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I totally agree. Playing it right after Trial of Champions, where the path through is razor thin, made it seem really refreshing to the point where I ran through it multiple times to try out the different paths and different robots.
A bit like Scorpion Swamp and Demons of the Deep it's not really than enaging in terms of immersion, but it's just fun. Forgot to mention the art is really nice, if obviously very influenced by Transformers.

Masks of Mayhem next for me but I'm looking forward to Creature of Havoc and Nightmare Castle after that. Beyond book 25 I've barely played any of them, so that's all going to be new for me.

Interesting, but very arrogant interview imo.

Been watching these on Netflix and halfway through the series so far. There's some good names involved and overall a bit of a Masters of Horror vibe and generally pretty good: Episode 2 was a bit slapstick but suitably creepy at the end, whilst Episode 3 (Autopsy) is especially excellent, as you'd hope from something based off a Michael Shea short story. I then skipped ahead to watch Pickmans Model, which was alright but suffered a lot from being padded out to an hours runtime. Anyone else checked these out?

Meanwhile (knowing it was a Flash reference) I had to look up what the internet had to say about war rocket Ajax in general, and found this on the wiki:

War Rocket Ajax is apparently the only spaceship in Ming the Merciless's entire navy. It performs tasks as mundane as collecting dead bodies and as prestigious as transporting Ming himself. As the only ship in the navy, it is equipped with massive shielding which is the only explanation for it being able to survive the full force of Mongo's defences while being piloted by Flash Gordon. Gordon successfully crashed Ming's wedding with Ajax and skewered Ming in the process of doing so.

Love this.

[ROBOT COMMANDO]

Speaking of playthroughs:

ROBOT COMMANDO

Another book I managed to complete in my younger days. I was a big fan of this one back then: the premise is absolutely ridiculous but it's got giant robots against dinosaurs, how can that NOT be awesome? I seem to remember it's also not that difficult to complete with several paths to victory  - a solid antidote to Trial of Champions then.

The plot is as contrived as it can be: I live in Thalos, enemy state of the Karosseans, where we use mecha for most tasks including dealing with the native dinosaurs population. One day everyone in Thalos falls asleep due to some dastardly unexplained plot by Minos, the leader of Kaross and only I am left awake to stop the impending invasion. It's all just a vague setup for me to wander around a deserted land in a battle robot and I'm totally fine with that. I'm also totally fine with me, a simple Dino-rancher, deciding that it's time to be taking on the entire Karossean army and saving the world.

I've got the choice of two robots at the start: a tough, all round humanoid robot designed for dino-herding or a light flyer. I seem to remember usually taking the former, so this time I go with the latter - it should be useful to quickly get somewhere a bit more useful. My robot of choice is Dragonfly class and literally looks like a giant dragonfly with rubbish armour and no combat bonus at all. I've also got 5 crappy medkits (1 stam each!) and a sword, because in this future society everyone still carries one of those, I guess. I decide my first port of call should be the City of Knowledge - perhaps there will be something there to help me in my plight. En route I battle a Pteranadon, which luckily has terrible stamina as my dragonfly robot has effective stamina 5, and defeat it before landing and making my way to the college of medicine where I read up on a compound that cures all sorts of sleeping sickness. I immediately make some - I've now got a litre of this cure, which should be enough to everyone in Thalos, but it gets super unstable once opened so I have use it all at once on everyone. More troublingly one of the ingredients I used (essence of Man Trap Flower) was unstable and may need to be topped up with a fresh dose. I'm not really troubled by how I'm going to add this to the compound when I already can't open it because I'm so hugely overconfident. I'll sort that out later!

After a scrap with some giant lizards I head to the college of war where my weedy robot is immediately shot down by a Karossean Myrmidon (essentially a Decepticon plane / robot transformer). Testing my luck, I scramble from the burning wreckage and hide until the Karossean stupidly climbs out of his robot and I nip in whilst he's wandered off and take over. This robot RULES with high stats and the ability to switch forms, even though I don't know enough about the controls to fully get the benefit of it. I then head off to a museum where hoped to get info on the Karosseans but the only useful bit of info I get it that they often settle tribal disputes with hand-to-hand duels.

My next stop is the City of Jungle where I'm hoping to get the other reagents for my cure. I transform my Starscream mech from plane to walker and enter the jungle on foot, quickly find the Man Trap plant, pick the flower and drop it into my cure capsule to complete it, before I have to fight the Man Trap in an epic plant vs robot battle, making short work of the foul flora. The jungle is hard going on my robots armour however and when I spot Karosseans are in the city it's time to leave.
I now decide to fly to the exciting sounding City of Pleasure, which sadly turns out to be mainly arcades - for the men and women of Thalos, Southend seafront would be the place to party! Here I accidently shoot myself playing Zap the Karossean but I do get a tip about something exciting... back in the city of knowledge - bah!

My only choice from here is the City of Industry. Here I pop into the Robot Experimental Centre and find a transponder helmet that better allows me to control my mecha, boosting my skill by +1 if it's below 11 (it is), get hit on the head by a book losing 1 stamina, and then bashed about by an experimental battlesuit for another 2 stamina damage.. ouch. A skirmish with a guard robot leaves my stamina pretty depleted by now so I use a couple of substandard medkits before beating a retreat but not before snagging an experimental missile. It's then back to the City of Knowledge, where I snag the one-use experimental Invisibility Cloak that I found out about in the arcade! Then I fly to the coastal City of Storms where at the weather bureau I discover a huge storm is due to hit Thalos soon - and if I can release my compound into it from The City of Worship I could potentially cure everyone! Result! I also replenish my medkit stock here (and then use them all up)

From here I can head straight to the City of Worship. The storm is rolling in, so I pilot my craft high into it - taking damage as I do so - and release the compound into the storm. As the rain washes across Thalos it wakes everyone up (I know, this still doesn't really make sense) and the Karosseans retreat. I am a hero and Thalos is saved!


As suspected I still enjoyed this - in fact I enjoyed it enough to play it again and try a different route that I was more familiar with, whereby I ended up fighting (and losing to) the Karossean leader in a giant battle tank and from a bit of reading there is also a third route to victory where you duel the Karossean leader with swords. It's a pretty easy book - I didn't really have any issues on my first go - and you can return to the city locations pretty much indefinitely although each time you do you risk an additional combat - although you can't go back to the in-city locations once you've been there. It all adds up to a non-linear experience with plenty of scope for exploration.
The robot side is well handled: combat is nicely straightforward compared to some other more complex books - essentially the robot has a stamina of its own and may or may not give you a skill bonus., and the robots stamina is generally on the low side meaning you may need to switch mech every once in a while. There's plenty to choose from on the way through the book, although many of them suck.
Where it falls down is that the plot itself is really stupid and the book lacks a bit of atmosphere - Thalos must be a wasteland because I was zipping about barely encountering anyone, including the invading Karosseans (incidentally, something I liked about them was that they are always described / depicted as having beards, which presumably is the Star Trek way you can tell they are evil). In fact the Karosseans are completely useless and fully deserved to be defeated via a deux ex machina.
I'd rate this one as fun, but not top tier.

Dinosaurs vs robots though!

i rolled a six, so was allowed to post a reply

i think i was 8-ish when they came out - absolutely fantastic

https://i0.wp.com/rubberchickengames.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Fighting-Fantasy-3.jpg?resize=1170%2C912

Great image that. We're less than halfway through that lot with our playthrough (although I'm over halfway through the ones I own myself)

Can anyone confirm that Falcon #1 got a reprint a few years but the other books didn't (not sure why, if so)?

Also, Way of the Tiger books - did these get reprinted? 

Thanks, chaps!

Yep - Falcon #1 was reprinted but none of the others, I assume nobody bought it. I've not seen it so not sure how different it is, if different at all.

The WotT books have all been reprinted - they were released in hardback with new art and some errata, but the company that did that folded. They're now available through Amazon on some kind of print on demand deal - I don't think the art works as well as it's obviously intended to be colour and so reproduces poorly at times in b&w - but the text is the same (and improved in Inferno, at least).

It's only mentioned in passing, that everyone has grown out their facial hair and that nobody in 'real Falcons time would ever do that! Must be a Star Trek reference.

I have played MoM but cannot remember a thing about it!

One of my favourite bits in Falcon was that in the Evil alternative timeline bad guys have facial hair which no good agent of TIME would ever have!

[Falcon 4: Lost in Time]

I haven't had a lot of time for Gamebooks lately but I have been playing Falcon 4: Lost in Time which Richard very kindly sent me. I don't have much to add to his excellent playthrough except to echo how absolutely nuts this book is. Each different place you jump to is very nicely realised with great descriptions and what feels like some real depth - which makes it somewhat frustrating when you spend an incredibly short time in each one with very little to do: in one you literally arrive, meet some guys and agree to join the resistance, get their names and so on... then immediately get back in your ship and leave again. On one level it feels like hopping into some fully realised worlds (like Orb) but it's also a bit disappointing - you could get a whole series out of this book alone.
There are dozens of auto-deaths and hardly any skill tests - it's an odd book, all in. The art, once again, is superb. I think I liked the Rack of Baal more: I enjoyed both, but not sure I'd look any others out.

I've also been playing a bit of Ronin 47 which is an independent gamebook from Jonathan Green (Bloodbones, Curse of the Mummy etc) where you play a dude using a giant robot to fight Kaiju. It's another odd one in that the background and writing are great but the combat rules when in the mech are super complex and it means I keep starting it and then putting it down again. Coincidentally Robot Commando is the next FF book so will play that instead, hopefully next week!

[Dredd]

Prog fell a bit flat for me this week.

Dredd still looks just amazing. Dredd is great here being his most inflexible self, but I'm less keen on the Zersetzung now it looks like they might be the evil Sov X-Men with a bunch of different powers and codenames. Feels like the story could now go one of two ways and I'm hoping it doesn't hark back to End of Days too much.

Enemy Earth I'm ashamed to say I didn't even finish it this week.

Hope Very light episode. I think I'm checked out on this series, it did nothing for me whatsoever.

Chimpsky top Thrill by some distance. It's another light episode, but I'm really into this story and want to see what happens next.

Hershey All action episode, absolutely brilliantly put together - the action felt really kinetic and crazy whilst still having some fantastic facial expressions on Hershey herself. I still find it hard to warm to this series, but this Antartic take has been my favourite so far.

This was a very engrossing episode - I felt a bit of trepidation going in reading some of the other comments, but a fascinating listen. Simon does sound very raw about the direction the story has taken but as Colin said above, very open and honest and really interesting to hear these views from one of the creators.

It's hard to disagree with most of what he says about comics that try to be both gritty and grim and also superheroic: they generally do suck and this is tonally all over the place. On the final couple of pages of this episode I always felt that this was the most 'evil' representation we ever see: he's slicing Jena up (he boots her in her wounded leg, a very typical 'baddie' move) and just standing there with this horrible sneer - I don't he looks heroic at all: he looks a lot like his Father.
What Simon says about the horror of this scene is true though: it's a horrific scene and this is Dante at his absolute worst and it could definitely have emphasised that this is evil Dante more. Although, the very next story it's back to japes in England...
This isn't my favourite bit of Dante because Dante himself is indeed awful here. For him to Romanov up, and to do so in such a wholehearted way at this point in the story doesn't really make any sense. I always kind of assumed he as trying to commit suicide by war, but by killing hundreds of people..? Not very cool. Elena aside I've also never been a fan of the irregulars either: they're an absolutely horrible bunch, especially the Groznys, so basically we've got evil Dante leading a bunch of murderous scumbags and I definitely feel Jena is more of the hero here.
The other bit I don't like is when it all goes a bit George and Lynne with Jena's top. I love Burns but that is well off. I definitely have a new appreciation for his Starfleet style robot now though, not sure if I ever really saw that before!
It's definitely made me read the story with a fresh pair of eyes, really enjoyed it.

Also great to hear someone described as a complete waz.

What is the recommended intense smokey whisky for the Podcast? Inquiring minds are interested.

Devastating news. I can remember moving from Spiderman comics to 2000ad and his work on Nemesis, and it blowing my perception of what comic art could be to bits. It was the same intoxicating feeling as when I first heard heavy metal music: a giddy thrill of finding a whole new world, a more exciting, edgy one where the rules of bland normality didn't apply.
Later his work on Marshall Law was so influential for me in my teenage years. It was like discovering him all over again.

Some lovely tributes. Can only echo everyone else saying: Thank you Kevin, for everything.

Really good to hear from you TJM.

Feeling depressed isn't comparable, please don't feel guilty thinking others have it worse so your feelings are less viable.
I don't comment much on this thread, I feel others say things better than I, but if you want to give voice to some pain and share the burden a little, we are here for you.

That goes for anyone here going through hell right now. Love to all you guys.

Given the risk factor involved in launching a new regular comic, I really hope Monster Fun survives and thrives. But... I dunno. I wanted it to be great. I enjoyed the specials myself and mini-IP enjoyed bits of them. But she wasn't really taken with the first couple of issues, and I'm not about to throw money at something she just doesn't care about.

Lew Stringer recently stated on a Facebook post that "the three important things a kids' humour comic needs are clarity of storytelling (both visually and in the dialogue), energy (keep it lively and interesting), and, most importantly, it must be *funny*!"
Monster Fun has been a real disappointment and I think a the first two factors Lew points out are real issues with it. Regened is more action-orientated so a slightly different kettle of fish, but I think clarity of storytelling is something that's really lacking as too many of these stories are being written as though they were for adult readers. I have no children myself, but the ones I know who do read comics don't want crazy panel layouts, stories mired in continuity and ancient jokes (like Nikki Louder in Bladers punning off Niki Lauda, who retired in 1985 ffs, is an awful choice of name for a strip aimed at a young reader). Regened didn't click for them at all.

I'd also like to see a more settled lineup in Regened - I didn't like Scooter and Jynx, for example, but is it now done and gone, or will it be back? It seems like if a story has promise it moves into the Prog for a series and everything else drops out and gets replaced, which I imagine is a good model for experimenting but surely not so if you want repeat readers to keep buying these issues. I really feel like the concept is a tryout in Regened, a run in the Prog, and then a GN which is presumably the desired endpoint.

It all adds up to a very frustrating comic indeed with stories starting and then stopping, weird tonal shifts and a complete confusion as to who this comic is actually for. Is it to get younger readers to pick up old collections of Dredd, SD etc? If so then they're in for something jarringly different when they find Dredd, Chopper and Rogue are totally different characters. If not, then it needs to commit to being a kids comic a little more fully: more clarity, more humour, more excitement and, because it's 2000ad, more craziness.  I understand why Regened exists, and if it's keeping the Prog going then all well and good, but it's hard get behind them with anything other than mild resignation.