I noticed from my stats page today that quite a few new readers have been directed to the blog today from a French-language forum about adventure gamebooks, so if you're one of them, a very warm welcome to you. The page in question was specifically linking to my review of The Mystery Squad adventure gamebooks, and I learnt quite a lot of new stuff about the series' publication in French from it, specifically:
- The final two books in the series were never published in France for whatever reason; a similar phenomenon affects several other series of the time, such as the GrailQuest series which also never saw its last two entries published over there.
- As you can see from the picture above, the French editions used original artwork for the covers rather than the photographic ones, although they did mostly use the original internal illustrations (with one important difference... see below).
- In France, the Mystery Squad were rechristened Thomas Laloupe (Casey), and Rémi, Anatole and Julie (James, Bodger and Beans). So presumably French parents in the 1980s were less cruel to their children.
- Finally, what probably really makes this post worth writing: the series' frequent rebus puzzles, which I didn't mention in the original review but probably should have done, were redone for the French-language editions, so here's a comparison using the one uploaded by Gauthier, the author of the article:
The French version decodes to ES-PIONS-NON-DIVERS-ALLAH-TOUR-JUS-LIT-ET-RE-MI: Let's spy divers at the tower. Signed Julie and Rémi.
Unless my memory deceives me, Grail Quest book 8 was published in France.
ReplyDeleteI did French A-level, which put me on the front line of sixth formers who had the option of going on the annual first formers’ trip to France to help keep order, and consequently I went to France twice in the very late 1980s. The first time, I did some souvenir shopping before we checked out a bookshop, so when I found that it contained a selection of translated gamebooks, I also found that I no longer had the funds to buy one.
On the second trip, I handled my budget more carefully, because I wanted a French copy of La Légion des Morts, which had caught my eye on the previous trip. This time round, it wasn’t in stock, so I made do with Grail Quest 6 instead. Probably for the better, in view of the edits made to that book – 8 wasn’t buggy enough to have required so many changes.