Greetings! This is Matt - aka Diggler - and The TPS Report is my blog-slash-geek embossed gaming hole.

Freelance game reviewer and rambling obsessive that I am, I currently seek employment in mags and web sites based anywhere in the world. If you're in a position to make that happen - and like what you see around here - please let me know. I have published work with the likes of IGN and GamingSteve.com

Hate mail, job offers and "right on!"s can all be directed this way.

TPS approved custom built gaming PCs

Yet there's more. Along with game reviews, stories and anecdotes, you'll also find the occasional write-up on movies, TV shows, and whatever else happens to be stealing my attention right now, along with free MP3 mixes, videos and even a monthly podcast hosted by myself and the boys...

Latest Show
Currently on hold

Old Entries
First time visiting? Be sure to flip through the archives. I've been writing for freakin' ever, and you never know what you may have missed.

Score Breakdown
Just what those wee numbers mean exactly.

Visit the Forum
Not just your bog-standard gaming chat-fest, I also flood this sucker with whatever interesting news and downloads I happen to stumble across on my daily surfage, both gaming related and non. The boards also play host to a variety of official guild forums in MMO land.

More...

If interested in discussing writing opportunities for on or offline gaming publications - either UK based or abroad - please contact me via E-Mail. Sparkling CV available on request

For those curious, here's a little background info on he responsible for this blue beacon of joy. If you hadn't noticed, I kinda worship the world of videogames...but I've worked on one or two other various projects over the years too. It started, of all places, when my dad introduced me to Star Wars as a near foetus...

Tap Tap Tap

Shortly after Force obsession blossomed within me and my brother, we snagged our first system...the almighty Atari ST. Really, we just wanted a way to play Star Wars games, with many a subsequent memory lassoing AT-AT walkers in all their polygonal glory still buzzing around in my head to this day. This resulted in me falling head over heels in love with the world of gaming as a whole shortly after though...in a way that's stuck with me ever since.

It was Nintendo's Super NES which really got me hooked in my teenage years however, and it was around then that I began discovering the utter brilliance of multiplayer gaming. Many a night would I host Street Fighter II and Super Bomberman parties round my house you see, while other poor saps were off doing their homework and other such nonsense.

The Dark Side

Thanks to my older brother, I was also getting heavily into dance music at the time. When I say getting into it, I mean really getting into it - music basically became my religion for the better part of five years, seeing me through many an angst-filled teenage period.

Whereas most horny young boys at that age are busy discovering the delights of porn, girls and tugging their own dicks, I instead discovered the absolute joy of playing records on turntables. As well as the aforementioned dick tugging. Electronic music of the early '90s was quite unlike anything else out there, both before and after, and is almost something you can't even begin to appreciate unless you were into it at the time. All of my best memories as a teenager, whether it be getting drunk on my 12th birthday, or my first ever kiss with a girl, can be re-lived any time I pop on an ancient 12" from back in the day. That's a force to be reckoned with, sir.

Over the years I got some decks then, starting making and selling mix tapes at school, and eventually started producing my own tracks. The gaming got left behind for a while, while I then went on to create Bassquake...

A Dance Music Retrospective

Definitely the biggest site I've worked on

Bassquake was a mammoth music project I spearheaded from 1995 to 2002. Primarily it was a RealAudio based web site that showcased the UK club scene inside and out, and it was a work of pure joy from beginning to end.

This was a time when Napster didn't exist and MP3s weren't a living room concept you see. Subsequently Bassquake was one of the largest online music archives in the world, with gigs of deleted tunes available for free.

Two of our releases

It became such an enormous part of my life in fact, that it opened up a whole new world of friends and contacts, both famous producers from around the globe, as well as many close buddies I still chat to 10 years on. The culmination was eventually forming our own record label and putting out seven releases between us, where I recorded tracks under the name Dark Forces.

With the advent of song sharing in subsequent years though, Bassquake was kinda rendered redundant in its latter days. The web had changed, and it was time to move on. Not to mention I was now spending way more time at the movies, and slowly rediscovering the latest generation of video games than listening to tunes.

Why am I boring you with all this though? Mainly to get the word "Bassquake" registered into all the search engines actually, and thus snag up some of my old visitors and plow some extra traffic this way. Suckers!

A Hole

Despite a couple of smaller internet projects in its wake, ever since Bassquake closed down I really missed the ability to interact with a web based audience. I may not be the best writer in the world from a technical stand point, but it's something I'm passionate about and enjoy immensely, and in light of the site's closure, felt somewhat empty without. As a result, The TPS Report was born.

Although concentrating primarily on games, the fact I also tend to follow and enjoy a ton of other forms of media mean you'll also see the odd movie review, TV round-up and even the occasional bit of hardware blurb around here. It's my own corner of the web for documenting some of my thoughts and feelings on everything I come across out there in the world of entertainment.

One of my other goals with this seemingly never ending blog though is to amass a large and comprehensive collection of articles, and hopefully turn it into a career opportunity for a gaming publication. Needless to say, if you work for such a beast and wanna talk big bucks, hit me up.

MP3s

For anyone with a vague interest in electronic music - or simple morbid fascination - here's a small selection of freebie tracks I've made in recent years, some released, some not. My gift to you.

Never Ending
Ambient electronica (6:21)

Irreverence
Smooth drum 'n' bass (5:14)

Digital Jazz
Liquid funk (9:15)

Dirty
Nu skool breaks (5:23)

Music
Nu skool breaks (5:21)

Elevate
Old skool hardcore (4:31)

Mixes

I've also been posting DJ sets around here for a while now. If you missed 'em at the time, you can peruse the track-listings and snag the MP3s here;

Liquid Funk - Mix 1
Liquid Funk - Mix 2
Liquid Funk - Mix 3
Liquid Funk - Mix 4 & Bonus Old Skool D'n'B Mix
Liquid Funk - Mix 5

Soundtracks

After video gaming journalism, doing film and TV scores is a second distant pipe dream of mine, yet another on the list of all-time top five perfect Diggler jobs.

I did in fact get the above track Never Ending used in a couple of documentaries and an independent film with that in mind. You can watch one such documentary online for free right here, and it proves a great cure for insomnia;

The Power of Place: Geography For the 21st Century

The Future

While I created and maintain this site myself, over time there'll be more and more contributors coming on board with their own opinions and thoughts. You'll be reading all about them here too.

As for me though, this is the fourth web site I've run now, and even if it ultimately remains little more than a gaming diary for myself and a select few others, I promise it'll be around for many a year to come. So pop on over to the boards, say hi...or send me those illusive job offers.

Come on. You know you want it.

Disco Kane knows how to get his groove on

Game
Mario Kart Wii
Online, few can touch it

Film
There Will Be Blood
A slow burner of epic brilliance

Show
The Wire
The most inaccessible show ever created, also happens to be one of the best

Tune
Tokyo - Chable & The Dirty Fours
Lovely dancefloor stuff from a few years back, with a fab breaks mix by Nubreed out there too

Person
Konami
For wasting 24 hours of my bloody life with that MGO beta cluster-frakk

Forums

The TPS Forum
Official boards for the web site, and a nice place for some general gaming chit-chat

RLLMUK Forum
The old Edge forums gone independent. The busiest and most interesting gaming board around, worthy of many a visit per day

NTSC-UK Forum
Another exceptional gaming forum, featuring one of the friendliest communities on the net, and up to the minute news on pretty much every system

NeoGAF
A more US-centric gaming board, with huge piles of traffic and even the odd famous face

Gaming Shows

The TPS Report Podcast
Of course, I have to plug our own podcast first. Not the most professional of endeavors by any means - more a drunken ramble about whatever games we're all playing that month - but we do have some fun. Schedule is currently intermittent

The 1up Radio Network
1up.com's collection of weekly gaming podcasts, the pick of which have to be the Games For Windows and 1up Yours show, full of juicy rumours and interesting banter week in, week out

The 1up Show
The lads and lasses at 1up also put out a hugely popular internet-based TV show each week, covering whatever upcoming games they can get their hands on, and various other bits and pieces

On the Spot
The humongous gaming site known as Gamespot broadcasts a video show each week, in which upcoming games are demoed live on air, and viewers are invited to send in questions to find out more

The Hotspot
Gamespot's audio-based companion to On the Spot, in which site editors cover the week's news while simultaneously poking fun at all that is gaming

Gaming Steve
A more mature podcast, hosted by a long-time games industry professional armed with a ton of insider info and loads of interesting opinions

IGN Weekly
Weekly video show on all that is IGN. Hosted by Jessica Chobot, providing a solid excuse for tuning in alone

Consolevania
Quick-fire internet-based TV show with console reviews and comedy sketches. Funny as hell

Major Nelson
An interesting "blogcast" hosted by a Microsoft employee, featuring stacks of exclusive behind the scenes news and interviews relating to all things Xbox 360

Epileptic Gaming
The original internet gaming radio show, still going strong after all these years

The Kojima Productions Report
Official podcast from the team of Hideo Kojima, creator of the much-loved Metal Gear franchise. Full of news and interviews relating to all things Metal Gear, it's probably one for die-hard fans only

Fully Ramblomatic
A hysterical gaming blogger posting what he calls "zero punctuation" video reviews that have to be seen - and heard - to be believed

Pure Pwnage
Mockumentary series on the life of a pro gamer. Episode five is possibly the funniest thing on the internet

Other Sites

Kotaku
What you could call gaming's homepage. Constantly updated news and links on the entire industry, from minute breaking headlines, to funny arse viral vids

Game Trailers
Easy to use multimedia-rich web site offering official trailers, video demos and sneak peaks at all the upcoming releases

Game Videos
Sister site to 1up.com, focusing on game trailers, video interviews and even the odd documentary

Gamespot
The Gamespot front-end, and the gaming equivalent of the Internet Movie Database. Includes detailed reviews and extensive video features on all systems

Giant Bomb
Speaking of Gamespot, the controversial "letting go" of editor Jeff Gerstmann resulted in him starting up this new venture with fellow former writers of the site

1up.com
Discounting the audio and video shows mentioned earlier, 1up's main site is also worth a visit in its own right. Not only bustling with quality gaming articles and extensive developers' blogs, it also doubles up as a massive friends network, ideal for meeting fellow gamers and joining like-minded communities. MySpace for gamers

Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars
Who is Surfer Girl? Nobody knows. And why is she reviewing Star Wars? She's not. It's just a title. It's "quirky". Her minimalist rumour blog - seemingly coming outta nowhere - has so far attracted quite the wealth of attention though, making it an ideal daily stop for those after the latest gaming rumours which they aren't supposed to know. Be sure to stop by her other blog too, linked at the bottom of every page

Live Marketplace Feed
The most up to date and reliable way to keep track of all the new Xbox Live Marketplace content, from new weapons and map packs, to movie trailers and game demos

Xbox Reloaded
360 backwards compatibility can be a minefield. This blog attempts to shed some light on the issue by playing original Xbox games for you and reporting back the results

GameFAQs
The ultimate resource for walkthroughs and FAQs on pretty much every title ever made

Disposable Media
A wonderful (and free) E-zine, full of reviews and articles on gaming, movies, music and TV. Puts most high street mags to shame

X-Fire
A must-have for all PC gamers, X-Fire is a buddy list and communications tool that keeps constant tabs on what games both you and all your mates are playing, on or offline

Steam Community
A contender to the X-Fire throne that has pretty much overtaken it straight out of the gate. Valve's Steam client contains friends lists, downloadable games, Live-style achievements and plenty more to sink your teeth into

MyGamerCard.net
Convert your Xbox Live gamercard into an image, for use on forums and web sites for free. That's mine further down

Ain't it Cool News
The latest news, gossip and spy reports from the world of movies and TV

Smodcast
Writer, director and actor Kevin Smith - he of Clerks fame - records a monthly podcast in which he and fellow pals discuss everything from trying to felate oneself, to the time his dog got covered in ejaculate. Riveting stuff

Matt Robinson, 2008
diggler@tpsreport.co.uk
Please do not use anything on this site without credit

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