Review: Blippo+ (Switch) - An Uncanny Channel-Surfing Sim That Perfectly Captures '90s TV

Surprise and Deee-Lite

If you want to really understand (or remember) what TV looked like before the internet, Blippo+ is just the ticket.

This unique little time capsule launched on Panic's Playdate in May and landed on Switch and PC in September. Now in full colour, this remarkable collaboration between the band Yacht, Telefantasy Studios, developer Noble Robot, and Panic itself teleports you back to a time when television was an appointment pastime and we viewed the world in fuzzy 4:3.

First off, Blippo+ is not a game, so if 'play' is the only verb that excites you, go ahead and hit that Back button or close the browser tab right now. 'Watch' is the, ahem, watchword here, and apt for a TV network sim and FMV experience like no other.

Serving up clips from a collection of fictional shows encompassing public, cable, and even pirate broadcasts on a distant Earth-like planet, it captures an alternate '90s buzzing with the static produced when older entertainment ideas and formats rub against an emerging youth movement looking to expand the horizons of art and tech with TV as their tool.

By the looks of its culture captured on screen, Planet Blip is all big colours and Space Channel 5-style energy, and instantly recognisable to any Earthlings born in the decades straddling 1985. Picture Bob Ross settling in at the Double R Diner while Groove Is In The Heart plays on repeat, and you're not far off the vibe.

You can cycle between channels at will, each one playing a series of minute-long clips that eventually loop around until a new 'packette' becomes available and you tune in a new batch. Along with packette notifications, messages from Blippo+ exec Lisa Duo periodically arrive, and interference from a nearby space anomaly means you'll occasionally have to manually recalibrate the signal. I played mainly with a Pro Controller, but you can snap off a single Joy-Con if you prefer remote-like control. You also have options to reduce background menu animation, and increase, reduce, or remove static effects entirely.

It would be easy to fill my word count here just listing references. Despite being 100% fictional, the array of programmes nails the feeling of switching on the telly and channel-hopping three-and-a-half decades ago. Werf’s Tavern blends the hokey energy of Star Trek, Dr Who, and '70s sci-fi with a dash of Cheers; Countertop's chatty 50s-styled waitress is equal parts Norma Jennings and Marge Simpson; trivia show Quizzards works in aspects of Crystal Maze and D&D; the Boredome studio is filled with 'tude-laden teens lounging around, discussing topical youth issues, and generally shooting the blip.

Elsewhere, you've got talk shows, cooking clips, kids' claymation, antiques analysis, soaps, news reports, psychic weather forecasts, and a Teletext-style Femtofax app with Personal ads, review columns, and assorted hot takes and message-board wisdom. There's loads more besides, and the verisimilitude of the audio-visual experience is astonishing.

Among all the flotsam and jetsam in this channel surf, it's hard to think of anything missing from the Electronic Program Guide. Something with a puppet, perhaps? There's no live sports coverage. Were a clip evoking the Italia ’90 qualifiers, the Malaysian Grand Prix, or something more sedate — darts or snooker — to pop up, you’d swear you were sitting on a worryingly flammable family sofa back in 1990. But short of dropping in clips from The Simpsons, they've just about covered it all.

Stylistic conventions from earlier eras bleed into the following decade(s), and that's the case with several shows; the brilliantly choreographed music videos, in particular, feel like authentic holdovers from early '80s Top of the Pops, with soft focus and light bloom aplenty. After seeing so many disappointing CRT filters in retro-themed games over the years, the accuracy of the signal warping, static, and distortion of an analogue broadcast here is enormously impressive.

That attention to detail extends to every part of the production: the calibration UI that pops up when your signal’s wonked; the early greenscreen compositing with prominent ghosting; the spot-on music, voice, and sound effect work; the collage-like, mismatching logo design; the editing and the way the minute-long clips automatically switch channels mid-sentence. Hitting 'Y' toggles to a 1-bit-style screen, presumably approximating how the image looks on a Playdate, and ‘X’ activates authentic-looking captions which I kept on most of the time. Every single detail is lovingly crafted and (re)created.

And threading all these disparate elements together is a gently comic narrative involving the discovery of a distant Blip-like planet on the other side of the galaxy. As you watch, topics and even cast members from one show begin appearing on others, with inter-show references woven in, sparking curiosity as you look out for new details and reactions to 'The Bend'.

Building a game around an activity born of boredom comes with risks of being too authentic, but the devs strike a nice balance between seeding narrative details and subtle worldbuilding while maintaining that odd, non-sequitous energy of channel-hopping.

My Switch says I've spent '9 hours or more' with Blippo+ before credits rolled, and only in short bursts towards the end was my attention beginning to drift. I probably didn't need to watch every cycle of every channel — including the ones with poor signals or others scrambled due to their 'adult' nature — but I didn't want to miss anything, such was the pull of those narrative threads.

Great performances from the sizeable cast keep you engaged, too. Representing all facets of '90s broadcasting involves being not just good, but bad if you want to accurately portray the awkwardness of a soap star's delivery, the unnatural line reading of an inexperienced teen, the overacting of a stage actor on the small screen. But it's all here - studied performances shot through with a dose of off-the-wall, intergalactic energy.

If it's not obvious by now, I love Blippo+, likely because it feels tailor-made for somebody born in 1984. For anyone who hasn't manually retuned a television — people who didn’t grow up before the World Wide Web arrived and everyone fragmented into online groups, who have always viewed the world in 16:9 and don’t know what Ceefax or Bamboozle are — I wonder if they’ll have the context to enjoy it.

Your agency is equal to watching TV with a remote in hand (slightly less, given the loopìng nature of the clips) as you exhaust each channel set and Femtofax update until it’s time to download the next packette. I found myself glued to the clips, only poking the analogue stick to shift once the loop was over, but would younger players without my reference points have the patience to stick with it?

Cleverly executed 'filler' channels here mirror the content supply problem broadcasters encountered back in the day as the number of channels exploded. The loving, lower-budget parodies here help turn a minus into a big (Blippo) plus and add to the impeccable presentation, but naturally, some people just won't 'get it'. It's not my place to worry about that, but it's important to flag in a review, I think. Perhaps necessarily, this entire project feels like an amazing joke that, by virtue of my age alone, I'm lucky to be in on.

I made a real effort to meet Blippo+ on its own terms, too. I treated it like television, switching it on in the morning for 20, 30 minutes while I ate breakfast with my mug of murk. You absolutely need to sit back and enjoy it in short bursts, coming back to the shows, developing a taste for your favourites, and yes, even skipping the ones you're not so keen on.

Conclusion

For people who grew up watching Gamesmaster, early MTV, Hartbeat, ‘80s soaps, Bill Nye or Open University programming, and scanning the high channels past midnight for a glimpse of something softcore, Blippo+ is an absolute must-play must-watch. It really is a work of art, nailing the aesthetic of early-'90s TV and uncannily capturing a time and place in the way a song or a smell evokes a memory - in a way that feels almost personal.

You need to treat it like old-school TV, though, surfing a little bit each day and soaking up the static; do not approach it as a game. And as fun as it is — as wonderfully assembled, expertly performed, and lovingly crafted — nostalgia for (or at least intellectual interest in) the era feels like a prerequisite. I’m an ‘80s kid, though, so I adored every second.