?

(Other than running fabulously successful Kickstarter campaigns, obviously. Congratulations again!)
Richard
I've been working from home for 20 years now, and I continue to work far, far harder than I ever did in an office.

I've got slightly more disciplined in recent years; I rarely, if ever, work evenings anymore, and I don't work at weekends (other than to reply to the occasional email - and even then, I try to resist answering). I find it's important to try and set boundaries with people I work with... and with myself. Basically, I try to keep to office hours with responding to emails and phone calls and that.

​It's hard, because what I've realised I'll do is I'll cram two days work into one day so that I can finish by 6pm. In order to do that I'll work at double-speed, and then be a complete wreck for the rest of the evening.

What I haven't mentioned, however, is my utter lack of boundaries when it comes to dealing with all things Digi-related. The past month has demonstrated I need to get a better handle on that...

NO FAR CRY NO CRY
I have been enjoying Far Cry 5 a lot over the last week or so. I am a sucker for open world environments and this is easily one of the best I’ve played.

The whole map just feels real and alive. The huge amount of stuff to do may seem daunting, but because you just stumble across quests simply by talking to people you encounter it never seems like a chore.

My only criticism is the slightly hitand miss looting mechanic - the amount of times I’ve accidentally swapped out my good gun for a rubbish one instead of looting the dead body is annoying. I hope that can be fine tuned in an update somehow.

It’s definitely a game that will keep me occupied for many more hours yet.

I have also been enjoying Octav1us Kitten’s YouTube back catalogue as she was new to me and only discovered her via your Kickstarter campaign. Looking forward to your collaborations. I did enjoy the Blockbusters special you both did with Ashens.
​
Very well done on the Kickstarter campaign by the way - my money is in your bulging pot. Feel free to spend the money however you like, and make whatever creative decisions you deem necessary. I’m not one of those fuss weasels you hear about these days.
Seam
Cheers, Seam. I planned out the content of the individual episodes this week, and I'm very excited by them. The biggest things I'm excited for is some of the VERY obscure gaming hardware we'll be featuring, and an idea I had for Tempest For Real. Remains to be seen if we can afford it, but - dammit - I'm gonna try.

Anyhow... yeah, I'm still loving Far Cry 5, though slightly concerned by how easy it gets. I'm pretty much fully kitted out with perks, and - having cleared most of the map - there aren't many enemies roaming around anymore. Still getting attacked by skunks and turkeys though.

Glad you've been enjoying Octav1us's output. I think she's going to be a bit of a secret weapon on the Digi Show...
GMAIL: FIX IT
Why is it your letters page uses a Gmail address? You've got the domain digitiser2000.com so surely you could use letters@digitiser2000.com instead?

If you haven't got the techie know how ask that nostalgia nerd bloke or that Octav1us kitten woman you've started hanging around with recently. I gather they're both good with computers?  Do you know why she spells her name with a 1? I can only guess she was pissed on her mobile when she typed it. 

Looking forward to your new show.
Matteusbeus
It's a Gmail address because it is, and always has been, and I don't know if I can be arsed to change it now. It's the least important thing on my list of things to do.

And you're asking the wrong person about Octav1us' name. Ask her! I did realise recently that pretty much all of the Digitiser Show hosts have a stupid made-up name. Aside from myself and Octav1us, there's Guru Larry, Gameplay Jenny, and Paul "Gannon". 
AH MATER WANT JET TO ALWAYS LOVE ME
Howdy. Have you thought of approaching the enchanting Diane Youdale, aka Games Mistress off of Games World for Digitiser the Show? That'd be ace because I still carry a torch for her now.

Also, have you ever had a Filet o Fish from McDonalds? My mate reckons they're an urban myth, what do you think?
James Walker
A few people asked about Diane Youdale, aka Jet from Gladiators, but apparently she's a psychotherapist/counsellor now. Having spent two-and-a-bit years training to be a counsellor myself, I've spent more than enough time around those people.

​I just looked up her website, and there's a video on the front page which put me right off. I'm not sure visiting a counsellor who you remember flipping around on the telly, wearing a bikini, waving a giant foam cotton bud, is the best starting point for wellness.

​But I'm not going to go into that now...

Of course I've had a Filet o Fish; I read somewhere that they're the unhealthiest thing on the McDonalds menu.
UKRAINE IN THE MEMBRANE
Was pleasantly surprised to hear that you have been to Ukraine. I wonder what else have you visited and/or seen apart from Chernobyl. 

Meanwhile I also can't help but continue to think about that line of yours about what beat 'em up set up in the streets of a typical UK town could look like: with mattresses, KFC cartons and free office chairs. I really love to gaze at abandoned derelict objects found on the streets (I also often film such objects) and it always was kinda odd for me how much such objects can tell (especially if you see them on an everyday basis), and yet how much mysteries you have if you pay attention to detail. 

There was a derelict car near the house where I currently reside, a ZAZ 968 M Zaporozhets was evident for a few months. Zaporozhets is that special brand of Soviet car which was, at the time, inexpensive, a bit ridiculous and yet somehow worked. It clearly had no proper maintenance for some time and yet it looked like it could have been a working car... Before winter struck that, is, and it was under a ton of snow at least three times, all of the three piles clearly melting into the car, effectively making everything rusty.

​The most mysterious aspect about that car, though, was a cylinder from a washing machine on the passenger seat. It was just there all the time clearly making too much questions in my head then it really should. The car vanished a week ago or so but I still think about why there was a washing machine cylinder in it. 

I feel like I should have had some punchline or a witty conclusion to it, but that's just it: some objects on the streets puzzle me. And it is kinda weird that not many people pay any attention to their surroundings whatsoever.    

Yours sincerely, 
Nikolay Yeriomin. 
I saw many things when I visited Ukraine, including a man covered with birds in a park. Kiev is an amazing city; as you enter it the place looks like City 17 from Half-Life 2, the roads are in a terrible state, and there are stray dogs and little old women carrying chickens wandering around everywhere.

However, it's paradoxically one of the most beautiful cities I've visited. And that Motherland statue is MASSIVE, yet nobody in the West ever mentions it. They all bang on about the Statue of Liberty, but when I visited that years back I was disappointed by how small it is.

Come on, Ukraine; start telling people about your enormous statue of a woman waving a sword! 

Also, when I was there the place had recently switched over to a democratic model, but every single person I spoke to wanted a return to dictatorship. So... that was interesting, and sort of made me realise that we shouldn't really be dicking around, telling other countries what they "should" or shouldn't be doing.
THE DUNNING MAN
Once again, I see you on Twitter panhandling for letters. Kind you, you do that so much that I expect that you make up most of your letters anyway.

I bet you even made this one up.

All the best,
Paul Dunning
SPOILER ALERT: I made up your entire life, Paul.
50 Qs OF WHYTE
1. What, in your opinion, is the definitive mobile game so far? My favourite is probably Peggle, but Angry Birds is probably the most iconic.

2. I remember you saying that you like playing football computer games despite not really liking football - are there any other sports that you don't enjoy but like the games of?

3. What was your opinion of the God of War games, if any? The first two (original especially) are still two of my favourite games ever so I'm genuinely excited by the new one - did you enjoy any of them?

4. Bayonetta is perhaps my favourite game ever, but even I, who usually doesn't care about this sort of thing, feels that the character is on the edge of being over-sexualised. The character was created and modelled by women but does that make it any more acceptable in principle?
​John Whyte
1. Yeah, it's probably Angry Birds, just because everyone played it. Whatever happened to Angry Birds? There was a film and everything. Apparently the studio behind it, Rovio, shut its London office last month. That's not good.

2. I absolutely love tennis and snowboarding games for some reason. I'm currently playing a lot of Super Tennis on the SNES. What a shame that was never included on the SNES Mini. It remains brilliant; incredibly simple, yet deceptively deep. Never got along with basketball games for some reason, though.

3. I've loved all the God of War games, and the reviews for the new one have got me right stoked up.

4. Oh, man. That's a big question. In all honesty, I don't feel sufficiently clued-up to really have an opinion about it. Not without putting my foot in it anyway. Oddly, I've never really considered the character as over-sexualised, because she's so stylised as to not even really register as human to me. But then... having just looked up some of the key artwork, a lot of it appears to show her "presenting" her anus. 
16 Comments
Paul
13/4/2018 09:04:11 am

I like those mini consoles. The C64 one looks great, but feel let down by the dead keyboard - review notwithstanding.

I’d love a mini BBC Micro, but there was a lot more going on than games. I guess the natural successor to the Beeb is the Raspberry Pi. There is even a version of RISC OS that runs on it, so Ibguess that helps keep things “native”. But a mini Beeb? If that ever happens, I’ll be there.

The one to get really excited about is the Spectrum Next - not a mini machine, but a new one that uses new hardware to move that platform on. The bare boards are designed to fit in original 48k Spectrum cases. It was a Kickstarter thing, so right now they are just fulfilling pledges, but hopefully after that (if interest is there), they’ll do a production run for the rest of us once their Kickstarter commitments are done.

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Neptunium
13/4/2018 02:40:35 pm

I actually think Nintendo's Top Ranking Tennis on the Gameboy outclasses Super Tennis. It's such a deep game, and has the catchiest tennis game title theme ever - they should defo use it to replace the Wimbledon theme.

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Mrtankthreat
13/4/2018 03:01:21 pm

A scrolling beat em up stream would be excellent but I'd love to see Biffo attempt one of those Kaizo Mario rom hacks.

As for Ukrainians longing for a dictatorship I've often wondered would it have been so bad if Napoleon had won? I've really only skimmed the wiki page about him but I'm not entirely sure what was so bad about him that he had to be defeated other than he was cutting into other people's empirical action. The only downside to him winning I can see is that we wouldn't have had that Abba song.

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Nikolay Yeriomin link
14/4/2018 10:01:07 pm

Well, in my family almost all grandfathers and grandmothers had some problems with USSR and practically lived their lives unable to achieve their full potential and use their talents (to say the least). Paternal grandpatents, who survived to see the USSR collapsing were still quite scared when it did, because transitional periods are never calm and we were kind of like always in transitional period. I'd say we still are.

As for Napoleon... I don't know. Megalomaniacs are often very charismatic but can't hold the power for too long and in cases of them actually achieving something they arguably fail even more spectecularly then on the battlefield.

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ZXGuesser
13/4/2018 03:03:23 pm

A "mini-spectrum" doesn't really make much sense if you want a working keyboard. The original ZX Spectrum was already "mini" and while you could easily shrink the motherboard down into a couple of chips the keyboard has to stay big enough to type on.

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Picston Shottle
13/4/2018 03:05:54 pm

Yup - them Kiev roads are real bad. I remember being driven to the airport and trying stuck in traffic so my driver just mounted the pavement and drove along that until we cleared the traffic jam which, from what I could make out, was caused by two trucks and a crater in the road.

I’ve been to Odessa too - don’t really remember the roads, but I do remember getting caught up in the Orange Revolution and managing to end up in the middle of marches/demonstrations for both Yanukovych and Yushchenko.

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sonicshrimp
14/4/2018 07:31:02 am

This trigerred a memory which made me do a big laugh! We had to get from rural Belarus to Minsk airport (a long old drive). Two minibusses (minibii? Minibussles?) That we booked did arrive but one driver was so extremely pissed we told him to lie down and put all the luggage and people into one. Turned out this, marginally less sloshed, driver was not the one who knew the way. The funniest memory was watching this man chase a tractor across a field, trying to ask for directions, whilst the tractor driver either couldnt hear/didnt care. Comically avoiding cows. Brilliant.

At one point he also stopped in the middle of a forest road in the pitch dark and left the van (presumably to do a poo) and didn't return for half an hour, by which point it all felt a bit scary.

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Nikolay Yeriomin link
14/4/2018 09:55:17 pm

As a Ukrainian semi-regularly visiting Kyiv (next time will be my 40th if I'm counting correctly, including a brief period of living in and around the city) I can say that roads near Kyiv evolved a bit since 2004, but not much.

Had never been in Odessa (which is kind of weird) and will try to cross that out of the bucket list this year.

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Chris
15/4/2018 10:44:59 am

Mr Hairs says in his book about cycling the iron curtain, that he could tell which side of the border he was on by the state of the road (and further down, in Germany, by the kindness of the people).

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breadface link
13/4/2018 05:48:38 pm

I started playing God of War several years ago, in between doing other stuff. I took up gaming late tho, and I'm frankly rubbish at it. I spent a year stuck on Ares' flaming balls just because I couldn't open a door quick enough. Finally managed it, and nipped around the corner and up the stairs, and now I've been stuck on the beams and saws bit for months. I never died so often - his death cry haunts me! Sadly I think Kratos may remain there forever as diminishing (never really there in the first place) hand eye co-ordination and a diagnosis of amd means I'll probably never finish. Which means the sequel won't get played either and I was really looking forward to that.

Mr B - I'm glad to hear there may be a way to contribute to Digitiser the show - finances not in a good place currently, so I couldn't contribute to the kickstarter. I consoled myself with the thought that I could potentially up my patreon donation at some point - and I am happy for that to continue alongside ads - but I would like to give something to the show directly.

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Monkey Head
14/4/2018 12:43:26 am

Good letters page this week, but where's Gaming Mill lately, I generally look forward to his letters but he's been missing as often as not of late. Now to look up the Motherland statue.

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Starbuck
14/4/2018 01:22:27 am

Mill, PSB, Hardy, O'Connor... perhaps there's a serial killer amongst us (or for Apple users, a Siri O'Killa).

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James Walker link
14/4/2018 07:42:51 am

I watched that Youdale video, blimey, you weren't joking were you? It was like something off of found footage!

She's still fit though! Megalolz!

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Nikolay Yeriomin link
14/4/2018 09:52:16 pm

Great thanks for answering that letter of mine, Mr. Biffo. I should have proof-read it a bit better (commas everywhere, whether they're needed or not).

Judging from what you have written you have been in Kyiv (correct pronunciation and spelling from the perspective of Ukrainian language, Kiev will sound like "Kiv", while the city was named after a guy named Kyi; it gets really tricky and starts many disputes) rather long time ago. Even if it was somewhere in 2010's, many things managed to change just in three years from 2014 to 2017. I can totally agree that telling other countries what they should or shouldn't do simply won't work... Because countries should probably make their own decisions and mistakes which will make them achieve understanding of their situation on their own.

I'd say 1991-2004 or even 1991-2014 was mostly inertia from USSR from the political perspective and I'm glad that situation is trying to change because... Well, I was born after USSR and from what I've heard and especially from what it was for my family I can tell it was never a healthy environment. Especially for what I love to do, which is filmmaking.

As for the statue and sights in general - it sure feels like we're trying to promote that, but not enough and kinda lazily. Recently a lot of commercials and music videos by artists and brands all over the world were filmed in Kyiv, though, showcasing different interesting locations.

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The Genie of the Lamp (Console?)
15/4/2018 10:49:11 am

A mini Mega Drive, you say, Mr Biffo? *waves wand*
Wish granted!
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/sega_announces_ages_for_nintendo_switch_mega_drive_mini_console

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Spiney O'Sullivan
15/4/2018 03:52:35 pm

This has a lot to prove as it's being produced by AtGames, who have made roughly fifteen thousand sub-par mini MegaDrive systems.

The Switch ports are exciting, though. Since Nintendo apparently can't be bothered to port old games to a system that is just a perfect fit for them, at least someone can,

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