Item - The Video Avenger

The film Tron inspired me to get into computers. Literally.

The Video Avenger is obviously a rip-off... I mean tribute to, the classic film of a computer programmer pulled into the digital world he created. As a child of the 80s raised on Atari, I loved this game book which features a kid trapped inside the digital world.

Instead of the MCP, you face off against Computer Control. Tron had a Bit as his companion whereas in this book you may meet up with a Glitch.

If this book is inspired by Tron, it also foreshadows other films that explore different levels of reality like Inception and The Matrix. One memorable scene in The Video Avenger has you getting pulled into a computer within the computer, a virtual machine.

Nice artwork throughout, but I always wondered about the pixelated “Elvis” on the cover.

After rereading this as an adult, I think this book holds up well. 4 out of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

This gamebook is basically a weak ripoff of the movie Tron, and like that film, it is rather badly dated at this point. It has a sort of eighties nostalgia charm to it, and I loved it when I was younger for some mysterious reason, but really it's pretty awful.

More reviews by Demian

I suppose I look at this in a more favorable light than Demian because this was not only one of my first gamebooks, but because I was one of those kids who grew up wanting to be Captain N. True, the world of video games of twenty-some odd years ago is almost unrecognizable now, but for anybody reading this who suffers from chronic nostalgia, or Captain N and Reboot fans, it might be worth checking out. Personally I thought the effect of being trapped inside a powerful evil computer worked well, with the large number of undesirable endings. It's not the best gamebook ever written, but I'd say The Video Avenger is a worthy read for all of those nostalgic gamers out there.

More reviews by Fireguard