Let's Go to Hell

In November 1984, the tenth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Steve Jackson's House of Hell, was unleashed upon the world, and marked many significant divergences from the established format. Until now, the series had been very much swords-and-sorcery, with a single excursion into science-fiction for the fourth book, Starship Traveller, also by Jackson; House of Hell was the first book to feature a contemporary setting, and the only one released in the original series' lifetime (it would take until 2012 for the 21st century relaunch to give us a second, Ian Livingstone's Blood of the Zombies), as the player character's car breaks down and leaves them with no choice but to seek refuge in the House of Drumer, which contains just about every horror movie encounter known to man, brought to life by Tim Sell's impressively macabre illustrations. It's also an exceptionally difficult puzzle-box of a book, requiring a strict sequence of moves to be done in an exact order, and featuring many tricks and traps including extended dead-ends where all the paths ultimately lead to death and secret sections not directly accessible from other ones.

In the same month as the book was released, though, a preview version (known as The House of Hell, with the definitive article) was published in the third issue of the official Fighting Fantasy magazine, Warlock. That version runs to 185 sections (compared to the full-length version's 400), but it isn't simply the book chopped in half -- it's a truncated version, with many of the rooms shuffled around and bits missing, but it is a complete adventure in its own right which keeps recognisably the same basic story. As the editorial in that issue puts it: "Steve's House of Hell is the one in this issue of Warlock, but turned inside out. The rooms have been jumbled, there are some cunning secret passages to find and the important clues are in totally different places. Getting through the mini-adventure will not help you at all!"

So what exactly is different?

The Aura of Acorah

Every day, the official Would I Lie to You? YouTube account uploads a new clip from an episode. The above story, in which Henning Wehn relates an incident where he sensed the aura of Derek Acorah in a theatre dressing room, was uploaded today. I immediately realised one very strange thing: This isn't a story that has ever been broadcast before, even in an outtakes show. This upload is the first time it's been seen by anyone outside of the studio audience for that episode.

My first thought was that the channel had started uploading previously unseen footage, which would be very cool indeed. But then my second thought -- after realising that would be a slightly odd thing to do without any sort of fanfare -- was to look up Derek Acorah's Wikipedia page. And that, I think, solved the mystery. The particular episode of WILTY? this clip comes from was recorded on 3 June 2019. It was broadcast on 31 January 2020. Inbetween those two dates, Derek Acorah died on 4 January 2020. This story was therefore probably in some earlier edit of the episode, got hastily switched out when Acorah died, and was still hanging around somewhere and duly got selected for uploading to the YouTube channel. (Had that series not been interrupted partway through for coverage of the 2019 election, it might never have been affected!)

Poorenheimer

I went to a small independent cinema last Sunday and in the lobby they had a box of used/surplus posters from recent films you could take in return for a small donation to charity.

So that was neat and my staircase now looks much classier. (If there were any Barbie ones they were long gone before I got there, sadly.)

Warlock and Keys

In early 1982, authors Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone are putting the finishing touches to the first book in a new series; having been asked by Puffin Books to write something introducing readers to this new-fangled "role-playing game" concept, they've come up with a very different book in a very special series. It's The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, which will be an instant best-seller and popularise the genre in the United Kingdom.

Livingstone wrote the first half of the adventure, and Jackson wrote the second, later doing some tweaks to bring Livingstone's side a little closer in style to his own. Whilst those final passes are being done, Jackson notices that, quite by chance, there are 399 numbered sections in the book in total. A number which is just begging to be rounded up to a nice, whole 400. Jackson quickly adds an extra section that's there solely to even the numbers out, and 400 references goes on to become the standard for nearly all of the series' titles (some of the more ambitious books come in at slightly or considerably more, and one or two are a bit short but still end in a multiple of 10).

I know what you're thinking and, yes, we do know exactly which section Jackson inserted to round things up; it's a dummy section which isn't reachable from any of the other references, and you don't even have to reverse-engineer too much of the book to work out which one it is. If you happen to have a copy to hand right now, then it's section 192, and if you turn to it you'll see how clever Jackson was; he didn't just make a filler section, he took the opportunity to throw in a very sneaky red herring. But we're going to put all this to one side for the moment, and jump forward in time two years.

Rupert Allason Socks

On 29 December 1992, the original BBC Radio 4 version of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge broadcasts its fifth episode, in which Alan interviews actor Conrad Knight and his wife Sally:

ALAN: There was a particularly bad one in Spy Magazine, which simply changed one of the words of the title in your book, they changed the first two letters of the word 'gent' and left the last two... So it was something in L.A.

KNIGHT: And I immediately sued Spy Magazine.

SALLY: Sadly, he lost the case.

ALAN: In fact, you set a legal precedent, because you're one of the few people who can now be referred to in print as that thing, without fear of litigation.

KNIGHT: That's absolutely right, Alan. But no other medium, just print.

ALAN: Right. So I couldn't call you that...

KNIGHT: No. But you could fax me it.

ALAN: Or, indeed, scribble it down on a piece of paper and hold it up to your face.

KNIGHT: That would be perfectly legal, yes. And people do do that.

Just Ask for Forbes Collins

Exhibit A: Forbes Collins as Henry von Falkenberg in the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond, a spoof of the hard-boiled detective genre for children adapted from the 1986 novel The Falcon's Malteser, often specifically spoofing The Maltese Falcon.

Exhibit B: Forbes Collins as King John in the 1989-94 CBBC series Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, a spoof of the Robin Hood legends for children, often specifically spoofing the 1984-86 series Robin of Sherwood.

Famous 5 Adventure Games Review (attempted)

 

A short while ago, I took a look at The Famous Five and You -- a not very good series of adventure gamebooks from the 1980s based on Blyton's books which I'd mentioned before, but wanted to go into more depth on. But would you believe Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy spawned a second series of also not very good adventure gamebooks, published around the same time? (I hope so, it's not exactly a very difficult thing to believe.) I've also mentioned these before and, well, we may as well try and look at them in more detail, in spite of the obstacle we'll run into almost immediately.