Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Only watching just this now, and finding it a lot of fun. Micro Men is a broadly comic semi-fictionalized drama about the early 80s computer war between Sir Clive Sinclair and Ex-employee Chris Curry (i.e. Acorn Electron, BBC). Alexander Armstrong’s portrait of Sir Clive is agreeably arrogantly monstrous. It’s still on iPlayer if you want to go watch. It’s a bit of a shame that it’s both technically awkward and probably illegal to watch iPlayer outside the UK, because the whole early 80s British computer boom is such a part of RPS’ gaming history – and influencing a lot of the wider gaming world in what it allowed – that I think it’d be interesting to the colonials. Trailer follows…
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Charlie Brooker, professional media sourpuss, occasional comedy megabrain and former PC games reviewer, tonight turned his frighteningly successful brand of comic sneering towards a games documentary(ish) on UK digital station BBC4. As with his Screenwipe and Newswipe shows, it’s him in a dimly-lit lounge, frothing bitterly to camera about popular culture. UK folk and IP perverters can now watch it online on the BBC iPlayer here, but I’ve just watched it the old-fashioned way. ON TELEVISION, AS IT HAPPENED. It’s like I live in the 1800s.
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Here’s a rather excellent thing you probably didn’t see yet.

We heart Consolevania. And sometimes they even mention PC games, which makes anything they do completely relevant to this blog. Phew, eh?

As a part of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, evil PR man Brian Baglow (he’s lovely, but it’s very important we maintain that everyone in PR is evil) was asked to do “something” about the games industry in Scotland. His idea – to make a film about the business. Using his cunning, he roped in the Consolevania guys to create a 45 minute documentary, filmed over three days, visiting some of Scotland’s games developers. And asking them questions like, “What’s the longest word you know?”

At first glance it may seem to primarily be about people making games for mobile and Xbox Live, but look closer. They’re making them on PCs, see? And some of them even mention that they make some games for PC sometimes. Outerlight! They made The Ship. Thank the baby Jeebus. See – there’s no question this should be on RPS. Also, we love Consolevania best, and are posting it anyway, so screw you.

Engagingly titled Fluff Piece, you can watch it below, and pretend to your friends that this is the primary source for watching it so we get all the hits, or get your own copy to keep forever from here.