Gamebook store

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Drac the Dane

More Way of the Tiger news on Friday, but here's a curiosity I wanted to share. Following on from the Danish edition of The Temple of Flame, it's Peder Bundgaard's cover for Crypt of the Vampire. Look for this one in October, along with four other revised, revamped and utterly awesome gamebooks. (Crypt would have been ready sooner, but I couldn't resist saving it up for Halloween.)

The vampire in the English version was named Lord Tenebron, incidentally, not Count Dracula. That was a deliberate choice that may baffle marketing experts, but seemed to me to be a question of creative integrity. Nowadays fanfic will happily appropriate even copyrighted characters, of course, but in the new edition he's still going to be Tenebron. He's not my most original gamebook vampire (that was the far more earthy Grim Dugald in "In the Night Season", the interactive section of my first Heroquest book) but hey, I was just starting out. I don't doubt there'll be more bloodsuckers to come.

5 comments:

  1. Dave, if you're looking for the weirdest gamebook cover ever made, go to the Japanese Amazon : http://www.amazon.co.jp/ref=gno_logo and search for "Deathtrap Dungeon". No comment....

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  2. OMG Olivier, that is really quite disturbing. This is probably why I can't get into Japanese comics.

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  3. Are these new Golden Dragon reprints any different from the originals, Dave? For example, any extras such as insider info from your good self or anything changed in the adventure?

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    1. There are some minor tweaks to the difficulty, Matt, but substantially they are unchanged. However, the Virtual Reality books coming in October all have some new sections (including an all-new ending in Heart of Ice and a new Prologue in Once Upon a Time in Arabia.) I didn't put in extras because - well, what is a blog for, after all? Maybe I should do that in future releases.

      Eye of the Dragon is missing from the current crop of GD reprints because I want to give that one a thorough overhaul - new intro, new magic system, etc. But since these books sell only a handful of copies, that's a labour of love that must wait till I have a spare few weeks. Oh well, I didn't really want a holiday this year :)

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  4. Thanks for the swift reply. I owned all the Golden Dragon gamebooks back in the day but have long since given them away. My youthful loss however is your gain as I'm likely to buy the new versions to play them through again and see how they hold up after all these years... ;-)

    I've never read the Virtual Reality books and I'm keen to get hold of them this autumn.

    It is a shame that modern reprints aren't as commercially successful as they once were but I'm thrilled that you're keeping this niche alive, even at what seems to be some cost to you. You are a rare breed, sir.

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