Date: 22/12/98

It's back with dead herrings in it's ears. It is.... Drumroll? Hello? Oh bugger.

We're(I'm) back!

After a months break from BSB, and several months break from page670, I've decided to give the old workhorse page670 a breath of Bristol life once more.

What exactly Oxygen, various harmful chemicals and last nights curry can do to a Digitally stored Website remains to be seen.

What exactly has happened whilst I've been out? Oh, not much.

Just the launch of several xmas titles, with automatic (as is the season) acclaim, magazines quickly forgetting how repeptitive the scene is these days. alt.digitiser has come back out of the woodwork, and, as the local newspaper put it, the "ALLIES [have]BOMB[ed] IRAQ." Us and the french risitance, obviously.

Trigger(bombing) happy

Infact, the body pol-lazy-gitic - the group of people who don't watch any sort of TV News because it's "fucking boring" and belive everything they read in the Sun - could of easily mistaken the whole event for a full scale war. As they did. On many a street corner you heard idel chit-chat on how we would be bombed by the Iraqis. WWIII, it seemed, could come at any minute.

But Operation Desertfox64 ("Shouldn't that be Gulfwars with added rumble pack?" - Nintendo Europe) wasn't a full scale war in the style of the 1991 conflict. Far from it, Desertfox went as quick as it came. An air of dissapointment could be heard in CNN International's London studios, as they saw their ratings tumble once more into an oblivion.

The 24 hour news networks need operations such as Desertfox so they can blast out mindless coverage from 'experts', amazingly intresting green pictures of Baghdad and various dignitries spewing jargon, and apologies. BBC News 24, Sky and CNN's saw their ratings go though the BARB equivilant of a heart during the faithfull 3 or 4 days.

It is also rather insulting to our intelligence that UNSCOM now expect that after they have bombed the fuck out of Iraq, they will kindly let them back in as they are too weak. Is Richard Butler completely naive? Surly they did the blitz their school historys lessons. Bombing may tear down houses, buildings and lives, but it dosn't tear down the moral fabric of a nation. If anything, pulls people together. This was the case with both the Germans and the British in WWII, as with many other conflicts in the past, terrorist bombings included.

After the blitz, did we invite the Nazi's in for tea? Erm, no. Will UNSCOM get a look in in the near future? Erm, no. Better keep bombing, MonicaiiimeanBill.

Dreamcast

Many have compared the launch of the 'cast to the launch of the 32-bit also-ran back in 1995. The lack of machines, the not-oh-so-amazing games (although much that has been said about the launch titles has been said by those who havn't gone near one yet) and the public floggings of Sega Japanese CEOs.

But it's not their fault. An apparant shortage of graphics chips, the all important component, manufactured by NEC and designed by Videologic - A british firm famous for the PowerVR chipset - meant the Dreamcast was forced into short supply.

Maybe if they set up shop in the UK, where some fairly empty factory space is going cheap (Hello Siemens), the shortage could of been non exsistent, yes?

'Course not. They'll never do that. The Far East can do what we do cheaper, anyway. Even if it isn't up to speed...

The end[of percentages]

A discussion on alt.digitiser will most likely lead to the end of percentages in Digitiser reviews. The overall marking system, used by games magazines for years now, could be replaced with a single word, or nothing at all.

Percentages annoy most reviewers, who after writing over 200 words of their opinion, have to wittle it all down into 2 simple digits. However convientent for the eye, the figure is actually quite difficult to produce. Should I mark down because it came out last year? How much by? Should I mark it up because that PR girl took me out to lunch yesterday? In the end, many journolists simply pick out a number between 70%-90%, and be done with it, attracting critisms of the "You're too safe" kind.

And then there's Mr Biffo. Paul Rose last week gave Fifa99 40%, a huge markdown because of the many fifa titles released in the year. A couple of ADers got pissy (including me) about the mark. It seemed a bit unfair after singing it's praises so much in the review, to damn it at the end heavily because it supposedly came out twice in the year already (as WC98 and Fifa98, RTWC), which was a fair point, but marking it down to 40% seemed absurd.

Biffo stood his guard however, and in the end the whole disscussion seemed pointless. Review scores are usually interpreted however the reader feels, and not only Digitiser, but other mags have had many a complaint from readers misunderstandings, leaving editors with no option but to plead "Get a life." However, it's unlikely many will attempt to experiment with a new system, bar Digi. Page670 is in favour of such a good deed. PAndroid