Nintendo Adventure - Books 1-6

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1. Double Trouble - Score = 💣💣 1/2 - Two and a Half Bob-ombs  (out of 5)

Sections: 59
Attempts to Beat: 1

After completing a recent stretch of 5 Fighting Fantasy books, I thought it would be a good time to mix in one of the "lighter" gamebook series from the 90's, and thought what better place to start than with one of the several series based upon video games that started popping up during this time. And it only felt right to start with the grand-daddy of this era, Nintendo! These gamebooks are rather small with a low section count (only 59 sections in this initial entry), so these reviews are likely going to be rather short, but then again, I should be able to make my way through the series rather quickly as a result. Starting off with Double Trouble, the edition I have which apparently came free with the purchase of 2 cans of Pringles (which probably also speaks volumes about the length of the gamebook), from author Clyde Bosco, whose work I am totally unfamiliar with, and indeed appears to have only written gamebooks for this series. In this first adventure we get to play as Mario himself, but there likely shouldn't have been any doubt that Mario would kick off the series as the first playable character. 

The story here opens with Mario getting jarred awake while slumbering peacefully in his bed by the sound of an alarm (and I guess this was before the stereotypical Italian accent. No, "Its'a me, Mario!" to be found here). It would appear there is trouble in the Mushroom Kingdom, as Princess Toadstool has sent out a distress call which triggered the alarm. Not being able to find his brother Luigi, Mario decides there is no time to waste, so heads out on his own to the Mushroom Kingdom, going through a pipe in order to get there (a warp pipe I am assuming). Before setting out though, you are given the option of visiting the storeroom first, where you can pick up one of 4 different items: a mushroom, a hammer, an anchor, or a magnifying glass, any of which may help you out later on during the adventure. You are also told about the scoring system for the book, whereby you collect as many coins as you can while you travel along, and then when you have won the adventure, you compare your score to a chart at the back of the book to see how well you did.     

It doesn't take long to discover that this is a puzzle book through-and-through, with no combat system or dice-rolling to be found here. As you initially explore the Mushroom Kingdom trying to figure out just what the problem is, you will encounter puzzles such as search-a-words, mazes, and various other word games, and successfully completing them may help you gather more coins, help you obtain an item, or just give you a hint as to what is coming up next. And yes, that last one is a bit of a problem, as there are several puzzles here where solving them just tells you what you can expect to encounter next before sending you on your way, whether you complete the puzzle or not, which you no doubt would have found out anyway when you turned to the next section, and which thus only contributes to these particular puzzles feeling rather pointless. Other than this caveat, the puzzles themselves actually weren't bad, certainly better than I was expecting them to be, even though you can tell these were aimed at a much younger audience than most gamebook series are.  

Around the halfway point of the adventure, after solving some puzzles that take you past Koopa's trying to trample you or Piranha Plants trying to skewer you, you will arrive at the palace to learn exactly what is going on in the Kingdom and why the Princess sent for you. (And I have to say right here, that even though the Princess is only barely in this, why did the author make her such a bitch?) It would seem that somehow, duplicates of all the creatures in the Kingdom are suddenly appearing all over the place, including one of the King. After determining who the real King is between him and an imposter, you deduce that because the imposter was made of sand, the dopple-gangers must be coming from the Desert Kingdom, and who has his palace there but Mario's sworn enemy, Bowser of course! So it's off to the Desert Kingdom to put a stop to this clone nonsense once and for all. Upon arriving at Bowser's palace, you learn that one of his kids, Iggy (the smart one, and you know he is smart because in the game he wears glasses), is responsible for the duplicates from having created a large machine just for the purpose. This was done at Bowser's behest however, as he plans to have all the clones, of which he controls, vote for him in upcoming elections, thus making him the newly elected King of the Mushroom Kingdom! Other than the fact that I didn't realize kings were elected, this is actually a brilliant plan! There are a lot of villains in more adult-oriented gamebooks that don't have plans nearly as cunning as this. The final confrontation with Iggy and his machine comes down to a choice on what course of action you want to take, and I will say that this might be the first gamebook I can recall where you actually win by running away! (As much as "subverting expectations" as that is, what gamebook player is going to want to run away during the climactic fight?) Anyway, after defeating Bowser and Iggy, you contemplate heading back to the palace, but eventually decide "screw it", and just go home to bed instead. And after how the Princess treated Mario earlier, I can't say that I blame him.    

Our election slogan will be..."A rotten candidate, for a rotten borough."

So all the above is actually fairly decent, but there are a couple of problems here that I should go over. First, the scoring system. In order to get the top ranking for the adventure according to the chart at the back of the book, you need to score 300 or more points. You would think that means you need to collect 300 coins right? I know I did. However, when you turn to this chart, you are told to multiply the number of coins you have collected by TEN, then look up the corresponding number on the chart. So you would thus really only need to get 30 coins to get the highest score. The problem here is that you are awarded 200 coins when you beat the adventure, making the top score a guarantee. (And not just a guarantee, but you are going to CRUSH the top level of the chart). Oops, I think someone may have made a mistake with this system. There is also a loop here where you can find yourself knocked out and sent back to the beginning of the adventure, which you could exploit to keep going back and gather infinite coins. Thanks to the scoring system though, this is hardly necessary. The second problem I had, and this one was really a pain in the ass, was in how the book tells you to proceed to the next section. The adventure is clearly marked with section numbers up to 59, contained inside mushroom logos at the top of each new section. However, each time you need to turn to a new section, you are given the PAGE NUMBER of the book to go to next, not the section number. The page numbers are located at the bottom of each page, but what the hell was the point of numbering the sections then? This took me some getting used to, being far more familiar with being told what section to go to next rather than what page, and even near the end of the book I was often catching myself going to the wrong place. I really hope this is addressed with the next entry. Ending on a positive though, the item system was fairly well handled, with the 4 items you can discover along the way aiding you or allowing you to bypass certain puzzles. The writing here was also fairly cheesy, but that was totally expected considering the subject matter. 

Ranking: The first entry in a series is always tough to rank, even more so when it is a very short adventure such as this. As stated earlier, the puzzles were better than I was expecting, and the story was whimsically "Mario" enough, and heck even Bowser's plan was diabolically clever. The problem for me was there never felt like there was much at stake on the puzzles, with several of them having nothing riding on them at all. The section numbering being rendered useless by how the book is laid out was also a pain, and the scoring system was rather botched. There do appear to be a few different paths through the book and you are unlikely to encounter all the puzzles on one playthrough, which helps with replayability even if the scoring system doesn't, and it does do a good job of capturing the "Nintendo" feel, which will probably be enough of a nostalgia kick for many. Despite its issues, this is a decent start that I hope can be improved upon moving forward. At the very least with the short length of these books, I hope to bang out some reviews rather quickly!

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2. Leaping Lizards - Score = 💣💣💣 - Three Bob-ombs

Sections: 58
Attempts to Beat: 3

Well if it was appropriate that in the first Nintendo book we played as Mario, then I suppose it makes sense that in the second book we would be playing as his brother Luigi. Once again written by Clyde Bosco, this adventure also starts out in the Brooklyn home and workshop of plumbing brothers Mario and Luigi, but unlike the alarm that began that previous adventure, here Luigi decides it would be a good day to take a stroll through the Mushroom Kingdom, so heads down the warp pipe located in their shop that will take him there. And that is pretty much the introduction, as we dive right in at section 1 where we are given a quick puzzle that will determine which of several items (anchor, frog suit, or wings) that we will get to take with us. 

After a short cross-country trip that takes him to the palace, Luigi arrives just in time to find that the dastardly Morton Koopa has just used a magic wand to turn the king into a giant rabbit! Luigi then sets off in hot pursuit of the escaping Morton in an effort to get him to change the king back to his former self. Solving some simple word and maze puzzles along the way as you go, you eventually learn that the wand can only be used "one-way", and cannot change the king back. The only item that can do that is a magic whistle, which is currently held by our old antagonist from book 1, Iggy Koopa. After tracking HIM down, we learn that this whistle is a prize awarded to the winner of the "International Mushroom Games", an Olympic-style contest held every 6 years, with the next iteration just fortuitously for us set to take place in a few weeks. Calling ourselves the "Mushroom Kingdom Royals", we enter a team into the games made up of: Luigi, Mario, Princess Toadstool, Toad (the princess's loyal retainer), Wooster (the king's "chamberlain"), and even the still-in-rabbit-form King himself. 

This "Mushroom Games" sequence is easily the highlight of the book, which up until then had felt rather lacklustre. There are several different events described to you, and you then solve puzzles which will reveal which member of your team would be best suited for each event. Whether you solve the puzzle or not, you will still get to decide between several of your team members as to who should compete in what, but you obviously then have a leg up should you have solved the puzzle. After making your choice, the outcome of the event will then be described, and you will be awarded a medal depending upon how well you did (Tin medals for first place, Wood medals for second, and Chocolate medals for third). Once you have run through the events, you are awarded points for each different type of medal you have won (10 points for a Tin, 5 points for a Wood, and 1 point for a Chocolate), and then add them up to see if you gathered enough points to win the games. Should you earn enough points to have done so, you win the magic whistle and turn the king back into his normal form and thus win the adventure. If you come up short on points however, the Koopa Team wins the games, and you lose the gamebook.   

This adventure seemed to me to be more difficult than the first (although still not hard by any means), and I found myself failing a couple of times just through making a poor choice. The opening sections also conveyed to me even better the feeling of being in a Super Mario game, with its description of bricks floating in the sky and staircases leading up to nowhere. This adventure though felt like it was pulling heavily from the Super Mario Bros 2 game in particular, with your team made up of Luigi, Mario, Toad and the Princess, and also some of the creatures you encounter having come directly from that game, such as the snake enemy Cobrat. The puzzles though felt almost identical to the ones from the first book, and once again several of them don't really have much point to them other than to "let you know what is coming up next", which seems rather a waste of time. The writing also seemed to me to take a small step backwards, feeling even more childish than the first, although the Luigi character did seem more fleshed out here than Mario was in the first book, and I enjoyed his mumblings about how he always played second fiddle to his far more famous brother even though he was putting himself in just as much danger. 

Now, were my main complaints about the first book addressed? Well, one was and one wasn't, which is better than nothing I suppose. The one that was addressed was the scoring system, which has been adjusted here to make the top ranking not a guarantee because now you require 801 or more points to achieve the maximum ranking, combined with the fact that coins felt harder to come by this time. In fact you now would need to find 81 coins to get the top level, and I didn't really come close to finding that amount, so now I am wondering if this maybe hasn't swung back around the other way and now the top rank is impossible? The issue that wasn't addressed was the section-numbering system, because you are still being told what page number to turn to next as opposed to which section number. Did the author ever play a gamebook before writing these? 

Ranking: Hmm, how do I choose between the first two books? Very similar in style but there are parts of each I thought were done better than the other. The style of puzzles was basically the same, and I thought the story and writing in the first book were slightly better, but the gameplay in this book edges out the first thanks to the Mushroom Games sequence, which is the best part from either book. For that reason, and because these are gamebooks after all, I give the edge to Leaping Lizards in the rankings, although there is still quite a bit of room left for improvement. It is going to be tough for such low section-count adventures to score too highly, but perhaps one of these entries will eventually surprise me.

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3. Monster Mix-Up - Score = 💣 1/2 - One and a Half Bob-ombs

Sections: 61
Attempts to Beat: 6

The third book in the series sees us transitioning to a new author in the form of Bill McCay, who is yet another author I am completely unfamiliar with, and who has only ever apparently written gamebooks to be found in this very series. And I gotta say, this initial entry of his does not make a good first impression. We are back to playing as Mario again, and the story opens with Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, Toad, and the King, visiting the circus in the Mushroom Kingdom one day when the Princess suddenly goes missing, and surprise surprise, it turns out she has been kidnapped! (And I will give you one guess on who is responsible. Hint: His name starts with a "B" and ends with an "owser") So, there is nothing else to do but start searching for her, and the rest of your party sets about doing just that, starting either within the circus itself or in the surrounding countryside.

Pretty soon though it is not just the Princess you need to find, as Luigi and the King also go missing in short order, leaving only Mario and Toad left to try and figure out where they have all been taken (and did they really need to wonder where?). The adventure almost immediately descends into a string of random encounters with strange creatures where you will either need to solve a puzzle, or just straight up make a choice between two courses of action. Probably the only good thing I will say about this book is in the puzzles themselves, which did seem to me to be slightly better than those in the previous books, and they always felt like they somehow related to the situation Mario and Toad found themselves in. They involved such things as comparing two pictures to try and identify how many things are different between them, or tracing a picture without your pencil leaving the page, or finding your way through a maze and then adding up the numbers you came across on the correct path in order to get the answer. There also did not appear to be any of those puzzles where the answer would merely tell you "what was coming up next" which I disliked so much from the prior adventures. However, there did appear to be fewer puzzles overall in this book, due to the many "choose a course of action" sections in lieu of a puzzle. Again, this is about the only good thing I have to say about this gamebook, because now I come to the negatives.....

No way to sugarcoat it. The design of this book sucks. On numerous occasions both Mario and Toad will each suggest a differing course of action, and you must decide on whose advice to follow. There doesn't appear to be a lot of middle ground here, with one of them being right and one of them being wrong, but it seems rather random as to who you should listen to, as both options usually feel quite reasonable. At first I thought the author might be attempting to do something somewhat clever, because for the first half dozen or so of these choices, Toad's advice always seemed to be the right one to take. Maybe this would not have been that clever after all, because once you realized this you would then know exactly what to pick every time, but it didn't matter anyway, as eventually Mario's advice started to occasionally be the correct one to take also. Not only is the randomness of who to listen to a problem, but so are the consequences or choosing incorrectly. Should you choose correctly, you are generally awarded with some coins and continue on your way. However should you choose poorly, then one of two things usually happens. Either you are sent to a failure section where you flat out lose the game outright (and incredibly there is one of these in the very first choice of the book), or you are sent back to an earlier section of the adventure! This latter outcome completely screws up the continuity of the gamebook, and also would allow for any player to just keep looping back on purpose to gather as many coins as they needed to achieve the top score. And while I may have enjoyed the puzzles themselves, the outcomes to the puzzles was another matter, as failing a puzzle also would often lead to either a game over or looping back to an earlier section. Ugh. I found myself looping back so many times that I started to lose the will to finish the adventure, and this is only 61 sections long! 

Edit: I was going to make a comment here about how the first book in the series handled this looping aspect better, as it also contained a section whereby Mario was sent back to the beginning of the gamebook, however it disguised this in the form of "amnesia", after Mario had been hit on the head. But once I thought about it, this example didn't make sense either. Just because you have amnesia doesn't mean you travel back in time!

So basically I had to use trial-and-error to force my way to the end of the adventure. The puzzles are not difficult so not much worry there. The only issue came down to the random choices, and I'm still not sure which outcome was worse, the looping or the instant-failing. Probably the most frustrating choice came right at the end of the adventure, when you confront Bowser in his throne room. Earlier on you learn that Bowser has been using a machine (which looks something like a cooking hand-mixer and is pictured on the cover of the book) to combine various creatures of the Mushroom Kingdom, or "mix-up his monsters" as it were. He turns this machine on when you arrive, planning to use it to combine Mario and Luigi, and Mario starts to feel dizzy. At this point, you are asked if you want to: A) attack Bowser, or B) wait for a better opportunity. Now normally I rarely take the "attack immediately" option in gamebooks, but in this case with Mario already starting to pass out from the machine, it seemed like waiting any longer would be a death sentence, so I attacked. Wrong move! That led to an instant game over, and I then had to go all the way back through everything just so I could pick the other option. Jeesh! Anyway, Bowser is then defeated and the Princess, Luigi, and the King are all freed.

I also need to give mention to the plot, which felt really dumb. Bowser's plan here to go around the Kingdom combining various creatures doesn't seem to have much payoff, and routinely the creature encounters we have with these new monsters make it clear that they are even less effective then their original components, so that Bowser is likely making his army worse off by doing this. The writing here also felt like yet another step down, with terrible jokes and puns popping up here and there, although there were at least a couple of good moments, one involving the Bullet Bills talking to each other as they slowly come towards Mario, and another about how Bowser was disappointed when he tried mixing a Super Goomba with a mini-Goomba and got......a regular sized Goomba. Overall though when it comes to the prose, I think the series is trending in the wrong direction. 

"It's So Bad!". Yes. Yes it is. Both this gamebook and the original Power Glove. If you had it back then, you know what I am talking about.

Ranking: Terribly designed and easily the worst of the first 3 books. The constant backtracking and random choices ruin it, and the non-sensical story doesn't do it any favours either. I was all set to give this a 1 out of 5, but the fact that I found the puzzles a slight step up (even if there are fewer of them) and that I also found the rare moment of humour here and there, meant that I felt forced to bump it up half a point. Still, make no mistake, this is a bad gamebook, but I guess on the bright side, hopefully we can only go up from here.