PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH

Tempting as it is to pick Gridrunner which is the best Gridrunner since Gridrunner++ was the best Gridrunner and the point where all of Jeff’s iOS-isms come together, it’s like historyofvideogames:thevideogame at times and it’s a truly fabulous thing and one of the few games to get filed under Great Lost Arcade Games That Never Were and that’s really really great but oh, Deflex. I fucking love Deflex.

Whereas the rest of Jeff’s catalogue is tailoring (very well for the most part) the arcade to iOS, Deflex is Jeff Minter:The iOS Game. It’s filled with all the things you take for granted in a Jeff game, animals, shaders, big text, more animals and some animals and so far so Jeff but yeah, not quite so by the numbers here.

Drop mirrors onto the board to bounce a ball to collect items to clear the level. Tap the left side for mirrors facing one way, tap the right side for mirrors facing the other. That’s it for the controls, beautifully simple stuff. But as usual, it’s the rest of the stuff that separates Deflex from your usual iOS fare. You can imagine many other games trying to do this sort of thing, fuck they’d probably do it ok as well but you know they’d have to throw in a cartoon beaver called Deefles who lives in the land of mirrors and must collect all the lost coins of Lex and PS buy more coins please, that’ll be £69.99 for 20,000 and it’d all be drawn in that slick but soulless EA-does-mobile kind of style and yes, yes, it’d be playable but god, just kill me now.

Instead, we have videogames through the Minter filter. There’s no cartoon graphics here, just slightly freaky 8 bit styled graphics ran through a weirdy shader and L.Ron Hubbard gawping out at you behind the glass. Fucking L.Ron Hubbard staring out of your iphone. Shit. Don’t do that, it’s scary. And the sound! None of the usual arcade sfx or blips and blops here just the tinkling of an Eno-esque ambient piano and the whispered voice of a little girl. It’s sort of calming in a way. Calming in that “oh no, I’m not going to fall asleep, you won’t make me, I don’t know what you’ll do to me whilst I rest” kind of way. And that, that’s the extra bits that tip over an already fantastic game into the realms of genius.

And that’s why you should go and grab Deflex sort of right about now because it’s fantastic and creepy and relaxing and feels like the kind of game that’s existed forever and will exist forever more because that’s what Jeff does and that’s what makes his stuff so very special.

This is Deflex.

Three letters that define my teenage years outside of videogames. Sadly not SEX but if you could all pretend anyway and I’ll feel a bit better about how much more shagging I probably should have been doing instead of watching films, going to concerts and playing videogames. Actually, I did alright now I think about it, scratch that.

Anyway, yes, VHS. Three letters. The eighties, the nineties. So much of my formative years defined by VHS. From the pre-video nasty gambles (“whoops, wrong Snow White”), to how many times can one kid humanly watch Krull even though it’s a bit rubbish, to the idents to the days off sick from school with a mound of concerts taped off the television and a copy of Day Of The Daleks to the like-Big-Hollywood-Movie-but-crapper straight to video market to really, is this what Charles Bronson has become? to Brian Dennehey in another true and emotional story to can we stop putting Eric Roberts in movies please he’s not very good to an eventual nervous breakdown.

Outside of videogames I can’t help but look back and tie so many moments with something VHS. More than videogames, more than music, those fucking clunky bastard tapes defined parts of me.

And then one day, they didn’t. One day we had DVD and that’s another story.

But if it isn’t VHS, it’s videogames. So a set of videogames that combine video schlock, old hardware and the cut and paste everything attitude? OK then.

Imagine every eighties type in gone wrong via the medium of VHS and you’re probably close. Probably.

Play them.

Sonic The Eccohog. Yes.

I didn’t get to play much of Derrick The Deathfin. Through the tutorial, out the other side and up to the first boss battle and then that was it. That was me done. I left Derrick behind.

I didn’t want to leave Derrick behind just that y’know, there was a small problem. Kinda about yay big and called “my son”. Yeah, I made *that* mistake.

I played Derrick The Deathfin in front of him and from that moment on, any time I’d want to spend playing Derrick would have to be done in the dark late hours of the evening because any time before that, he wanted to play Derrick. I got the “nah, come on” face when I told him that yes, the reason the characters look like they’re made out of cardboard is that they were made of cardboard. No way! You can’t make games out of cardboard, dad. Don’t be soft. One video later. Yes you can. Oh man. Yes.

So yeah, Derrick. What I played of it was absolutely fantastic grin worthy blue (oceans) sky fun. I’ll come back to Derrick next year when the kid’s bored of it and I can safely load it up without being mugged for the controller. Until then, oh go on, it can have a place in my #indiexmas list for the hours of peace bought alone.

Derrick The Deathfin is on PSN for not a lot of money.

We’ve sat quietly and watched as Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands found themselves dragged through the mud, their elegance, their colours, their beauty beaten and kicked out of them in a succession of point missing tatware releases. Sometimes we wept because it hurt.

And we wondered to ourselves, will we ever see the likes again?

And then, as if by magic, a Super Crate Box appeared and the spirit of Bubble Bobble found itself bottled in a jar of super high paced lean videogame and for a moment, the world felt right again. But we paused, and we wept once more. For Rainbow Islands, what will become of you?

Fuck it, Frutorious is close enough. It’ll do. It’s the modern Rainbow Islands but without Toy Island so you don’t want to nut someone in the armpit for being nasty to you. God, I hate Toy Island. It’s the spirit of Rainbow Islands and that’s good enough for me. Start at the bottom, get to somewhere near the top, collect fruit because collecting fruit is videogame life and smile. Oh fuck yes, just smile. For a game made of fuzzy felt and plasticine that isn’t full of “oh get me, I’m a creepy goth, rargh!” is smiles, it can be nothing else.

It’s on iOS. It’s the modern Rainbow Islands without Toy Island. It’s a bouncy pinball plasticine skull stole my fruts of a game. It’s great.

This is Frutorious. #levels.

A game where you race to shave a face as fast as you can whilst using a razor blade guided by a really powereful magnet. I wouldn’t blame you if you had a far more gruesome image of how the game plays out than the reality because y’know, razor blades, magnets, just don’t. However! MSD takes the Minter route to videogames and everything in the game could politely be described as “utterly off its tits” from the cucumber that covers the eyes (careful now) and the bonus mode where you erm, have to balance a penguin on a razor blade whilst flying through space.

VIDEOGAMES.

Best of all, thanks to the unfortunate demise of Open Feint, Magnetic Shaving Derby is now absolutely free so if you own an iOS device, really, you’ve just ran out of excuses now. This is the stuff legends are made of and that’s why there’s an honourable appearance in Charlie’s Games excellent arena shooter Scoregasm and a SCRATCH tribute. It’s a truly wonderful thing, get it.

This is Magnetic Shaving Derby.

Yeah. Twenty Twelve. Look at you, look what you did. A year of great victory and great sadness. A year of anger and the crumbling of giants. Fuck, Twenty Twelve you’ve been a rollercoaster, you really have.

WATCH as the big hitters paper over the cracks of XBLA’s demise as a viable sales route for most indies, the transition from game box to media box screaming BEWARE WINDOWS 8 to all and sundry.

SHOUT as Valve accidentally expose the dark secret that “indie” is not a catch all term, the differences in approach, heart, ethics and end goals spewed onto the internet over $100 to chance your indie arm at being on a store. And lo, Greenlight was born and it was so very shit.

CELEBRATE the press finally fucking realising that yes, it’s absolutely fine to take a look at indie games for realsies and no-one will set fire to them for it. It’s been a long road from Indie Zone to Noitu Love 2′s Edge review to twenty twelve indie reviews as normal content but it’s done. Fuck you, we’ve landed. Only this time, you’ve noticed. The rest of the world is catching up with RPS, finally.

CRY at the realisation that there’s still the console release=legitimate actual real videogame narrative, ex studio staff make game is still considered an interesting story over actual real person with more facets than ex-cog makes a game but nod knowing that we can all make better stories, there’s still ground to be gained. There’s still fuck you’s to be done. We’ve got time.

REJOICE as for the first year that I can ever remember, thanks to Twine, thanks to the proliferation of other easy game dev tools and more, there’s more important voices joining the chorus of WE MAKE GAMES than ever before. I am a white man with a beard, I am not the lone voice of indie anymore. The world of videogames benefits oh so much from this. It is a brilliant thing. I can’t keep up. That’s fantastic. We’re fantastic.

WORRY because it’s always worth being concerned.

SCREAM because sometimes, it just fucking helps, you know?

And the games, those bloody videogames. Oh, look at you all. Just look at you. You’re brilliant. The consoles may be on a death cycle but the games just keep on coming anyway because that’s what we do, that’s how we’ve always done. We make videogames. We always have.

And you know what? We do that fucking amazingly, all told.

Just play videogames, alright? Yes, let’s do this. Let’s play some fucking videogames because what else are we here for if not that? Let me help you out with that today. This is Indie 2012. This is videogames 2012. There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the let’s play some videogames party.

I’ll help you have yourself a very indie xmas but try and squeeze in some time for human beings as well. There’s lots of good people out there, you should probably embrace that. They’re worth more than the glow of machines.