1. Metal City Mayhem
Author: James Wallis
Illustrators: Chris Russell (full-page art), Keith Rawling (filler drawings)
First Published: 1993
ISBN: 0-14-090391-7
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 7 (not including defeat by loss of lives)
Plot Summary: Sonic gets distracted by a tough Game Gear game, and
while he's not looking, all of his friends are kidnapped. This is
particularly frustrating because he really wants to consult with one of his
buddies on how to beat the final boss.
My Thoughts: I'm a big fan of James Wallis thanks to his brilliant
Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen competitive role-playing
game; thus, I was eager to try this book, even though the Sonic the
Hedgehog theme kind of frightened me. As it turns out, the book is a mix
of wonderful and not-so-wonderful elements. First, the good: despite
seeming like it was going to be condescending and cheesy at first, the
writing turned out to be pretty decent. It's written in third-person,
present tense, but the "third wall" is frequently broken, with
Sonic talking back to the reader from time to time. There's also a fairly
funny running gag in the conversation options when Sonic encounters other
characters. Because of its somewhat irreverent, self-referential attitude,
the book actually reminded me of the Tiny Toon Adventures TV series,
which was just about its contemporary. Other positives are the game system,
which is simple but effective, and the successful integration of video game
elements and overall logic into the text (mentions of background music, a
bonus stage for high scorers at the end, and so forth). The book does have
problems, however. The art is less than inspiring (Sonic's tone demands
bright colors, and black and white line drawings just look flat), the mission
is very linear (though not frustratingly so), and there are a number of
points where rules issues become confusing. The book tends to make you loop
back a lot (after dying, mostly, but also after making some non-fatal
mistakes), yet it doesn't really address what happens to items that were
picked up and enemies that were defeated -- I was frequently unsure whether
I should erase items from my inventory or whether it was necessary to fight
the same old foes again. This seriously detracted from my gameplay
experience, as I didn't feel quite satisfied when I finally won -- the
uncertainty of whether or not I had accidentally cheated after losing lives
and otherwise being sent back prevented me from feeling proud of my efforts.
Still, despite its problems, this is a solid gamebook, and better than you
might expect from the subject matter. It's worth a look.
My High Score: 56 rings
Errata: The "Cool Looks" attribute on the character sheet
should actually read "Good Looks."
2. Zone Rangers
Author: James Wallis
Illustrators: Uncredited (provided by a company called Arkadia)
First Published: 1993
ISBN: 0-14-090392-5
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 22 (including one ending which directs the reader to section 1 instead of saying "Game Over," but not including defeat by loss of lives)
Plot Summary: Sonic and Tails are napping when they are suddenly
interrupted by a bulldozer tearing up the countryside. Unsurprisingly, Dr.
Robotnik isn't far behind.
My Thoughts: After the second or third attempt at this book, I was
preparing to declare it the most brilliant thing I'd read in ages. It has
the same sense of humor as the previous book, but it's even more successful.
There are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments, and also some amusing (if a bit
predictable) references to things like Alien and The Prisoner
(Doctor Who fans must also be sure to examine the artwork carefully).
The book also has a very interesting structure, jumping between the separate
adventures of Sonic and Tails in order to build suspense -- it's very
effective, and I was pleasantly surprised by the pacing. Unfortunately,
further readings revealed significant flaws which prevent me from
wholeheartedly recommending the book (though I still recommend it with 90% of
my heart). First of all, the game design, for all its cleverness (or perhaps
because of all its cleverness) is fairly linear and episodic; this wouldn't
be a bad thing in and of itself, but it means that once you figure out the
optimal paths through early segments of the adventure, getting defeated near
the end gets increasingly annoying since it requires tedious replay through
familiar territory. Each death feels more frustrating than the one before
it, and it gets harder and harder to look at the bright side and view defeat
as an opportunity to try new things. Of course, you could always cheat to
avoid this problem, but as a matter of principle I don't like to do that.
Also, the book could have used a bit more proofreading and playtesting, as it
has a lot of continuity problems. None seem to be fatal to the gameplay, but
they are distracting. At one point, for example, if you have a key, you have
to sneak past some guards in order to use it. If you fail the sneak roll,
you're sent to a combat section, where you're told that you attack the guards
because you don't have a key. Similarly, later in the adventure, if you use
a rope to reach a high perch, the book acts as if you got there with a
see-saw catapult. Reusing segments to save space is a good thing, but it
should have been done with more caution here. In any case, if you don't take
the game system too seriously and can deal with a few slightly confusing
errors, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Despite its problems, it's
an amusing read, affectionately poking fun at both Sonic the Hedgehog and
gamebooks in general.
My High Score: 838 points
3. Sonic vs. Zonik
Authors: Nigel Gross and Jon Sutherland
Illustrators: Uncredited (provided by a company called Selecciones Illustradas)
First Published: 1994
ISBN: 0-14-090406-9
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 24 (1 victory, 4 instant failures, 19 conditional failures)
Plot Summary: Robotnik has created an evil duplicate of Sonic, and it
must be stopped quickly!
My Thoughts: My expectations for this book were fairly low, since I
figured that it would be difficult to follow James Wallis' excellent act.
Alas, my fears were justified. This book isn't nearly as good as the first
two. First of all, the humor is almost entirely gone -- there were one or
two jokes that were passable, but for the most part the book's attempts at
being funny ranged from unimpressive to cringeworthy. Worse, the general
quality of the writing is remarkably low; most upsetting is the fact that the
tense keeps changing from present to past and back again in a distracting
(not to mention amateurish) manner. This sort of error, especially as
widespread as it is here, simply should not have made it past the editor.
And speaking of errors, there are a lot of game-breaking typos present. At
first there's nothing too severe, just the occasional point where the numbers
for choices are reversed. As you approach the conclusion of the book,
though, things get really bad. Sometimes you'll end up in a section which
has no relevance to what you're doing, and other times you'll get stuck in an
infinite loop of vaguely related (but obviously not quite right) sections.
Either way, the book frequently forces you to backtrack and take other
choices because the area you've reached is completely incomprehensible. As
with the tense problems, this simply should not have made it past the editor.
The final blow is the fact that, as with the rest of the books, the combat
system is rather vaguely defined, making battles hard to resolve
satisfactorily and making the book even more frustrating than it should be.
Even without these problems, the book couldn't be considered much more than
an average effort. It has a few interesting ideas (most notably a "zone
chip" which can be used at any time to warp into a different area of the
book), but these don't do it too much good in the face of all the
pointlessness on display. Far, far too many of the choices are of the random
"do you go left or right?" variety, and there are two fairly
tedious mazes (three if you count the otherwise somewhat nifty pinball
machine puzzle) that serve as little more than padding -- to be fair, though,
I should mention that at least one maze offers an easy solution if you get
a good enough roll of the dice. Ultimately, if not for the many typos, the
mission would be an easy one -- I finished it on my second attempt and lost
within just one move of victory on the first (though it's possible I
unintentionally cheated due to vague rules). I'd recommend avoiding this
one -- while the first two books were surprisingly fresh and entertaining,
this is more what you'd expect of a licensed video game gamebook: a cynical
attempt to cash in on a popular name with the help of a hacked-together,
barely-playable mess.
My High Score: 120 rings
Errata: Your starting equipment isn't listed on the character sheet,
though I think it's just supposed to consist of the Energy Gun. The choices
are reversed in sections 298 and 119. The path that leads from 82 to 67
should in fact lead to 121 instead. The path from 85 to 68 should instead
lead to 227. The transitions from 216 to 114, 153 to 268 and 199 to 97 are
all wrong, though I'm not sure where the paths actually should lead. The
only place where I'd make a guess about a correction for an incomprehensible
transition is in the jump from 180 to 76, which works slightly better if you
replace 76 with 234 (though it still doesn't make much sense).
4. The Zone Zapper
Authors: Nigel Gross and Jon Sutherland
Illustrators: Keith Ward (cover), Uncredited (provided by a company called Selecciones Illustradas) (interior)
First Published: 1994
ISBN: 0-14-090407-7
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 27 (6 unconditional endings, 21 conditional failures)
Plot Summary: Sonic must undo the results of Dr. Robotnik's latest
creation, a device which turns good into evil and evil into good.
My Thoughts: Like the previous adventure, this lived down to my low
expectations. As before, the writing was of amateurishly poor quality, with
tense problems and questionable grammar and punctuation. There were also a
few typos which messed up gameplay, and though the book was silly, it was
very rarely funny or clever. Some new problems also arose to further lower
my opinion of the adventure. In at least one place, the same text was copied
and pasted in such a way that it was possible to encounter the same paragraph
in two different places during one playthrough. More seriously, the
adventure was far, far too easy. I was able to finish it on my first try
without losing a single life (though I did lose all of my rings near the
end; I guess that's something). I don't like gamebooks to be too hard, but
this is just ridiculously simple. There are far too many "do you run
blindly in or think of a plan first?" choices, the various riddles that
need to be solved become rather obvious when there are only two possible
answers to choose from, and many crucial die rolls allow the reader to retry
indefinitely, thus making the rolls entirely pointless. The only
difficulty-lowering feature that I really appreciated here was the fact that
there's a maze that only needs to be solved if the reader makes an otherwise
fatal mistake during the adventure; it's nice to have a second chance. On
another positive note, I also enjoyed the idea of having a friendly (but
somewhat cranky) monster for a companion. Beyond these two redeeming
features (which are barely even redeeming), this is pretty much a waste of
time. Still, I see that the next two books have different authors, so maybe
they'll be more interesting; I can only hope....
My High Score: 0 rings (but I got the best possible ending... really!)
Errata: The rules state that you start the game with some equipment,
but nothing is listed on the character sheet. Section 36 fails to include a
difficulty level to roll against. In section 80, both choices mention having
the Power Sneakers on, but the path leading to section 203 should actually
read "off." The transition from section 199 (and various related
sections) to 294 makes no sense; however, if you ignore the lack of
continuity and try different options, you can eventually proceed with the
story.
5. Theme Park Panic
Authors: Marc Gascoigne and Jonathan Green
Illustrators: Adrian Chesterman (cover), Uncredited (provided by a company called Selecciones Illustradas) (interior)
First Published: 1995
ISBN: 0-14-037847-2
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 1 (or failure by loss of lives)
Plot Summary: Sonic pays a visit to a new theme park only to discover
it is a decidedly unsafe environment.
My Thoughts: With a new set of authors, the style of this book is a
bit different from the previous two. It tries a little harder to resemble
the first two books, with a light tone and some sections in which Sonic
directly addresses the reader. Unfortunately, the text lacks the wit of
James Wallis' writing and falls almost completely flat from a storytelling
perspective. The gameplay, while not too exciting, is at least functional
and captures some of the feel of a video game. It's also interesting that
there are no instant deaths in the book. Anyway, since this takes place in a
theme park, there are different themed areas to visit -- a house of horrors,
a pirate ship, the Wild West, etc. Each area feels like a different level of
a game and generally concludes in a battle with a boss-like character.
Defeating these characters generally gives the reader items which prove
useful in the final battle of the book, and completing certain areas offers
access to new places. It's not absolutely essential to visit every area, but
it helps, and the reader has some freedom to try going different places in
different orders (though the book is far from totally non-linear).
Unfortunately, though, it's not as interesting as it sounds, mainly because
the reader doesn't have enough control over character creation. Well-chosen
stats can help in completing the first area or two, but after that, it's more
down to luck. Opportunities to boost ability scores before the very end of
the book might have made the adventure more exciting and less luck-based,
though this admittedly might also have made things too easy. In any case, as
it is, the book is an entirely playable but also entirely forgettable
adventure. I have no major criticisms, but I also can't think of any real
reason to bother playing this.
My High Score: 0 rings (but I got the best possible ending... really!)
6. Stormin' Sonic
Authors: Marc Gascoigne and Jonathan Green
Illustrators: Adrian Chesterman (cover), Uncredited (provided by a company called Selecciones Illustradas) (interior)
First Published: 1996
ISBN: 0-14-037848-0
Length: 300 sections
Number of Endings: 3 (or failure by loss of lives)
Plot Summary: Sonic's home in the Green Hill Zone is suddenly plagued
by bizarre and dangerous weather.
My Thoughts: This book is quite similar to the previous one, but
marginally better while still not being very good. After a brief
introductory segment, the reader has the choice of exploring four different
locations (each with different strange weather) in any order. After a
particular two of these areas have been explored, the last stretch of the
adventure is unlocked (but going there without having completed all four
sections is fatal). This structure makes for good replay value at first,
but once the individual areas have been cracked, it becomes extremely tedious
to work one's way back to the endgame (which will almost certainly be
necessary, as the last part of the book features a rough time limit); this is
definitely a book where some sort of "save game" mechanic would
have been most welcome (though admittedly not in keeping with the video game
that inspired the book). As with the rest of the later books in the series,
though, the real problem is that there's no reason to bother with the
gameplay because the story simply isn't interesting and the writing lacks
flavor. There are a few moments that are almost weird enough to be fun
(camel-riding penguins with exaggerated French accents, for example), and the
presence of a section styled after Donkey Kong surprised me (after all, this
is inspired by Sega, not Nintendo), but the whole thing really fails to come
together as a story. I almost hate to say it, but somehow, in the absence of
a real plot, allegedly cool anthropomorphic animals don't work as well as
generic fantasy cliches. This series stopped being worthwhile the moment
James Wallis stopped writing for it, and I'm really pretty relieved to be
done with it.
My High Score: 5 rings
Errata: In 270, the second choice should read "If Knuckles hits
Sonic, turn to 84." As written, it makes no sense, since if Knuckles
totally wins the fight, the book would be over and there would be no reason
to turn to a new section.