Hello and welcome to Dominik’s Little Purple Column, the thing that can’t decide whether it’s a column read out loud or a podcast where you get to read the script. Anyway, it is the 9th of its kind. And the builders are not working next door but at the end of the version for PAID subscribers you will hear a couple of outtakes of me losing my shit over a helicopter flying overhead.
Let’s start with some gaming news – this story is called
Dragon This Gag On Way Too Long
This is the first time I have featured news about Skyrim in this column podcast comcast thing. Which is strange because it is probably the most discussed game in our house. And those discussions tend to be between my now 18 year old man son Charlie and I because he STILL plays Skyrim now. Eleven years after it came out. And I STILL take the piss out of him for doing so, using the same gag I have used for at least 10 of those eleven years. Namely this one:
Charlie (playing Skyrim): Oh Dad, come and see this!
Dominik: Really, what type of soup are you making now?
I know it’s about dragons and stuff, but I really did feel you spent an inordinate amount of time in Skyrim collecting ingredients to make soup. And if works both ways. If my son is playing Skyrim, I will go up to him and make a soup gag. If I am making soup, I will shout him down and make a Skyrim gag. Namely this one.
Dominik (in kitchen making soup): Charlie come and see this!
Charlie (entering kitchen breathlessly, completely falling for the ruse): What is it?
Dominik (indicating soup): I’m playing live action Skyrim!
Oh, how the fun never starts!
(Special mention to THIS YouTube hero who makes real soup based on its Skyrim counterpart.)
Anyway, the BIG Skyrim news this week is that one of the modders on Nexus Mods, who goes by the name of xilamonstrr, all lower case, monster spelled with two rrs at the end, instead of an e. has come up with a 16k texture mod for the dragons in Skyrim. What does that mean exactly? Well technology, graphics, computers etc etc blah blah blah you can now see every individual scale.
A dragon you can see in more detail now, just cos
(PIC xillamonstrr’s 16k TEXTURE MODDED DRAGON AHOY!)
Now while I get that this is an incredible achievement, for people who are into these things, I still wish he would spell the monster part of his screen name the proper way. Is it too much to ask that if you can spend months researching code and graphics to the extent that you can create one of the most visually impressive things ever seen in videogames – you honestly don’t have five minutes to read a fucking dictionary?
However… this news is not without huge ramifications in the Diamond household. Because it did allow me to just shout from the basement, all the way up to the top floor of the house (I’m a Scottish Dad, we can shout across entire continents) that I had something amazing to show him and got him to run down not one but two flights of stairs, just to have me say.
“Look at this son, 16k texture mod for dragons in Skyrim.”
And immediately he knows what’s coming, and so we have a race to the punchline. And I just get it out before him.
“Imagine how detailed the soup is going to look now!”
But then he gets his revenge because he uses this news story about the 16k textured dragon mod to tell me in great detail about a mod that allows you to play Skyrim in virtual reality and you can swing and hit someone with a hammer and they will realistically fall over, something that is quite hard to do in VR apparently for reasons I don’t understand but - holy shit - did my son EVER get animated talking about them. He is such a total geek. And I totally love him for that.
The Juicy Tip of The Column
Time now for The Juicy Tip of the Column because who doesn’t like a nice juicy tip. Sorry I didn’t have one in last week’s column, I don’t know you got through playing your 90s games without it, but you did because not all heroes wear capes.
This week’s juicy tip is a cheat for classic mid90s car chaos smashgasm Destruction Derby. Let me ask you a question: Do you ever want to spank the monkey while playing videogames. It’s hard, isn’t it? Not with this game. Simply. Choose Destruction Derby Championship and enter MONKEY as your name. Stat the game and perform five 360s. A monkey will begin running around the track. If you hit this monkey is worth a large amount of points, Enjoy your relaxing monkey spank.
(PIC - Destruction Derby. From the mid-90s.)
(PIC: A monkey. Yesterday.)
MAMESGASTER CHALLENGE
I really thought last week’s mystery messed with video game picture was tough. Because I thought I was so smart. It just featured the word ART. And I spent so much time trapped in my own smugness, literally sitting there looking at myself in the mirror going, “look at how clever you are Dominik, you made the mystery videogame picture one that says ART. Because, you know, ART, yeah? ART!” That I didn’t realise if you had Outrun anywhere near the top of your mind you would – as Mike Gibson did, have posted the correct answer about 10 minutes after the column podcast was published.
So well done Mike, you get an official Dominik’s Big Purple Column Golf Clap!
this week I have got the most difficult to guess mystery messed up gaming picture yet. Have a look at it on the written version of this podcast on Substack and then type what you think it is in the comments section.
(Yeah. That’s it above. Tiny, isn’t it. )
The comments section is only open to PAID subscribers because I have to make money from this because this is what I do for a living. I write words and I speak them out loud. It is my craft; it is my livelihood and giving it away for free would be like you coming into my butcher’s shop and me giving you a leg of lamb for nowt. Or me going into your gynaecological practise and asking you to have a right good look down there. For free. Or if you are a professional butterfly collector, me going into your house, shoving a red admiral up my jumper and then getting outside and realising I’ve killed it. Cos that’s what happens if people don’t get the paid version of this column. You kill it. Just like you killed that butterfly.
So, the PAID version continues in a moment with hilarious bits about the worst thing that modern cars do with regards to technology, the misery of left-handed gaming, the joy of Horizon Zero Dawn and gags about Tom Hanks and Glenn Close for some reason, but for this week’s FREE version I am Dominik Diamond saying keep it little, keep it old, keep it purple.
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #9 FREE