1. Battle Road
Author: Steve Jackson (US)
Illustrators: Larry Elmore (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: July, 1986
ISBN: 0-88038-297-X
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction)
Number of Endings: 36
Plot Summary: You have twenty-four hours to rescue the daughter of
the president of Louisiana from an oil baron; if you fail, he will force her
to marry him, thus getting that much closer to taking the presidency for
himself.
Translation: French
My Thoughts: Although it has a number of problems, this book is at
heart a fairly solid design. Since its character creation system is
point-based and has no random element, the player has total freedom to
customize his or her character based on personal preference and past
experience, and the book does a decent job of accomodating different
strategies. Once you become familiar with the adventure, it's possible to
get quite far without any dice-rolling simply by raising the right stats and
making wise decisions. Sadly, there are quite a few drawbacks to accompany
the book's balanced game design. First of all, the mission feels shorter
than it should. For a 400-paragraph adventure, each playthrough goes by
awfully quickly; it sort of makes one wonder what exactly is filling out the
book's pages. There's also not much here in the way of plot; although the
politically-oriented framing storyline is intelligent and interesting, it
makes up a very small part of the book. Most of the adventure is simply a
series of unmemorable random encounters, one after another. The worst
problem of all, though, is the combat. The combat system itself is pretty
solid, but due either to large numbers of combatants or low odds of hitting
anything, fights can drag on a bit too long sometimes. The tedium of rolling
dice endlessly really breaks up the flow of the story, and it's especially
frustrating to spend ages rolling dice only to get killed and have to start
over. Most fights can be avoided, which is a good thing, but in a book set
in the Car Wars universe, combat should really be an asset rather than
a liability -- blowing stuff up should not be more boring than running away!
In the end, I'm really not sure what to think about this book. It's a
strange combination of successes and failures; while it works on a mechanical
level and also shows off some of Steve Jackson's talents, it ultimately fails
to be particularly fun or notable. The series could certainly have started
off on a worse note, but I feel it should have been much better.
2. Fuel's Gold
Authors: Steve Jackson (US), Creede Lambard and Sharleen Lambard
Illustrators: Larry Elmore (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: October, 1986
ISBN: 0-88038-298-8
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction)
Number of Endings: 34
Plot Summary: You are given an important courier job and soon end up
working against a group of bloodthirsty anarchists.
Translation: French
My Thoughts: This is a definite improvement over its predecessor.
Its events feel more like a story than a random collection of unrelated
happenings, its fights are a bit more entertaining, and it doesn't seem quite
so overly brief (though I've certainly had much longer adventures in books of
this thickness). It's also nice not to have to keep track of time, as that
constant book-keeping made it harder to become particularly immersed in the
previous adventure. There are a number of flaws present here, however.
While matters involving the rolling of dice are less annoying than they were
before, they still add a degree of tedium to the adventure. It seems
particularly irritating that the book actually starts out with a battle in
the introductory section! It's not a particularly dangerous fight (you can't
be killed), but it really makes starting over a frustrating experience after
a while. There's also at least one minor continuity error in the text -- it
is possible to read about an object that you have never seen in section 103.
All in all, this book marks a step in the right direction, but it's still not
as much fun as a regular game of Car Wars.
3. Dueltrack
Author: Scott Haring
Illustrators: Jim Holloway (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: February, 1987
ISBN: 0-88038-443-3
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction)
Number of Endings: 20
Plot Summary: You're an autoduellist whose friend is a famous
inventor. Unfortunately, his latest creation, the RB-4 robot, creates a
controversy which threatens your life.
My Thoughts: This book is a nice change of pace from the last two.
While the previous books were both fairly linear, this one uses a structure
that's less common in gamebooks and which is well-suited to mystery stories
like this one -- there's a central section with lots of options, and the
reader follows various paths from this one section, keeping track of time in
the process. By being in the right places at the right times, the player can
advance the story. It has a pleasantly non-linear feel to it, and the
execution here is largely successful. Another nice touch is the fact that,
while the story ends in a gigantic battle, the author provides optional
alternate rules for players who just want to get things over with in a timely
fashion. My only real complaint is that the book is too difficult for its
own good. Clues and leads are exceptionally hard to come by, leaving the
reader wondering what to do next much of the time. This problem is made much
worse by the way the book all-too-frequently relies on random chance -- some
events are determined by a simple unmodified die roll. This is unfortunate,
since it means the player can do nothing to affect these events; if the rolls
at least used skill scores, strategic character creation could be used as a
work-around to figure out which events were important and which were red
herrings. As it is, though, all one can really do is grow increasingly
frustrated. After I had been playing for a few hours, I started finding
myself wanting to give up because I couldn't think of anything new to try and
I didn't feel motivated enough to retry the same old path in hope of having
better luck the next time around. Still, it could have been worse, and for
the most part the book is a success. Sometimes being a little different
helps a lot.
4. Badlands Run
Authors: Creede Lambard and Sharleen Lambard
Illustrators: Jim Holloway (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: June, 1987
ISBN: 0-88038-298-8
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction and glossary)
Number of Endings: 28
Plot Summary: You must drive Orson Whitney, a controversial Church
Elder, to San Francisco without letting him get killed in the process.
My Thoughts: The previous book's non-linear structure isn't repeated
here; we're back to the same basic linear form used in the first two
adventures. This isn't such a bad thing, though, as the book is quite
well-designed. While most of the same events happen every time you play,
you still have some freedom -- there are many fights that can be provoked or
avoided and many subplots that can be investigated or ignored. Since there's
no timekeeping and little use of money, the story isn't bogged down by
excessive book-keeping, and since there are many opportunities to repair
your vehicle, victory doesn't require the same degree of continuous luck
that some previous volumes forced you to rely upon. There's nothing too
spectacular or unusual about the book, but it's well-balanced and interesting
enough to make for a couple of entertaining and non-frustrating playthroughs.
Errata: This book's introduction ends with the sentence "You
are the autoduellist," which is very similar to the "You are the
duellist" which marks the transition from the third-person introduction
to the first-person adventure in the first book of this series. Since the
introduction here is in the same first-person as the rest of the book,
though, this line serves no purpose and seems kind of weird.
5. Green Circle Blues
Author: Scott Haring
Illustrators: Jim Holloway (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: August, 1987
ISBN: 0-88038-445-X
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction)
Number of Endings: 17
Plot Summary: You are an autoduellist looking to revive a sunken
career; an opportunity arises when the government asks for your help in
foiling a nuclear threat from a group of terrorists known as the Green
Circle.
My Thoughts: This book is an expansion of an earlier solitaire Car
Wars adventure published in Autoduel Quarterly. I haven't played
the original version, so I can't say how the revisions stack up; I can say,
however, that I was rather disappointed by this book's role in this series.
Scott Haring's previous book offered a breath of fresh air with its unusual
design and at least slightly atypical plot. All this book offers, though, is
yet another linear escort mission. For the most part, it's no worse than the
previous books, but after having done more or less the same thing two or
three times before, I found the whole thing pretty dull. There's not enough
character personality or plot originality to set it apart. I also strongly
object to one of the adventure's final choices -- it's possible to make it
through the whole adventure, then fail at the last minute as the result of a
seemingly trivial decision. This may be realistic, but it's an awfully
demoralizing and frustrating thing to do to the reader. If you ask me, once
the final battle has been won, the reader really shouldn't be forced to start
all over again; doing so only results in senseless tedium. Of course, I
might not have found this book quite so redundant if I hadn't played it so
soon after completing its predecessors. If you own a set of these books,
you'll probably increase your enjoyment of them if you can avoid reading them
within too narrow a window of time.
6. Mean Streets
Authors: W. G. Armintrout (edited by C. Mara Lee)
Illustrators: Jim Holloway (cover), Dan Carroll (interior)
First Published: November, 1987
ISBN: 0-88038-446-8
Length: 400 sections (plus introduction)
Number of Endings:
Plot Summary: You are a cloned agent of the nation of Texas, and you
must defend your homeland from the nuclear threat of the old enemy who killed
your previous body.
My Thoughts: This book brings the series to a very satisfying close.
The storyline is considerably more exciting than the previous "just
drive down the road until you reach the end" missions, and the game
design features a number of creative surprises. There's a very high replay
value thanks to numerous conversation options during your initial briefing
and the inclusion of random elements throughout the rest of story; the most
notable variation is the fact that each time you play, you randomly end up
with one of three possible partners, each with different knowledge and
abilities. I have only a few minor complaints. The worst problem is one
that's pretty familiar to most gamebook readers: lack of proofreading. The
book has a handful of irritating typos which break the flow of play, though
fortunately the open-ended design makes it easy to work around problems that
might have been game-stopping in a more linear book. A more philosophical
complaint is the fact that the book isn't very politically correct, going
gratuitously out of its way to point out the racial backgrounds of its
villains. This is fairly typical of the action genre, but it struck me as
something that would probably offend some people. Finally, it seems kind of
silly that one of the choices offered in the introduction leads to instant
death; it's not a big deal, but it's rather pointless. These quibbles aside,
though, this book is well above average and worth taking a look at!
Errata: In section 5, one man is described as being armed with a
shotgun in the main text but as having a pistol in the choices. Section 179
doesn't have any outgoing paths even though it is clearly not an ending. The
transition from 221 (or 282) to 395 seems to be incorrect.
French Translations
I believe that only two of these books were translated into French; they were released by Hachette. The French editions exclude the useless character bookmarks. Thanks to Charlotte Benditt and Frederic Martinoty for help with the literal title translations.
Demian's Gamebook Web Page (c) 1998-2003 Demian Katz