Nintendo Adventure - Books 7-12

 ______________________________________________________________

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.

______________________________________________________________

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.