You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat

This is a curious little gamebook. A one-off title by the character's creator, Harry Harrison, You Can Be the Stainless Steel Rat is absolutely impossible to lose. All the paths eventually lead to the same victory, although it is possible to get stuck going round in circles. There's also no real inventory management, no statistics, and no dice (although tossing a coin to make a decision occasionally comes into play), making the whole thing comparable to an entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. One wonders whether or not Mr Harrison truly grasped the concept behind an adventure gamebook (he never wrote another interactive book again); at any rate, calling this 'interactive' or a 'role-playing game' (the latter term is used on the American cover) seems to have a bit of nerve. Also, the title is a complete misnomer, as you do not play as the Stainless Steel Rat, but rather a new recruit to the Special Corps, with the SSR serving as the book's narrator.

Despite the trivial difficulty level, YCBtSSR is saved by a truly excellent level of humour, and I can only wonder what might have been if this had been married to some slightly more ambitious gameplay; intentionally (and successfully) funny adventure gamebooks like this one are, sadly, all too rare. Much like the GrailQuest, it is difficult to find short examples that work well in isolation, but James diGriz's sarky narration makes it consistently enjoyable throughout.

There is one small but interesting note here; according to Demian's Gamebook Web Page, the American version has five extra sections (although the British version has internal artwork by comic book artist Dave McKean, which is pleasingly authentic and apparently completely missing from the American printing). Anyone know exactly how the two versions differed?