The Drawing Board

The following board game, which could probably not be published today, appeared in The Bash Street Kids Annual 1995:

That last page in particular has been really stuck in my head for the better part of three decades. I found "the spinny thing that rarely works", and advising the reader to just buy a dice instead, incredibly funny, have always referred to them as such since, and was very pleased to rediscover its origin when I bought this book in a charity shop the other week. I wondered why this childhood memory lodged itself in my mind so firmly, and I think it's because it was probably my first experience of a work taking the piss out of its own idea.

The Shadow of Death

Holding the Spear of Doom up high, you shout your war-cry and charge. The Spear is not meant to kill Voivod; as the Horned God said, it returns life to the dead. But Voivod is death itself, so the Spear may not have enough Life-force to affect him. Fight each Attack Round of combat as normal; but once, at the end of each round (whether you win the round or not), you can attempt to give Voivod life. Roll two dice: if the total is equal to or less than the Spear's current Life-force, turn to 400; but if the number you roll is higher, you have failed. If you fail, deduct 1 from the Spear's Life-force, then fight another round of combat, and so on. Because you are trying to wield the Spear, you fight Voivod only in defence: if you win a round, he loses no STAMINA; on the other hand, Voivod thrives on your death, so if you lose a round, you must add any points of STAMINA that you lose to Voivod's current total. If the Spear expends its Life-force, you must try to defeat the Voivod in normal combat -- only then will your telling blows cause him to lose STAMINA points.

VOIVOD        SKILL 10        STAMINA 10

Should it be that you win in normal combat, turn to 303.

So goes the final combat of the 44th Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Legend of the Shadow Warriors by Stephen Hand (published 1991). It's around this point you can tell that the authors are aiming the range at adult collectors as much, if not more, than the series' original target audience of teenage boys. This eventually came to be seen as a problem by Puffin Books, who felt the series had become too unknowable and needed to get back to its roots, but a planned 'back-to-basics' relaunch in 1995 blew up on the launchpad and no revamped books were ever published, despite the fact the first one had been completed.

And maybe they had a point there, and maybe the new 21st-century books thread a needle which the range didn't manage to in the nineties, innovating with the format whilst keeping in mind who the target audience is. But Legend of the Shadow Warriors boasts a rich backstory, an immersive writing style, high replay value, experimentation with the series' basic rules including an innovative system for equipping different weapons and armour, and possibly the best-written 'boss battle' not just of the range, but of any gamebook.

The Monsters Are Due on Beano Street

According to The Official History of the Beano, the above strip -- from issue #2346, dated 04/07/87 -- is the first appearance of Number 13, a story about preteen vampire Boris and the rest of his family, as drawn by John Geering. Well, that book at least considers it the first official appearance. This begins our look at a comic strip with a rather confusing beginning and end.

The Most Esoteric Game Over in Interactive Fiction

In the superhero-themed Fighting Fantasy book, Appointment with F.E.A.R., you can get mugged whilst in your civilian identity.

The cool air is refreshing and allows you to gather your thoughts. You must anticipate the F.E.A.R. meeting if you are to prevent their master-plan from succeeding. If only you knew where it was to be held, and... Thump! You feel a heavy blow across the back of your head and you drop to your knees. A rough accent says: 'Just get the money and let's get going. Quick!' A hand searches through your pockets for your cash. Though groggy, you know what is happening. You are being mugged! You could, if you wished, fight back, but that would mean you having to reveal your secret identity. Or you could let them think they have knocked you out -- you have very little money on you, anyway. Will you fight back (turn to 230), or let them rob you (turn to 279)?

Triple Dog Dare

Last time, I was looking at Bananaman strips from the late 90s adapting episodes of the 80s TV series, which were drawn by John Geering -- who had created the strip and drawn the vast majority of it up to that point, but had no known involvement in the series. It would be worth going back and reading that piece if you haven't already, as that way this one will make sense.

But in short: the last strip adapting a TV episode is from the issue of the Dandy dated 3rd July 1999, and a week later a wholly original strip appeared for the Dandy's world-record-breaking 3007th issue, dated the 10th July. On the 20th July, John Geering died. (Some sources list his death as the 13th August, which is the date his obituary appeared in his local newspaper, the Warrington Guardian; I am presuming the date given in the Independent's obituary is correct.) However -- as was often the case when an artist passed away -- he had a buffer of strips built up, and new stories by him continued to regularly appear in the Beano and the Dandy for around two months after his death.

In issue #3004 (19/06/99), another strip drawn by Geering had started appearing in the Dandy: a revival of Puss and Boots, the very first characters he had created for D. C. Thomson in 1969.

The Crystal Ship

As you enter the harbour square, you pass a line of wagons laden with heavy machinery, which are queueing to enter a dry dock. There, illuminated by the glare of huge oil lamps, is the largest ship you have ever seen -- a monstrous ironclad juggernaut bristling with awesome weaponry. You stop to stare at this terrifying vessel, and overhear two Drakkarim engineers talking about their work. Your blood runs cold when you hear one of them reveal why this juggernaut is being built. It is to be used to destroy Holmgard, your country’s capital city.

If you enter the harbour at Argazad in the twelfth Lone Wolf gamebook, The Masters of Darkness, whilst infiltrating the Darklords' base, and so discover this terrifying juggernaut, you are given the option to enter the dock and find some way of sabotaging the ship. Sensible players will reason that the aim of your mission is to destroy the Darklords before the behemoth can ever set sail, and thus this is an unnecessary risk, and their suspicions should only rise if they attempt sabotage anyway:

A group of slaves are at work near the stern, hoisting into position a strange spherical tank made of a sparkling orange metal. As soon as it is secured, the Drakkarim engineers begin coupling heavy springs and thick copper cables to the tank, linking it to a massive propeller at the rear of the craft.

Carefully you study the complex machinery, soon realizing that if the orange tank were destroyed, or damaged beyond repair, the vessel would be unable to propel itself. However, the shell of the tank appears to be constructed of super-hard metal, and the only way you can think of destroying it is by using your Crystal Explosive.

Bananamanrama

In 1983, Bananaman -- at the time appearing in D. C. Thomson's weekly humour anthology comic Nutty -- made his onscreen debut in a series of animated five-minute shorts on Children's BBC. As explained in this interview with Steve Bright, who co-created the character with artist John Geering and wrote many of the scripts for the comic strip over the years, the animation executives had originally thought they'd make a series about a more iconic character such as Dennis the Menace or Desperate Dan, but during a focus group at the publisher's headquarters they happened to catch sight of the relatively new Bananaman and decided they'd rather focus on him; hence, the Big B became the first DCT character to appear in animation less than four years after his strip debuted.

The shorts were repeated many, many times on the BBC over the years, and in late 1998, during one of the final runs, someone at the Dandy (where the crime-fighting hero had resided since the Nutty ended in 1985) had the bright idea of adapting the TV episodes into comic strips to tie in, beginning with issue #2975, dated the 28th November 1998:

The Harbour of Lost Ships, helpfully labelled as the very first one.

The publisher had gotten a lot of mileage out of Bananaman's status as a TV star over the years, and it's possible someone at the BBC tipped them the wink that these were likely to be the final broadcasts and the adaptations were intended as one last hurrah. (In the event, they would be reprinted circa 2007, tying in with the series' DVD release.)

Sub-Optimal

The six Transformers Adventure Game Books were released between 1985 and 1987 by Corgi. Gamebooks based on licensed properties are rarely high points of the genre, and whilst these don't plumb the depths of Dick Tracy: A Catch-a-Crook Adventure, they're not especially remarkable: each runs between 67 and 72 pages, and can have as few as three possible endings. They were authored by Dave Morris, who also wrote the Knightmare gamebooks and The Crystal Maze gamebook, as well as other series based on Enid Blyton's Adventure Squad, LEGO, James Bond Jr. and HeroQuest, but is best known for his work with Jamie Thomson on their own original ideas, most notably the incredibly ambitious Fabled Lands series.

The second book, Perils From the Stars, is the one that only has three possible endings -- one good, two bad. One of those bad endings, though, is a stunning example of one of my favourite ways to die in interactive fiction: The game allows you to voluntarily do something incredibly, lethally stupid. (Much thanks to regular commentator Ed Jolley for putting me on to this.)

You look to JAZZ, but he is still too groggy to act. STARSCREAM's homing beacon, which is attracting the falling weapons pod straight towards it, lies on the floor beside the telescope.

If you want to get the homing beacon and hurl it at STARSCREAM, turn to page 44

If you want to put it in your pocket, turn to page 46