Edit Wars #14

Just a quick one this time, but this is an interesting development: It appears that circa Series 4 of the original run of Robot Wars, participating teams could receive the live, uncut studio footage of battles they participated in on request. This means that two battles featuring Iron-Awe survive in their raw, unedited form:

Iron-Awe vs Mazakari vs Mortis: Uncut Version vs Broadcast Version

Iron-Awe vs Steg 2: Uncut Version vs Broadcast Version

Also, I mentioned these on Twitter when they first started appearing, but this channel has recently uploaded an absolutely enormous number of videos from the live events in '96 and '97 that were effectively a pilot for the TV series. It may well be that some of these clips are the same ones that convinced the BBC to commission the show, so it seems worth mentioning them here...

Just Ask For South By South East: The Book of the TV Serial of the Book (Maybe)

So far this year, my never-ending quest for the 1991 Diamond Brothers TV series had had two big breakthroughs: the sleeve for a Spanish VHS release surfaced in March, and then the actual title sequence followed suit in May. Short of the actual full episodes turning up, I thought maybe we'd had all the discoveries we were ever going to have.

I was wrong, for today Christian-Bernard Gauci got in touch to tell me he owned a TV tie-in edition of the book. Thanks to him, I am able to shed a little more light on this lost series. More pictures and my "analysis" follow under the cut.

Unsung Heroes

Remember HeroQuest? It was basically a simplified tabletop RPG crossed with an adventure board game. Very much your classic dungeon crawling setup. BoardGameGeek describes it as "Milton Bradley's answer to Dungeons & Dragons", which is a pretty good description. It's been out of print for many years now due to legal issues (although a crowdfunded revival is currently in the works), apparently relating to co-developers Games Workshop, but still remains fondly remembered despite a second-hand copy of the game being likely to set you back at least £60 on eBay, quite possibly much more, to say nothing of the various expansion packs released over the years.

But there were also three -- seemingly pretty obscure -- adventure gamebooks based on the board game. So let's talk about those.

Truth, Lies and Videotape

As you may be able to tell from the fact that I am illustrating this article with a picture taken from Wikipedia, I was extremely scrupulous about the rules against on-set photography.

On Saturday night, my first excursion outside of Bristol in eighteen months was to Pinewood Studios to be in the audience for a recording of Would I Lie to You? I have some (spoiler-free) notes on the subject.

Get a Clue

The episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue I was in the virtual audience for, with the panel of Tony Hawks, Marcus Brigstocke, Henning Wehn and Vicki Pepperdine, was broadcast on Radio 4 this evening, and is available to listen to for another 30 days here. Here's some notes, mostly on things that didn't make the edit, for the curious.

The Diamond Problem

When I first wrote about the incredibly obscure 1991 Diamond Brothers television series, I really wasn't expecting to get the response I did. I have received many, many e-mails and tweets on this subject -- more than everything else I've written about put together. People digging out old TV listings to prove the series actually did exist. Supportive and informative messages from those who remembered watching the original and only broadcasts. People putting me onto the trail of other information, and where I could possibly track down a copy. The second post in this series -- as far as I am aware, the first time any visual record of the series had ever been posted online -- is the most-viewed post on this blog by some distance.

But before there was the 1991 series of the third Diamond Brothers book, there was the 1988 film of their first adventure, which also starred Colin Dale and Dursley McLinden as the brothers and was also adapted by Anthony Horowitz from his own novel (the film's director, Stephen Bayly, served as an executive producer of the TV series). And, thanks to one of those correspondents, Simon Drake, I've learned that the film has its own interesting story. Here's what Simon had to say on the matter:

In the mid 2000s, I picked up a DVD of Just Ask For Diamond, a childhood favourite that i'd had on VHS for years. When I watched the DVD, I was convinced it was missing a load of Nick Diamond voice over and some other bits. I used to regularly post on the IMDB forums asking if anyone else's DVD was incomplete from their VHS, but no one really responded. I picked up a couple of different JAFD DVD releases (there were several versions on multipacks) thinking they might contain the extended voice over and they all seemed to be missing what I was sure I'd remembered being in the film. 

So I spent £20 on a VHS copy, and did a side by side comparison. And I can confirm the VHS version from the early 90s and the UK DVD release do differ. 

Just Ask For South By South East And You Shall Receive

Over three years ago, I first wrote about the long-missing 1991 CITV Diamond Brothers series, and its total obscurity to the point I voiced a theory I had held for many years before starting this blog: the series never actually existed and was actually some sort of elaborate hoax.

Since then, I've managed to establish its existence with pages from the Radio Times, a thorough second-hand account from someone who watched it, a promotional poster, and the sleeve for a Spanish VHS release. But even the briefest of actual footage from the production has escaped us.

Until now.

Broken Gamebooks #19: Return to Firetop Mountain

The 50th book in the Fighting Fantasy series, the centerpiece of the range's 10th anniversary celebrations, a sequel to the very first book in the series -- and originally intended to be the last book of all in the series, but the special attention given to the range for these various milestones caused sales to spike and it carried on in its original form for another three years.

But that is not all Return to Firetop Mountain is known for.