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The documentary Heart Of Neon tells the story of pioneering videogame designer Jeff Minter. A new Kickstarter campaign has launched to fund its Blu-ray release.

Directed by Paul Docherty, the feature-length documentary Heart Of Neon tells the story of a key figure in the British games industry. Jeff Minter began making games in the early 1980s; but where once mighty software houses have fallen and game designers have moved to other industries, Minter has kept going.

In the 21st century, he’s still making his own brand of psychedelic shoot-’em-ups – titles like Tempest 4000, Polybius and Akka Arrh are as recognisably his as Attack Of The Mutant Camels and Gridrunner were in the 1980s.

In 2017, Docherty travelled from his base in Brooklyn to Minter’s farm in rural Wales to meet him for the first time. Through Minter, Docherty wanted to tell the story of the British games industry from Minter’s unique perspective,...

Breaking news: Charlie Brooker is developing a new piece of tech that will redefine reality.

The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday received in their inbox the ultimate Easter egg to promote season seven: A leaked internal and confidential email from Tckr Systems Communications preparing the Black Mirror creator for the launch of a new product called Nubbin.

Black Mirror viewers will recognize the Nubbin as the headpiece that many characters across six (and soon to be seven) seasons of the Netflix dystopian series place on their temple before they head into some sort of immersive escapade with their virtual consciousness.

(If you haven’t guessed by now, this is not a real product announcement. But it is a real Easter egg… so, let’s keep going!)

Included in the “leaked” email is a live website introducing the implantable technology, while also making users aware of its risks. [Writers note: Anyone interested in Nubbin should check out the FAQs section, and then go watch season six episode “Joan Is Awful” before engaging with this product.]

There’s also a...

Audiences have pretty thoroughly scoured Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in order to see every depressing/gruesome/surreal ending to mentally ill computer game programmer Stefan’s story. But there’s one short conclusion that Netflix wants to highlight, perhaps because they have the behind the scenes viewing information that suggests that this is the least seen part of the show.

Via their Netflix UK & Ireland Twitter account, they’ve instructed viewers to do the following:

think you’ve seen everything there is to see in bandersnatch? try picking up the family photo, ~twice~

So, what happens if you do that? Well, the murderous author of the in-universe choose-your-own-adventure novel Bandersnatch, Jerome F. Davies, will appear from nowhere and stab Stefan to death. Though many people are calling this a ‘new’ ending, I did actually reach it the first time through, and it’s a pretty effective jump scare.

But wait, there...

After spotting Jeff Minter in Port Talbot last week, I’ve thinking about the Welsh video game industry as I can’t recall the last time that I played a game set in Wales or made by a Welsh Developer, so it was quite coincidental that this week I was sent The Bunker to review, a game made by a company based in Bridgend called Wales Interactive. It was also a nice surprise to find out it’s a Fmv (Full-Motion Video) game – a genre that’s quite difficult to get right – and while there are some pitfalls that come with the territory, The Bunker is a well-made and enjoyable narrative-driven tale definitely closer to the 7th Guests and Phantasmagorias of the genre than Tender Loving Care.

The Bunker tells the story of a man called John who has spent his entire life in the titular bunker following an undisclosed catastrophe above ground.

In recent years there has been a real boom in documentaries surrounding popular culture. Films such as Electric Boogaloo, Video Nasties, The Search for Weng Weng and Adjust Your Tracking have captured the zeitgeist of fans across the globe, and in turn inspired more people to create their own documentaries about pop culture subjects that matter to them…

But not all these documentaries see the same success. Having been on something of a documentary kick lately, I thought I’d break down the ten of the best little-known, or better yet little-discussed, pop-culture documentaries from the many, many examples I have been watching. So here they are and, for once, they’re in order:

1) Slaughter Nick For President

There’s a good reason this film is at the top of my list. This is the documentary that kicked off my exploration of pop culture documentaries (eventually ending up at compliling this list) and,...

Great geek book publisher Read-Only Memory has announced Britsoft: An Oral History, which charts the growth of the British games industry...

Read-Only Memory have published some of the best videogame-focused books of recent years, including Sensible Software 1986-1999 and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: The Collected Works.

The company's latest volume, Britsoft: An Oral History, charts the golden age of programming in the UK - an early-80s era where a new generation of affordable computers prompted an explosion of creativity.

Designed as a companion piece to the recent documentary, From Bedrooms To Billions, Britsoft will include interviews with 35 programmers and designers that entertained a generation of gamers - these include Elite's David Braben, Attack Of The Mutant Camels' Jeff Minter, X-Com's Julian Gollop, and chiptune composer Rob Hubbard.

Given that Read-Only Memory's previous books have been both exquisitely designed and full of valuable info, we're looking forward to seeing their...

The Play “Expo” events in Blackpool and Manchester are, in some ways, an attempt to recapture and relive the community spirit of video gaming in an age where keyboard warriors and faceless online gaming rule the roost. It’s also a celebration of the history of gaming, from the early years of arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac Man, thorugh the early gaming years of the Zx Spectrum and Commodore 64, all the way to the last-gen of consoles…

And Play are not the only ones interested in the history of video gaming. There have been a number of film makers have eleased documentaries in recent years that look at gaming in a nostalgic light, many from a Us perspective, including World 1-1: The Pioneers – which had its European debut at this years Play Blackpool; and From Bedrooms to Billions, (a big seller for Play sponsors Funstock.co.uk...

There was a little-known program that aired just this Saturday night over on UK soil, called How Video Games Changed The World (you’ll have to get your Google on to find it now!). Usually shows that attempt to dissect such hyperbolic titles will swing too much in the favour of the mainstream opinion on topics us gamers are very well versed in, such as violence, sexism, and the new ‘are games art’ debates, often just fanning the fires of debate rather than controlling them.

However this show managed to wade deeply into the topics that mattered whilst also holding the mainstream’s hand to ensure they didn’t get pulled under through lack of understanding. Helped along the way by industry figureheads like Peter Molyneux, Jeff Minter, Tim Schafer and Neil Druckman alongside more well-known names such as Jonathon Ross and Dara O’Briain, the show did a fantastic...