Digital Cowboys is on hold for a week while Alex recovers from the sudden fortnight-early birth of his baby daughter; Lyra. If you want to blame someone, blame her.

Of course you'll have to get through her dad first.

See you next week for much rejoicing.

Amiga 500/Clone Wars/Bourne Conspiracy.

Quantum's back! And this week he bought a friend; the Amiga 500.

Continuing our platform focused episodes, this week we're discussing the home gaming computers popularised in the late 80's and early 90's by machines like the Atari ST and the Amiga 500. This is a shadowy subject for Alex who hopped straight into consoles, but Tony Atkins and Tony Edwards both had one and reminisce about what it was like to play the first installments of some surprisingly long-lived gaming franchises. The impact of these machines on gaming was subtle but undeniably important as they paved the way to advanced gaming PC's able to play Doom.

Also discussed are the new Star wars animated movie; The Clone Wars, The Bourne Conspiracy gets a 360 review and Tony Atkins talks about the pub games for Fable 2.

Alex mentions TWO top ten lists but only mentions one. The other one is the top ten Amiga/ST games ever and it's reprinted for you here in no particular order;

10. Syndicate
9. Cannon Fodder
8. Rainbow Islands
7. Sensible Soccer
6. Worms
5. Kick Off
4. Lemmings
3. Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
2. The Secret of Monkey Island
1. Monkey Island 2 - LeChuck’s Revenge

Next week; Paul?

Braid/King of Kong/GRID/Piles of Shame.

Paul is away this week but the show must go on. We start with a review of a light-hearted, amusing documentary about obsessive retro video gamers; The King of Kong. Obviously it's rare we see movies about our favourite subjects so this one is kind of important.

Tony reviews the latest car racing game; GRID. Find out if the cars in this one race better than the cars in the ten thousand other identical hi-def racers out there. I'm kidding tony, they're all VASTLY different!

We start a new weekly feature. So you'll find out what that is too.

Then we discuss our piles of shame. These are the ever-growing collections of video games on our shelves that we sort of played but never really got into and occasionally beat ourselves up over never completing.

Finally we review Braid, the Xbox Live Arcade title that seems to be getting perfect scores and internet backlash across the board. Get the final word on whether it's any good here. There's also a spoiler section at the very end where we discuss the secrets of the plot.

A remarkably well-packed show considering we're one man down.

Okay, here it goes, here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again...

Due August 12, we have the Roadrunner 6 Pack. The pack will be 480 MSP and single tracks will be 80 MSP for the first month. From that point on the pack will be 800 MSP and the single tracks will become 160 MSP. That list in full:

Airbourne "Runnin’ Wild"
DevilDriver "Clouds Over California"
Dream Theater "Constant Motion"
Killswitch Engage "My Curse"
Machine Head "Aesthetics Of Hate"
Megadeth "Sleepwalker"

Room 101/Hellboy 2/X-Files/Man on Wire.

This episode we venture back to room 101 (last seen in episode 11) to rant about what drives us crazy about video games. Witness all kinds of daft ideas and soulless marketing ploys get condemned to the firey pit,

Also reviewed this week; Man on Wire; the documentary about French tightrope walker Phillipe Petit's death-defying high-wire walk between the twin towers in 1974.

Paul talks about the new X-Files film; 'I Want to Believe'. Find out if he does, or more importantly if this is good enough to usher in the return of a long beloved sci-fi to our screens.

Finally (but before we move on to Room 101) Alex and Paul discuss Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, which they were both fortunate enough to see in preview this week. We made sure not to spoil anything but you still get the skinny on whether it's any good.

Finally we move on to the Room 101 section. Sparks fly, teeth gnash and some suspects escape the flames. Find out what sucks, right here.

The Batman Special.

In this mammoth episode we track Batman from his humble pulp hero beginnings in comic books starting in 1939 right through seven decades to what has become one of the highest rated and highest grossing movies of all time; The Dark Knight.

The DK review section is nearly an hour long and contains massive spoilers so make sure you see the film first.

Our sincerest apologies for being late this week. The screenings Tony went to see on Wednesday were sold out (he was fuming).

This episode is a must for bat-fans everywhere.

This week, some of tracks in the Rock Band DLC selection are sure to at least make one Digital Cowboy a very happy bunny:

Crüe Fest 3 Pack 02 (240 MSP):
Buckcherry "Rescue Me" (80 MSP)
Mötley Crüe "Face Down In The Dirt" (80 MSP)
Sixx AM "Life Is Beautiful" (80 MSP)

Singles:
System Of A Down "B.Y.O.B." (160 MSP)
System Of A Down "Toxicity" (160 MSP)