Do you remember Do You Remember This? Do you remember Do You Remember Do You Remember This? Of course you do. But do you remember Digitiser The Show? Apparently quite a lot of you do, because the Kickstarter for a second series of the chaotic retro gaming-themed YouTube show blasted through its initial goal of £25,000 in less than 24 hours and, at the time of writing, is sitting at more than double that.
For the uninitiated, Digitiser is the brainchild of Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose, and was originally a much-beloved section of the Teletext service on the British TV channels ITV and Channel 4 between the years of 1993 and 2003. It gained renown for its irreverent, surrealist humour and the fact that video games coverage was just part of what it offered; people might have initially showed up for the video games, but it was the hilarious work of Rose and the other contributors that kept people coming back to Digitiser’s little corner of Teletext day after day.
In more recent years, Rose has been working hard resurrecting the Digitiser brand for a modern audience. He initially launched a website called Digitiser 2000, which features articles by both Rose and contributing guest authors, and subsequently decided he wanted to experiment with what the combination of Digitiser and YouTube could offer the world.
The result was Digitiser The Show, a series of ambitious, chaotic episodes that combined semi-serious discussion of retro gaming matters with madcap physical comedy, surreal segments and live-action adaptations of some of the most beloved characters from the original Teletext pages.
Digitiser The Show featured Rose in a “master of ceremonies” role, but also Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman from the hilarious podcast CheapShow, retro gaming YouTubers Octavius King, “Guru” Larry Bundy Jr and Jennyverse as regular guests. Various episodes also featured additional guest appearances from people such as YouTube tat-fondler Stuart Ashen, Go 8-bit co-creator Steve McNeil, Rose’s partner in crime from back in the day Tim “Mr Hairs” Moore and many more besides. Legend has it even Sonic creator Yuji Naka put in an appearance, but the veracity of these claims is yet to be indisputably proven. I think I might have dreamed that bit.
Following the success of Digitiser The Show, Rose has continued to experiment with format on his YouTube channel, branching the Digitiser brand out to incorporate a much wider variety of topics beyond gaming, albeit often still with a retro angle of some description. The lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic also forced a great deal of improvisation and smaller-scale projects while it was impossible and/or impractical for Rose’s frequent collaborators to meet with him, but over time Rose has managed to maintain a loyal and enthusiastic audience as well as solid support on Patreon, even when faced with the challenges of the last couple of years.
Rose has also played host to two highly successful and well-received Digitiser Live shows in the United Kingdom, which brought the chaos of the YouTube channel to the stage in spectacular fashion — as well as giving us songs you’ll be singing in the shower for years to come, such as the all-time classic “David Braben Did a Poo”. The second of these shows was something of a celebration of pandemic lockdown restrictions lifting enough to make such an event possible again — and everyone had a thoroughly lovely time.
For a long time, though, Rose has been conscious that certain people have always followed Digitiser for stuff that is at least tangentially related to gaming. Rose is a fiercely independent creator who never lets people tell him what to do, and that’s why people love his work. But there’s still clearly a love for gaming — particularly retro gaming — burning inside him; his regular contributions to Retro Gamer magazine from Future Publishing should be proof enough of that. And so he wanted to resurrect Digitiser The Show as a format — taking on board the lessons he learned from both the original series and the live events.
Rose’s followers and fans have proven themselves to be more than willing to cough up for crowdfunding when it comes to creative projects, so Kickstarter was a natural choice to fund “Level 2” of Digitiser The Show. He planned for both a lower-budget and bigger-budget version of the new series — given the success of the campaign so far, I’d reckon it’s fair to say we’ll be looking at the higher-budget take on things, which is a delight to see.
“After the first series, people told us to take Digitiser The Show to TV companies, but we resisted,” Rose writes on the campaign’s Kickstarter page. “Frankly, we know what this show needs to be, we know games, and we didn’t want external producers getting involved and turning it into a shiny floor panel show jamboree hosted by One Of Those Comedians.
“I want to make the gaming show I’ve always wanted to see,” he continues, “and, if you back the campaign, you’ll be coming along for the ride, every step of the way.”
At the time of writing, 586 people have signed up for that ride, raising £55,159 of the original £25,000 goal with a full 27 days left to go on the campaign. This means that nearly all of the project’s stretch goals — including Rose marrying his old nemesis, the Amiga, as well as a visit from both a monkey and a second, much larger monkey — have been met already, with only the reveal of The World’s Most Beautiful Boy at £60,000 and DVD cover artwork from Ste Pickford at £70,000. There’s also an as-yet unrevealed £75,000 stretch goal.
If you want to be part of this amazing story, your pledge can get you all sorts of goodies, ranging from a simple mention in the credits at £5 up to backer-exclusive episodes, T-shirts, DVDs, set visits and even — even — clumps of Rose’s hair.
You know what to do. Stay away from Mr. T’s bins. And also back Digitiser The Show Level 2 on Kickstarter. If, you know, you want to.
