Thanks!

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Firstly this month, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who showed up on #digi98 (RIP), and who's helped in our mission to start up a Digi newsgroup.

The newsgroup world, though, is full of self-important, bureaucratic buffoons, whose mission in life appears to be to obstruct, rather than facilitate, the creation of new groups.

(Also, the basic info about how to set a group up is locked in a special drawer at the bottom of the sea, in a box marked "Beware Of The Squid").

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So if you want there to be a forum on the net for talking about games - and Digi itself - with other readers, and Digi staff and contributors, you're going to have to help us out again, one last time (if it fails, we'll give up).

Don't worry, it's nothing complicated - just go to uk.net.news.config and post a one-line message headed "Digitiser newsgroup", with this body text:

"I, (your name here), support the creation of a Digitiser newsgroup under the name uk.games.video.digitiser".

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But enough about that. Let's talk about some more important stuff, like football games.

Because I'm just about sick of playing footy games, picking Scotland, and seeing some bunch of pixelled nonces running around in kits anything up to two years out of date (Actua Soccer 2), or even worse, some revolting made-up concoction of pale-blue and white vertical stripes (Power Soccer 2).

This would never happen with England. Sort it out, you useless chimps.

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In June, we don't see millions of games about sunbathing. In November, the shops aren't exclusively full of bonfire and fireworks simulations.

So how come in February, it's completely impossible to buy any kind of new game that isn't about snow?

The ONLY new Playstation and N64 games officially released this month (which, incidentally, comprises a pathetic TWO new games for each machine) are all either about snowboarding or the Winter Olympicsszzzzz. It's hopeless.

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Once again, then, we're left without a single dedicated video games show on Earth TV. The last Gamesmaster ever (yeah, right) bowed out this month in a flurry of, er, something. (I forgot it was on and missed it, as usual.)

Now might be a good time to start demanding a replacement - write to games magazines and insist that they mount a concerted campaign, perhaps printing up lots of pre-paid postcards which readers can send to their MPs. (And if that doesn't work, throw a bucket of water over them.)

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Seriously, though, it's a ludicrous state of affairs that a pastime so well suited to TV, and with many more active participants than opera, cricket or any of a dozen other things which get hours of airtime every week, still has no proper telly coverage whatsoever.

(There are more than three million console owners in the UK alone, plus the countless PCs used for gaming.)

That the games industry has done nothing about it is a limp disgrace. Let them know about it.

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And there's just enough time left over for a quick reminder to PC owners:

Never, ever install anything on your PC that didn't come supplied with it!

Not even if it's just software!

If you want to run something new, buy a new PC instead! It'll be cheaper in the long run!

You know I'm right.