Nintendo Adventure - Books 7-12

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7. Dinosaur Dilemma - Score = 💣 - One Bob-omb

Sections: 61
Attempts to Beat: 5

Ugh. So much for a pleasant return to this series. The previous book I had played, Doors to Doom, had easily been the best one yet, so to watch the quality plummet back down again with Dinosaur Dilemma is rather discouraging. We go back to a Clyde Bosco written adventure, and I have to say his heart really doesn't seem to be in it anymore. This book opens with Mario and Luigi on a much needed vacation on Dinosaur Island in the Mushroom Kingdom, courtesy of the Princess for all they have done for the Kingdom of late. At this point it is interesting to note the transition from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Super Nintendo, as we are introduced to the cutesy dinosaur character of Yoshi, who has befriended Mario and Luigi during their holiday. Unfortunately for the brothers, Yoshi has a voracious appetite and has eaten through all their stocks of food, requiring one of the plumbing brothers to go out and look for more. The adventure then begins with you choosing who you want to send out to look for food, Mario or Luigi.

Now right here with this decision the adventure immediately goes in the dumper. Because if you make the wrong choice between the two brothers, you have already lost. Not only that, but the book has you go through several sections, even solving a puzzle along the way, before unavoidably killing you off. What the heck? Okaaaayy, I guess I'll just restart and pick the other option, thanks for wasting my time! Once you get going, you quickly learn that the adventure is not about the quest for food, and you discover that all the dinosaurs on the island (except for Yoshi who is accompanying you) have apparently just vanished, and it is up to you to figure out what happened to them. In the opening sections, you are given the option of exploring 3 areas, either the desert, the lake, or the jungle, and unbeknownst to you at the time, they need to be visited in a particular order. You solve puzzles as you go along as usual, and there are some opportunities at times to loop back, but there are other times where if you don't have the correct item because you didn't do things in the proper order then you are killed outright. I don't mind this style of design generally, as figuring out the order in which to do things is part of the fun. However, in a puzzle book like this, once you have solved a puzzle, you are guaranteed to get back to any spot you just left, so restarting feels rather a waste of time. 

You will need to collect several items if you want to win (an Invincibility Starman, a Flying Feather, and a pair of Scissors), and I will say I thought a couple of them were quite well hidden, which was one of the only things I enjoyed about the book. But boy, once you have gathered everything you need and proceed to the final area of Bowser's Castle (to the surprise of no one, Bowser is the one behind the disappearance of the dinosaurs), you learn what his evil plan is. And to say I found his plan non-sensical, even for this series, would be an understatement. As it turns out, Bowser has kidnapped all the dinosaurs, then published a theory as to their disappearance, claiming they became extinct due to "not looking both ways before crossing the road". This theory has won him much admiration within the scientific community of the Mushroom Kingdom, and he is being awarded the honor of the "Snowbell Prize". Why does he want this? Well, the winner of this prize also becomes head of the Museum of Mushroom Kingdom History, which is located close to the Royal Palace, putting him in a better position to cause mischief. Ok, this is a bit lame but not completely terrible. But it gets worse. For some reason, Bowser is holding a reception at his Castle for the scientific community that awarded him the prize, where he intends to cook the dinosaurs he has kidnapped and serve them up in a giant omelette! What the frack?? He already had what he wanted, why did he need to do this and risk being caught? (Which he eventually is of course). I guess he needed to "get rid" of the dinosaurs he kidnapped, but considering all the creatures in the Mushroom Kingdom are anthropomorphized, this is a particularly gruesome solution, especially for this series. When exactly did Bowser become Hannibal Lecter? Even the details of the plan make no sense, as Bowser has somehow had the kidnapped dinosaurs all placed inside unbroken eggshells in order to make the omelette. Man, this plan is something else! Anyway, you chain the required items together right at the end, being asked in quick succession if you have each one, and thus free the dinosaurs, costing Bowser his award and foiling his plans once more. 

"I served them a Dinosaur omelette with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

On the subject of the puzzles you need to solve along the way, there is nothing really new for the series here, as some of them involve showing you a picture of a dangerous situation and then asking where you would like to position Mario so that he does not get hit by the enemies on the page, and some others that involve you using process of elimination on a group of letters by giving you a clue on which letters to remove, at which point you then need to take the remaining letters to form a message on what to do next. That said, a couple of the puzzles seem broken to me here with no workable solution, or perhaps something is missing from the instructions to the puzzle itself. Worse though, are several puzzles that ask you to select from among 2 or 3 starting items, perform the puzzle using your item of choice, and then turn to the page indicated by the answer you come up with. The huge problem with this is that only one of the starting items leads to the "correct" answer, so whether you can get the puzzle right or not comes down to a complete random guess on your part when you begin. That is some awful design. 

I have to also give mention to the puns found all throughout the book, of which this series has always been heavy on. To be fair, there are actually some pretty good ones here. "Basic Draining", "James Fenimore Koopa", and a character called "Francis Ford Koopola" uttering the phrase "I'm getting away from this apocalypse now!" all got a grin from me despite my annoyance with the design of the book, with that Apocalypse Now pun maybe being the best one in the whole series so far. I have to wonder though, with this series seemingly being aimed at a younger audience, I feel like many of these jokes would be lost on them (are they really going to know who James Fenimore Cooper is?), but who knows.   

Ranking: Taking a look at the authors for the rest of the books in the series, this is the last one written by Bosco, and if you told me he wasn't interested in writing these anymore by this point, I would absolutely believe it. The story is terrible, and while some of the puzzles are decent, others seem broken, and still yet the presence of some others that basically require you to make a random selection and hope for the best is particularly egregious. It's also totally possible (and probably even likely at least a couple of times that you play) that you will find yourself going in circles, which also allows you to collect unlimited coins should you wish, once again making the scoring system a waste of time. The only thing I remotely liked about the design was that the required items needed to beat the quest were well hidden, but even that is kind of ruined because you might need to make a random guess or two before you can find them. Oh, and the puns were actually pretty good too I suppose, although I'm not sure how likely the younger crowd that I have to believe these books were written for would be to "get" them. Overall I think this was the worst book in the series so far, and needless to say this was not a good return to the series for me, but I see we have a new author with the next entry so perhaps there is still hope.

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8. Flown the Koopa - Score = 💣💣 1/2 - Two and a Half Bob-ombs

Sections: 60
Attempts to Beat: 3

So not only do we have a new author for the series in the form of Matt Wayne, but looking ahead I see that he will be the author for every book from here on out. These also appear to be the only gamebooks he has ever written, so I wonder if he volunteered for this, or if the assignment was thrust on him. This entry opens with the "gang" of Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, Yoshi, Toad, and the King himself travelling by ship to Dinosaur Island (again?) to attend the International Dino-Flying Derby, where Yoshi will be competing. Once the ship docks at the island, the Princess and Yoshi go on ahead to register him for the events, leaving the rest of the group to travel together to the fairgrounds where the contest is taking place. 

And once again we have an opening choice, that if you pick the wrong option, you already cannot win the book (at least as far as I can tell). Before leaving the ship you have the option of taking 1 of 3 items: a Fire Flower, a Flying Feather, or a Flashlight, and there is a moment right at the end of the adventure where if you don't have the correct one of these, you die. I am a bit more forgiving of the situation in this case for a couple of reasons. First, there is at least a puzzle provided this time that is supposed to provide a hint as to which item to take (although I found this particular puzzle to be a bit nebulous, and unfortunately not one of the better ones in what was otherwise a decent area of the book). Second, even if you take the "wrong" item, you can still make it almost to the very end of the quest, so it at least allows you to map out what else you need to do, even if you now can't win on that attempt.

So Mario, Luigi, Toad, and the King travel overland through swamp and desert, solving puzzles every few steps along the way, until after a short while the King decides it's too dangerous out here for him, so he decides to head back to the ship with Toad (who is suffering from amnesia in an odd subplot where he bumps his head in the opening). This just leaves Mario and Luigi to continue, and you spend the adventure "controlling" both of them, with several of the puzzles showing a picture involving the two of them, and then asking you which of the two is in the best position to defeat the enemy or get past the obstacle in question being shown on the page. They quickly arrive upon an odd scene where it appears that all the dinosaurs on the island are being kidnapped by an as yet unknown villain (who turns out not to be Bowser for a change, although he does make a brief appearance). This is where the deja vu kicks in. Not only have we had this exact same plot point before in the series, but we just had it in the very last book! Mario and Luigi follow the dinosaur tracks to a mysterious castle, which they infiltrate to discover that the villain of the adventure, Magikoopa, is using his magic wand to shrink down the dinosaurs, which he then puts inside his TV set in order to power it. (It appears the tiny terrified dinos run in circles inside his TV, providing it power). This is just as loony as the evil plan in the last book!

A positive for the adventure is that there are a couple of different ways to infiltrate Magikoopa's castle, with both of them being rather involved, at least as far as this series goes. You can attempt to find a way to scale the outer walls then make your way through various underground tunnels, or you can try to disguise yourself as one of the dinosaurs and sneak in with the other dinos currently being kidnapped (with Mario and Luigi arguing about who gets to be the "head" and who gets to be the "rump" in the dinosaur costume). This certainly helps with the replay value, and there are more than a few different situations to experiment with here. Once you get inside and defeat Magikoopa, by solving more puzzles of course, the dinosaurs are freed and you head back to the ship. (No word on how Yoshi makes out in the Derby though). 

The writing is basically the same as the previous entries, with cheesy puns to be found all over the place. The last line of the book, after having rescued the Princess who had been turned to stone by Magikoopa, is even "You know we'd never take you for granite". But while Wayne did not impress me all that much with his prose, his puzzles were definitely a step in the right direction, and while there are some simple ones to be sure, this adventure contained several that I needed to study for a fair amount of time before arriving at my answer. There is one in particular involving a picture of two skeletons, each with many different types of bones showing, where you are given a weight for each type of bone and need to determine which skeleton is heavier. This is a lot more number crunching then I would have expected to find in these adventures, but fortunately I enjoy these types of puzzles. Finding a viable path through the adventure also felt just about right, that opening puzzle notwithstanding. This book did seem to be a bit more forgiving than most in terms of getting puzzles incorrect, as often times you were not killed outright, but instead you would suffer a loss of your precious coins which impact your final score (if you care about that sort of thing), before being sent on your way.       

Ranking: Since completing this, I have been questioning myself as to which is worse when it comes to story-telling, an adventure like the previous one with a terrible (but at least involved) story, or an adventure such as this with barely any story at all. And I'm still not sure what to tell myself. You spend most of this book just wandering around not knowing what is going on, only having that revealed to you right at the very end. It's a shame there isn't more of a plot too, because the puzzles in here are quite good for the most part, and is the reason why for me this entry scores much higher than the last one. The villain's evil plan here is just as bad as the previous entry, but these are puzzle books too after all and I felt those were much better here, which is why this pulls out in front. It's a bit unfortunate that everything rides on the very first puzzle, but at least you can go on to map out most of the rest of the adventure even if you get that wrong. Overall I would put this right in the middle of the rankings for the series so far. Very solid puzzles, very weak story. In his defense, authorial first efforts are not often absolute gems, so it will interesting to see if Wayne can improve on this effort going forward.

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9. The Crystal Trap - Score = 💣💣💣 - Three Bob-ombs

Sections: 62
Attempts to Beat: 4

Finally! After 8 straight books set in the "Super Mario" universe, we actually get something a bit different here, as we get to play inside the world of Nintendo's other big franchise, "The Legend of Zelda". When the story begins, it feels like we are already at the end of the quest, as we learn that Link and Zelda have spent the last few hours fighting their way through Midoro Palace, and we join up with them just as they are about to confront the big villain of the franchise, the evil wizard Ganon. In his usual goal of attempting to obtain the Triforce, a powerful artefact that would make him unstoppable, Ganon has come into possession of a magical Scroll that allows him to encase someone in solid crystal. Before Link and Zelda can defeat him and recover the Scroll, Ganon uses its magic to imprison Link inside a crystal trap, which is the scene depicted on the cover of the book. Ganon is at this point about to kill Zelda, when he decides he would rather her suffer by having to watch her friend die, as in 24 hours Link will perish inside the crystal. Ganon then transports away, leaving Zelda and the entrapped Link inside a seemingly unescapable chamber. Zelda manages to find a secret exit of course, and she escapes the palace to seek out a way to free Link before the 24 hours expire.

This then becomes the biggest surprise for me of the book, in that we don't play as Link, but as Princess Zelda. A teenage Zelda no less, as this adventure apparently takes place when both Link and Zelda are in their late teens. A clue is given to Zelda in the opening encounter by Ganon himself (the big dope) that she will need to find 3 secret items in order to free Link, and the majority of the adventure thus becomes her trying to locate and obtain these items (of which she does not know exactly what they are). So we travel across forest and desert, through swamp and village, looking for anyone who might be able to help us find what we are looking for, solving puzzles along the way of course. The puzzles here were good enough I thought, with the usual mixture of mazes to trace your way through, word scrambles to unjumble, and math problems to solve. There is even one in here that assumes you know what Legend of Zelda creatures known as moblins and octoroks look like, so some prior knowledge of the Zelda games would certainly come in handy here. There is also a puzzle that asks you to colour in various shapes on the page in order to reveal the answer, but as I can never bring myself to deface the books in this manner, I found myself trying to reproduce it on a scrap of paper instead (which was a bad idea, as it turned out to be rather laborious). And even though my biggest problem with the puzzles was in trying to read some of the very small printing contained within some of them, that is as much on me and my ever-decreasing eyesight as it is on the book itself.   

The real strength of the book for me was in locating the 3 items you need to free Link (a magnifying glass, a handprint, and a jar of honey.......as random as that all sounds), as I felt they were well hidden, with any wrong move meaning you are likely to miss one. I will say that despite this, there was one moment very early on in the adventure that I wish was handled differently. As soon as Zelda leaves the palace to seek out help for Link, she is given the option of exploring 3 different areas: the forest, the desert, or the swamp. I wanted to explore all 3, as they all sounded quite interesting, and I was dearly hoping they would all be viable and still allow you to win. The book ALMOST does this, as no matter which option you pick, you will eventually arrive at a chokepoint, and if you want to win you will need to have found a brass key and a ring by the time you reach this chokepoint. The brass key can in fact be found along all 3 routes, so well done there. However the ring (which you need to get the magnifying glass), is to my knowledge, only found along one of the 3 routes. Now, there is a puzzle that provides a clue as to which of the routes you should take, and I guess this is an example of "one true path" gamebooking which I am normally ok with, but making all the routes sound fun to explore means I wish this particular adventure would have at least made it possible to obtain both items along each route. Ah well. 

Once you have gathered all the needed items, you are whisked back to the palace thanks to those bees that produced the honey (how the bees managed to pick up Zelda I'm not sure, but I'll go with it here). You use the items to free Link from the crystal trap, and the two of you move on to confront Ganon once more. At this point, Ganon himself calls out what I'm sure a lot of readers were thinking, in that why do our heroes not think that Ganon will just use the Scroll to trap Link again? (Which he indeed tries to do). Here though, you need to use information you would have gained from the very first puzzle of the gamebook, which tells you what particular weapon you will need to use against Ganon. Once you know that, you defeat Ganon and the Scroll is destroyed, with Ganon escaping to no doubt wreak havoc again at some future point. Oh and as is typical for the series, the final line is yet again another bad pun, with Link expressing his confusion over all the events of the adventure, while Zelda responds that she actually found it all to be "crystal clear". 

On the subject of those puns in general though, there did not seem to be nearly as many of them here as in the previous books, and I wonder if this was an attempt to make the series a bit more "mature", as the subject matter of the Zelda franchise in general always felt a bit more adult to me than the more cutesy Super Mario. Another thing to note is that, just like the Super Mario books, this quest includes a scoring system called the "Triforce Protector Rating", whereby as you make your way through the quest you can gather points by defeating enemies. In order to get the highest grade possible in this adventure you must score at least 800 points, but this really shouldn't be too much a problem to achieve, and I blew past this total, getting 1260 on my winning playthrough. This is because there are numerous places to collect points, and they might have been spread a little too generously here. 

Ranking: This book gets a slight bump right at the start merely for being something other than yet another Super Mario adventure. Other than that fact, there really isn't anything that stands out about it, but I thought it was enjoyable enough for what it was. The puzzles were pretty much what I have come to expect from the series at this point, and even though I thought the writing was actually a small step down from previous entries, I did like getting to play as Zelda as opposed to Link as I felt that was a nice twist on expectations, and I also liked having to uncover the location of the 3 hidden items required to free Link, along with the correct weapon required to defeat Ganon. So while not the best book in the series, The Crystal Trap is definitely in the top half for me so far, and it's a shame that only the Mario and Zelda franchises seem to be represented in the series. Still, I now wonder who I will get to play as in the next book. 

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10. The Shadow Prince - Score = 💣💣 - Two Bob-ombs

Sections: 59
Attempts to Beat: 1

And the answer to the question of who I will get to play as in this book is......Link! While it was nice to get to play as both of the two main protagonists over the course of the two Zelda books, nothing much else about this particular adventure was very good I'm sorry to say. The story opens in a strange fashion, with the first paragraphs describing events from the perspective of a group of Moblin in a forest, waiting to ambush Link and Zelda who are out hunting and will be passing by shortly. Although I admit that it can be done well at times (Master of Ravenloft did this very well), I nevertheless always find it a bit jarring in gamebooks when we experience events from the perspective of characters that we are not playing as (and the bad guys too no less). After a brief discussion, the Moblin move out of their cover to ambush the heroes, and from that point onwards we play exclusively as Link. Zelda and Link put up a brave fight, but eventually thanks to sheer weight of numbers, they find themselves defeated by the Moblin, with Zelda knocked unconscious and Link about to have his throat cut. Just before Link is about to die however, the heroes are rescued by the sudden appearance of a strange and mighty warrior, who turns out to be the titular Shadow Prince the book is named after. The Prince, whose name we learn is Charles, puts the Moblin to flight, and the now-revived Zelda is so grateful she offers to take him back to her palace at North Castle for a fitting reception. 

The adventure then really begins with the three characters travelling back to North Castle, and here also starts the jealousy angle of the book, as despite having the Prince save his life, Link is clearly envious of the affection Zelda shows for their rescuer. Link's frustration grows as the story progresses, as the Prince is continually "one-upping" him at every turn. Something is clearly amiss though when the King himself is so taken with the Prince upon meeting him, that he decides to show him the Triforce of Wisdom, which is kept at North Castle and almost never shown to outsiders, despite having known him for less than a day. At this point, if not even earlier, it should be clear who the Prince really is, and this was one of my biggest gripes with the adventure. It's set up as some big mystery as to the true identity and motives of the Prince, but c'mon, we know right away he is evil just from the name and cover of the book (which depicts Link fighting him no less). This destroys the desired mystery of the book before we even open the damn thing. And as to who the Prince truly is, you will probably only need one guess.  

So even if Link hasn't yet figured it out, as readers we probably have, and our job now is to find a way to reveal the Prince for who he is before he manages to leave the palace with the Triforce. Despite almost everyone he meets loving him, we do have one ally in our quest, as Zelda's nursemaid Impa believes we are on to something in not trusting him. She goes on to tell us that if we can locate the Mirror of Truth, believed to be hidden somewhere in the town of Ruto, it will reveal to everyone the Prince's true identity. We then set off towards Ruto (oh, and we have been solving puzzles as usual every few sections along the way), where we locate the Mirror, bring it back to the palace, and after the final straw of the King naming the Prince his new champion despite all Link has done for the kingdom in the past, we finally unmask the Prince. (I won't even say who he is, but I think you know). Unmasking him doesn't prove very effective though, as he immediately "yoinks" the Triforce anyway and makes off with it, with Link hot on his heels. Link catches up with the Prince rather quickly, and they have a final confrontation in the forest just outside the palace. This is another big letdown, as whether you win or not comes down to a simple question, do you want to attack the Prince with your sword as normal, or try to cut away the strange magical necklace he is wearing. Gee, I wonder. Pick the right option and you win, pick wrong and you die. You then recover the Triforce, return it to the palace, and accept Zelda's apology for treating you so badly. (And the Prince escapes of course).    

There were several things I did not like about this gamebook, outlined below.

- Looking at my map, this adventure is extremely linear, with any choices you are given seemingly "Link-ing up" (heh-heh) almost immediately afterwards. I realize these books have a relatively small number of sections, but at least the majority of the other adventures still managed to cram in room for some exploration. Not so here.

- As mentioned earlier, the first half of the book treats it like a big mystery as to the identity of the Prince, like we are supposed to be tense and on the edge of our seat the whole time, even though that aspect was all but spoiled from the get-go

- Probably the main draw of the adventures, the puzzles, were a big step back here. They felt more simple to me than normal, and while I didn't time myself, I completed several of them very, very quickly. But worse than that, many of them when solved only reveal what is coming up next in the story, which we would find out anyway just by turning to the next section! To be fair, these kinds of puzzles have been scattered all throughout the series, but they seemed even more prevalent to me here. I feel like a puzzle should have a reward for solving it, or conversely a penalty for not solving it, but the way these ones are set up they seem completely pointless.

- I even managed to beat this adventure on my very first attempt, which has been surprisingly rare in this series. I chalk this up to the ease of the puzzles and not really having anywhere to go wrong, but it also leaves the scoring system once again a bit meaningless, as I'm not sure how you wouldn't get the 800 points required to get the highest level, assuming you beat the book, as there really only appears to be one way through it. And no last-line bad pun? What a gyp!   

Ranking: Even though there was nothing particularly broken about it, this adventure felt like everything it tried to do just didn't work. I won't say this entry was awful, but I think the key word here would be "weak". Weak design, weak puzzles, weak mystery. Maybe this helps to explain why this is the last Zelda-themed book in the series? Perhaps the author just preferred writing for Super Mario instead so decided to return there, and if so, then I should be able to expect a far better effort with the next entry! Right? (Fingers crossed). 

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11. Unjust Desserts - Score = 0.5 - Half a Bob-omb (if that)

Sections: 60
Attempts to Beat: 3

Wrong! Good grief is this gamebook ever awful! Where to begin with this mess? Well, I guess with the story, which is laughably bad. It kicks off with Mario and Luigi attending a birthday party at the Mushroom Palace being thrown for Yoshi, the lovable dinosaur who eats everything in sight and doesn't say much other than PLORP. I assume he is being feted due to his accompaniment of Mario and Luigi on their prior adventures and thus in aiding in the preservation of the Mushroom Kingdom, because it's never really stated why he would garner such royal treatment otherwise. Anyway, Yoshi is presented with a lavish birthday cake, complete with large cherry on top (as depicted on the cover), which he quickly devours. As it turns out, usual villain Bowser had the cherry snuck into the palace and put on the cake, and this cherry causes Yoshi to start eating everything in sight. Hang on a second, THAT was his big plan? How is making Yoshi eat everything he sees any different from how Yoshi usually acts? Bowser couldn't have poisoned the cherry or something? As far as inept evil plans go, this one takes the cake! (Ha!). So, while on his eating binge, Yoshi happens to also gobble up Luigi, who survives but is now trapped inside the dinosaur's stomach. It is then up to Mario, who we play the whole adventure as, to ingest a shrinking potion that the palace doctor happens to have on hand, allow himself to also be swallowed by Yoshi, then locate Luigi and provide his brother with another of the shrinking potions so that the two of them will then be small enough to uh....pass out of Yoshi. Jeesh!

So after shrinking, Mario finds himself inside Yoshi's mouth, and then must make his way down through the body toward the stomach. Almost immediately this starts to make even less sense than it already has so far, because Yoshi's insides do not resemble the inside of a living body to any real degree, and instead consists of several pipes and tunnels as if the dinosaur was a man-made structure. The adventure is rather disgusting too, as Mario is continually making his way through mushed up food that Yoshi also ate at the party, such as birthday cake and grape punch. Yoshi's insides are also filled with various creatures normally only found out in the Mushroom Kingdom, and in a mind-boggling twist, Mario learns that Bowser himself has shrunk both himself and his ENTIRE army of creatures to also enter Yoshi, presumably to finish off Mario and Luigi inside. How dumb is that? He just willingly put himself in the same situation he put the brothers in. And I have to ask, but how did Bowser and his whole army enter Yoshii unnoticed? You know what, who cares I guess, because nothing much makes sense here anyway. As long as you have picked up several essential items along the way, you will be asked in rapid succession near the end if you have each one, at which point Mario and Luigi exit Yoshi (through his mouth thankfully), take a different potion to grow back to normal size, and easily defeat the still tiny Bowser.  

The puzzles in this book are absolutely terrible, with most of them being one of the following types: a) puzzles that merely tell you what is coming up next, rendering them pointless. b) puzzles where you choose a starting option at random and work out the answer, leaving what way you go or item you receive totally up to chance. c) puzzles that have no bearing whatsoever on the situation at hand (what does trying to spot differences in many different pictures of Bowser have to do with Mario deciding which direction to go?). And sometimes there are even combinations of these types. To make all this somehow even worse, there is an item essential to winning that can only be obtained by one of the (b) type puzzles above, meaning you have to chose a starting spot at random for a maze, and hope the path you picked comes out at the essential item. Awful! And just because I feel like bringing it up, this book also contains what must be the laziest maze puzzle you will ever see (different from the essential item one), which can be found in section 53. The safe route through is blatantly obvious and just goes around the outside, and this is a very small maze to begin with. This is the extreme example, but there are so many puzzles in this book that just felt totally phoned in. 

The writing in the adventure? No relief there, because it is very, very bad. I'm not sure what happened with the author, because his previous efforts were not like this. Just about every character is portrayed as a complete moron. For instance when Mario first shrinks and allows Yoshi to eat him so he can get inside, he finds himself standing on Yoshi's tongue, and wonders what those large white platforms are that line the mouth. Seriously dude?? Bowser is an idiot as well for reasons mentioned earlier, and Luigi, Yoshi, and the King are almost totally mindless. The only character who remotely has any intelligence is Princess Toadstool, and she is barely in this. And what is going on with the scoring system? When you start the adventure you are often rewarded a certain amount of coins for successfully completing puzzles, then at the end you are meant to convert the coins you have collected into points to get your score, as is usual for the series. However, early in this book, you start being awarded points directly instead of coins! Is this an error and the author meant to say coins and not points? It happens so often it seems more like it was either just forgotten, or the author no longer gave a crap, with the latter reason feeling more likely. I also don't recall any clever puns in here (although there could be some I missed), and a lot of the attempted humour seems to come from characters "mishearing" one another, or from characters uttering lines that fall incredibly flat. For example when Mario meets Bowser inside Yoshi, this exchange takes place:

Mario: Bowser Koopa!

Bowser: You were expecting maybe Maxi Mushroom and the Mushketeers?

Ranking: "Unjust Desserts" is exactly what anyone who plays this is gonna get. This is just terrible on so many levels, and it's probably no secret by this point in the review when I say that this is far away the worst book in the series so far. The story makes no logical sense whatsoever, even in the context of this series. The puzzles are the worst group of any of the entries yet, and the writing, somehow, devolved into nonsense. Playing this brought back similar memories of playing Chicago Gangsters from the "Virgin Adventure" series, in that it was so bad I started to feel myself becoming physically ill while playing it (or at the very least, the recipient of a splitting headache), and needed to force myself to power through in order to finish. I so far have reserved giving a zero score only to adventures I find to be broken, and even though this gamebook was not that, I debated heavily on giving this a zero anyway. So is there anything positive I can say about it? Well, I guess the cover is one of the best-looking ones in the series (the pink cover edition I have really pops, and could Yoshi BE any cuter here?). But this only goes to reinforce the old adage about never judging a book by its cover, because this book is absolutely atrocious. In the span of a couple of entries I have gone from mostly enjoying this series to thanking my stars it's almost over. Now if you will excuse me I need to go and take a couple of aspirin