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.

The Famous 5 Adventure Games ran for a total of eight titles, published between 1984 and 1988 (and reprinted into at least the early 90s) and all written by prolific gamebook author Stephen Thraves -- each one adapted one of Blyton's original novels, with rather good new names such as The Secret Airfield Game and The Missing Scientist Game. (The full list of books adapted for F5AG, should you so care, is Go Down to the Sea, Go Off to Camp, Have a Mystery to Solve, On a Hike Together, Go to Demon's Rocks, Go to Billycock Hill, Get into a Fix and Have a Wonderful Time. In what seems unlikely to be a coincidence, there is no crossover between the books adapted here and in The Famous Five and You; that series adapted the first six Blyton books, and Go Off to Camp is the seventh in the original order.)

The adaptations of the text seem looser than The Famous Five and You, with far less material taken verbatim from the original book. And, most importantly of all, each book came packaged in an "Adventure Wallet", containing a special Famous Five die with the Five's faces on it (the sixth side being a wildcard 'Mystery' spot), cards and other props. As I mentioned in an earlier look at Stephen Thraves' interactive bibliography, these books (Thraves unleashed several similar ranges based on Biggles, Asterix and Peter Pan upon the world, as well as some using his own original scenarios) are the scourge of many a gamebook collector, because it is simply impossible to find a copy with these still attached in a second-hand bookshop, and as we'll see, without them the book has little functionality at best. You can pick up still intact editions online, but they'll set you back a minimum of fifty quid, which is very much outside this blog's budget.

Fortunately, however, we can nick pictures of all the equipment from eBay listings and try to make do with that. (For a closer look, you may wish to consult the lovely high-quality scans provided by The Enid Blyton Society.)

At the start of the adventure, the player has one of the four equipment cards -- the measure card, the torch, the map and the codebook -- and should tuck their choice into the slit in the Rucksack card, putting the others to one side and not referring to them unless they manage to find them over the course of the adventure. They should also put the three Picnic Cards in the similar slit in the Lunchbox card, and remove them when instructed; should they run out of picnic entirely, the game is over and the player must start again, with the clear implication that the Five starve to death. (I'm not certain if the phrase "lashings of ginger beer" is ever used verbatim, but yes, that is what's pictured on the card.)

We are now ready to begin the adventure, which will invariably begin with the player rolling the patented Famous Five Die, which will decide whose direction to follow. This will sooner or later bring them to one of four different types of puzzle, each utilising one of the four equipment cards. The torch card requires you to place the torch over the book to reveal the hidden message:

The measuring tape, similarly, requires you to place the card against the illustrations to know which reference to go to:

The codebook card seems self-explanatory:

And finally, the map puzzles require you to look up certain landmarks on the map and choose the correct grid reference, with two incorrect options for you to guess at if you don't have it. You are penalised for going wrong by losing Picnic cards, or occasionally even equipment cards. By covering the first book in the series, The Wreckers' Tower Game, I think you've seen all the different puzzles: some books replace the Torch card with the functionally identical Binoculars card, or the measuring tape with a compass, but that's all the variation the series (and, indeed, most of Stephen Thraves' other ranges on similar lines, apart from the inclusion of a little code wheel with some of them) seems to have.

Yes, it's another picture plucked from an eBay listing.

There were one or two translations of the series that took slightly different approaches to the playing aides -- the Spanish translations stuck the various playing cards inside the back cover, omitting the bulky "Adventure Wallet" (actually made of clear vinyl) and also the die, with the translated text apparently changing all the relevant sections so the player chose who to follow, whilst the Dutch translations used one of those spinny things that rarely works (which can be seen in the last image here) in place of the die. Most interesting of all, though, is that the Italian translation merged the series with The Famous Five and You, publishing them as a single fourteen-book range; the eight Adventure Games first, and then the six ...and You titles (with the covers modified to include the logo and border of the Adventure Games, despite the fact that design was clearly meant to tie in with Stephen Thraves' many other gamebooks; even though most other Italian translations of Thraves' gamebooks found substitutes for the "feelies" by just printing the contents of the equipment cards inside the books and making other adaptations to the text, it appears F5AG was an exception and it came with all the equipment, even the die).

Anyway, back to all the equipment cards. They're all well and good, you might think, were it not for the fact that they are the "game" part of the book in its entirety. The only time the story branches is when rolling the Famous Five Die, or if you're guessing because you don't have the required piece of equipment. Similar to The Famous Five and You, there's no real control over events or a way to lose beyond running out of provisions, apart from one genuine "game over" section if you reach the very final puzzle without having the requisite equipment card. I suspect these books are significantly more fun if you do actually have the original game kit, but it's still hard to imagine them posing all that much of a challenge. I said it in my previous post on Mr. Thraves, and I'll say it again: There are some really high quality production values and fun ideas here, and they could be something truly special if married to a more ambitious, less formulaic gamebook. For both series of Famous Five adventure gamebooks from the 1980s, then, I reach a similar conclusion: These aren't just cheap cash-ins, but they could be so much more.