"You killed my father, prepare to die!"

Six fingered men, chatty duellists, scheming Sicilians, rodents of unusual size and oodles and oodles of revenge!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, humans and aliens, allow me to introduce to you a true cinematic epic, a timeless classic of the silver screen, a modern masterpiece...

Hmm, maybe the above was a bit over-exaggerated? Alright, we'll scrub the cinematic epic and silver screen classic bit, I'm sticking by masterpiece though, because it bloody well is!

What is? I hear you ask breathlessly ..... Oi! Stop laughing over there!

It's The Princess Bride of course. The single greatest over the top fantasy/revenge/comedy/romance movie ever to delight my formerly innocent eyes. They're jaded and cynical eyes now by the way! The movie that made revenge look cool and edgy, that made Sicilians look slimy, that made marriage look scary and pirates look dashing. The Princess Bride!

*Looks at all the blank, confused faces*

Sheesh! Bloody hell!!

You know it's shocked me on more than one occasion the amount of people I know who've never seen, or even heard of this film. Another shock is those who dismiss it as crap without having seen it, purely because it's a fantasy tale.

Can I call people morons in a kind way?
Ah fuck it, if you dismiss a film 'cause you ain't seen it then you're a moron! Ha it's my blog I'll say what I wish, deal with it MoFo's! ... I'm smiling and saying that friendly like!

Anyhoo back on topic. The Princess Bride! I'm not going to do a review here, those rare souls who've read previous entry's will know I don't do reviews, well I don't think they're reviews, I prefer to call it an overview.

Anyhow our story starts off, kind of, with young Stablehand Westley (our hero). Stablehand Westley like any young man his age dreams of chopping people up in to bacon sized chunks and wooing beautiful, rich  women (the chopping people up dream may not be strictly true).

As luck would have it (and a convenient plot), young Westley becomes the infatuation of the beautiful and rich Buttercup. Awwwww! See, you can always achieve your dreams if you live in a fairytale land.

If memory serves aright (to my shame I've been a few years without seeing the film), Buttercup is a bit of a dominatrix at first, constantly ordering poor Westley about. Bloody privileged people huh? However, eventually, true love develops between them ... it is fantasy after all. 

Buttercup and Westley enjoy an unspecified amount of time getting to know each other and doing all the things that loved up couples do. Fortunately we're spared from watching those antics! For reasons I can't quite remember, Westley then decides that he must make his fortune and promptly heads off for sea. Doesn't that strike you as odd? He's getting all hot and heavy with a stunning bank account and then decides to run off to be a sailor? Kinda screams commitmentphobe to me, hmm! No wonder us men are so stereotyped when that's happening on the big screen! Westley I had high hopes for you, now you've left me sad...

The abandoned Buttercup lives on in hope that her wayward beau will return to her, we all cling to something I suppose, then she receives dire news. Westley has been cruelly murdered by the Dread Pirate Roberts!

Dread Pirate Roberts? Doesn't quite have the same menacing ring to it as Blackbeard, does it?

Poor abandoned Buttercup isn't destined to spend her life alone though. Riding in to her life comes the brave (cowardly) and dashing (idiotic) Prince Humperdinck.

The Pratty Prince is on the hunt for a woman who can see past his title and hate him for who he really is. That's not hard trust me, watch the film and you'll agree. What Humperdinck lacks in personality and wit he more than makes up for with complete buffoonery.

So Prince Buffoon meets Abandoned Buttercup and they fall in apathy and agree to marry.

Prince Humperdinck is a bit of an evil twit as well and he wants to start a war, as any true politician always does! So he employs his evil henchman, Count Rugen to come up with a nefarious scheme.

Count Rugen, a man blessed (or cursed) with an extra digit upon his hands (six fingered men now has an explanation), comes up with a brilliant (ha), evil and dastardly scheme to have the soon to be Princess Buttercup kidnapped and a neighbouring nation blamed for it. Scandalous! Never trust anyone with a title, they're all evil, underhanded bastards!

Little note here; I'm not precisely sure that The Six Fingered Man hatched the Buttercup kidnapping plot, but for the purposes of this blog he did, so nit picking from the informed please.

Count Rugen hires a crack (snorts) team of mercenaries to abduct and flee with the poor, young lady. I bet she was thrilled actually. I mean if your future involved spending the rest of your life with someone who has less personality than a store mannequin wouldn't you want a change of scenery pretty quickly? Thought so! So late one night the future Princess Buttercup is stolen away from her comfortable and boring existence.

The professional kidnapping mercenaries flee across the sea with their prize, guided by their leader, the brilliant, scheming Sicilian, Vizzini. For them to be led by anyone else would be inconceivable.....

Ah Vizzini, a man who's intellect is so vast he can call Aristotle, Plato and Socrates morons and utterly believe his own words. Would anyone ever willingly challenge him? After all it's well known that you never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

The man is actually an idiot!

Without his giant, musclebound henchman Fezzik to watch his back, Vizzini would be nothing more than an annoying mouth.

Loyal, brave, strong and utterly dumb Fezzik. I guess every mercenary gang in history needed a big brute to do all the donkey work for them, you know; throwing boulders, crushing heads and moving small countries, that kind of grunt work. Step up Fezzik, you may not be much in the brains department, but you don't need to be, you have a sneaky, bald Sicilian to do your thinking for you. You poor bastard you!

Despite their brains and brawn, neither Fezzik nor Vizzini would be able to pull off a daring kidnapping without the blade of a master swordsman to protect them. In a medieval fairytale land the sword is boss and everyone pays attention to it. To be sure of success in a daring raid you need to have a better swordsman than your adversaries do, you need a man so driven by vengeance that he wills himself to be the best! Here he is.

Meet Inigo Montoya, swordsman extraorinaire, driven by extreme vengeance to kill people with more than the required number of fingers on their hands. Well when you're seeking vengeance for something, having such a distinguishable feature does tend to narrow down the number of people you have to skewer!

Mr Montoya is searching for a man with six fingers, believed to be culpable in the murder of his father. Have you seen any six fingered men yet? He intends to recite him something (I'm guessing it ain't poetry), before entering a sharp bit of metal in to his body. Nice!

So there we have it, a princess to be has been kidnapped, the kidnappers have been revealed and for some reason they're being pursued across the sea by the totally non-scarily named Dread Pirate Roberts. Why has he even got involved? Maybe he just wants a wench he can put across his knee and spank every so often, hmm...

What follows on is the main meat of the film, which I shall not reveal to you, save to say there will be death, duels, swamps full of fire, dangerous rodents of a quite unusual size, witty one liners, sneakiness, more death, some part death and the oh so joyous revenge! As well as pure badassery like in the only clip I shall show you:

Be amazed at the awesomeness there!

So there you have a brief, totally non-review like look at The Princess Bride. I implore you to watch it, to enjoy it and to quote the hell out of it like lots of us knowledgeable folk do online!

Have fun storming the castle!

To the pain!

Goodbye!

The ultimate duel of duels!!!

Mumm-Ra vs Skeletor

This is the ultimate battle of our time folks, the great unanswered question.

Who is the ultimate badass? Which evil super-villain can claim the bragging and gloating rights for all time? Will it be the demonic mummy? Or the menacing skeleton?

Instead of writing a full on battle scene, which would be both incredibly boring and full on cheesy (and which I'm too lazy to do), we’re going to settle this duel with the classic points awarded system. Points will be awarded out of 5 (points are not to be argued with).

Without further ado, let’s get right on with it.

Round one ~ evilness

A very tough one to call this, both of these undead horror’s had entire worlds quaking before them, wondering just what evil plot was being hatched in their devious minds. They both had the power to leave even the most hardened viewer hiding behind a wall of cushions. But Skeletor once had a slip up, he performed a kind deed and rescued a child. Can you imagine Mumm-Ra rescuing a child? He’d probably only do so if he could use it as bait in a plan to destroy the Thundercats!

Mumm-Ra, 5. ~ Skeletor, 4.

Round two ~ Places of power

Mumm-Ra resided in the Black Pyramid, and while this was quite a frightening place and housed “the ancient spirits of evil”, from which Mumm-Ra draws his power, it’s nothing compared to the coolness of Snake Mountain. On a name basis the Black Pyramid doesn’t exactly fill you with fear, just makes you wonder at the unoriginality of evil. Snake Mountain though just gives you little shivers of fear every time you hear of it.

Mumm-Ra, 3. ~ Skeletor, 5.

Round three ~ Henchmen

Every evil super-villain needs a core of thuggish, brainless henchmen to help carry out his nefarious plans. Usually these were ugly, cruel and utterly fucking impotent morons who were little more than cannon fodder for He-Man or Lion-O. However Skeletor had Evil-Lynn and that inclusion alone raised Skeletor’s henchmen up a level. How many other cartoon villains could claim they were doing their bit for female equality? None other than Skeletor!

Mumm-Ra, 3. ~ Skeletor, 5.

Round four ~ Adversaries

One of the key factors in being an evil super-villain is the quality of the hero facing you, and I’m afraid in this round Mumm-Ra takes another beating. Lion-O is a tough dude alright, and I really wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, but really would you be more wary of an overgrown moggy with leadership doubts, or “the most powerful man in the universe”? it’s not even a contest is it? Skeletor really did have the harder task with He-Man for an opponent.

Mumm-Ra, 3. ~ Skeletor, 5.

Round five ~ Power

This is what it really all boils down to, who’s got the greater power! Skeletor is a self taught sorcerer and he’s pretty ingenious, but he’s still just a walking set of bones with a finite lifespan. Mumm-Ra really comes into his own here, he’s “the ever living”, an evil being, thousands of years old and with almost unlimited power. If that isn’t enough to leave a brown stain in your pants I don’t know what is! They both have their weaknesses though; Skeletor is a coward, take away all his toys and he’ll gibber for mercy, while Mumm-Ra literally is afraid of his own reflection, show him a mirror and what he sees will render him bloody useless.

Mumm-Ra, 4. ~ Skeletor, 2.

Final score: Mumm-Ra, 18. ~ Skeletor, 21.

So there you have it, conclusive proof that in the ultimate duel Skeletor will just win out over Mumm-Ra. 

The above is just opinion and not to be taken as actual fact, thank you for your understanding dear reader.

Rod, Emu and Grotbags ~ The Unholy Trinity!

“There’s somebody at the door, there’s somebody at the door”

Can I ask, has anyone ever been so excited by someone knocking on their door that they’ve all but had an orgasm at the thought of having a visitor? Nope? I thought as much. So it’s just the freaks and window-lickers then!

But I suppose you can’t really blame Rod Hull for getting a tad enthusiastic about the possibility of adult conversation, all he had to talk to really was a bunch of waster kids and a psychotic puppet that resembled an emu. Any conversation that didn’t make him feel like a paedophile must have been a welcome relief. And seeing as his house was called “the pink windmill” adult visitors must have been few and far between.

In curiosity, what kind of visitor could a man who lives in a pink fucking windmill, and constantly has his hand up Emu’s arse expect? Certainly no one rational, no one he can talk politics or any of the major issues of the day with. Would you want to travel to a bright pink windmill and run the risk of getting pecked to death by a glorified hand-puppet?

So really it’s no surprise that poor old Rod looked like he’s made an excited mess in his pants every time there was a rap at the door. Even if it could have been the police, coming to arrest him for “doing a Michael Jackson” with all those kids.

And now we’ve brought him up, what the fuck was Emu’s problem? This was a puppet who’d made it, he was the celebrity of celebrity’s in the puppet world, eclipsing anything that squeaky voiced idiot Orville could do. He’s had a successful showbiz career spanning a few decades and some fairly successful TV shows and he’s rumoured to be up for the lead role in the new version of Animal Farm. Yet he’s a dick! All he wants to do is attack people, peck at them until they accept his mastery. Did you know poor Michael Parkinson is still in therapy, years after Emu’s vicious and unprovoked attack upon him? Only Rod’s little friends seemed to be safe from Emu’s attentions.

So why do we love this uncontrollable and rage filled puppet? Is it because we are an inherently violent species trying to be civilised, and thus we have to live vicariously through Emu to indulge those violent tendencies? Or is that far too complex an answer? If anyone has a theory I’m open to hearing it!

Emu did have someone other than Rod who wanted him around, though I’m sure Grotbags had a completely different reason for it.

Ah Grotbags, has there ever been another witch quite like her? Assisted by her two helpers; Robert Redford, a gay robot and C3PO wannabe and Croc, a huge idiotic crocodile who’d leave even Steve Irwin feeling unimpressed, Grotbags manages to fuck up just about every plan she hatches. Since most of her plans involve kidnapping Emu we can only be sorry that she fails all the time.

Instead of being like any normal and respectable witch and carrying a wand, the green faced old trout carried along a freaky looking thing called a “bazazzer”. Looking like a cross between an arm and an umbrella it was hardly likely induce fear in even the most abject coward, and the most use she put it to was to beat her incompetent assistants around the head while shouting “bazazz” to activate the thing.

And there readers is a brief description about a trio of the freakiest characters ever to disturb young minds. Don’t exactly sound like role models do they?

The Toxic Avenger ~ Why nuclear waste is bad for you

Not so long back, well it was a few months ago from time of writing but that’s not long is it? Anyhow, not so long ago and at the behest of my friend I sat down and watched my first ever Troma movie.

Oh My Fucking God!

You better be prepared for cursing because I think there may be a bit of it in this post.

I’ve seen lots of different types of movies, so I thought I’d be prepared for this one, holy shit how wrong I was. My eyes and brain have only just recovered from the sheer brutal assault upon them. In fact it’s very possible that at some point I may need counselling to deal with the troma … sorry trauma of this experience.

If any Troma fans want to help me pay for sessions then I’m open to donations!

Would it surprise you after reading all the above to learn that I really enjoyed this movie? I know it surprised the shit out of me to realise that once the end credits started rolling I was sad there wasn’t more to watch. If I’d have seen it as a teenager I’m damn sure I would have loved it obsessively.

It’s got violence, bad language, gore, tits and really bad sex what’s not to like? Well aside from the really wooden acting, but if you watch a lot of porn you should be used to that. There are a couple of disturbing scenes, but they don’t detract a lot from the enjoyment.

What’s it all about though?

Well I’m not going to do a thorough review as that would just be spoiling it and I certainly don’t want to do that. But a very basic description would be, “nerd gets revenge and gets the girl”. Sounds very clique doesn’t it? But it’s what surrounds that basic premise that lifts this movie into the fucking surreal.

We’re introduced to the town of Tromaville (I’m taking a wild guess here, but I’m thinking this town may be made up), a typically American town filled with thugs, big breasted women, corrupt officials and a slight toxic problem. Well it was the mid-eighties and everyone seemed to want to do a Chernobyl before it actually happened. Lovely little Tromaville (location unknown) is also home to Melvin Junko, the man with the mop, the man with teeth so huge dentists the world over would likely have wet dreams about them.

Melvin is our hero, well sort of, he’s gotta suffer horribly a bit first before really earning the hero tag. And suffer he does, from looking like an advert for pure nerdiness to the endless abuse he gets from Bozo and his hit and run loving pals. But that’s all mild compared to the pain and suffering caused by taking an involuntary bath in a barrel of toxic waste. Yes you did indeed read that right, barrel of toxic waste and man swimming in it. Thanks to a malicious prank and a couple of idiots who’d prefer to get stoned rather than doing their job properly, this is Melvin’s fate. Well at least it’s a memorable way to go out, right? Even if it’s excruciatingly painful it’s still memorable. So alas poor Melvin, we didn’t know you very well.

Don’t grieve too much though, because if you’re a geek with teeth the size of a small fucking country then toxic waste isn’t bad for you, in fact it’s the best thing to ever come into your life. Because for geeks toxic waste is the route to ultimate superhero status.

See these posts can be quite educational.*

So in defiance of all natural laws, Melvin Junko, mild mannered goofy geek, becomes The Toxic Avenger!!!

I totally never saw that one coming (that was sarcasm by the way).

Now the fun can begin.

On to the scene now steps The Toxic Avenger (henceforth known by the popular name of Toxie), a hideously ugly, gruesomely deformed monster who is driven to destroy evil. Destroy is definitely the right word for the way Toxie treats his victims. He rips off arms and beats villains with the soggy end, dry cleans little old lady’s (they are obviously evil), deep fry’s robbers and crushes heads in gym machines. As a calling card he jams a mop into the skull of his every victim. You’d think that people could figure out who this weird superhero was off just the mop bit alone, but they’re morons so obviously they don’t.

Toxie’s main aim in his new ugly life is to gain revenge on all those responsible for his ill-fated dive into a drum of toxic waste. Unbeknown to him though he has another enemy and wouldn’t you know it he’s political. The worst ones are always in politics aren’t they? The mayor of Tromaville is corrupt, well most politicians are but he takes it to extremes, and being corrupt he’s quite worried about the possibility of a monstrous freak of a hero bringing him down. You just know that such a conniving shit of a man is going to do all in his power to bring Toxie down, manhunts, guns, the army, that sort of thing. Will Toxie survive the mayor’s attentions? Well it would be a fucking pointless hero movie if he didn’t.

Being a mutated freak isn’t all bad it seems, whereas Melvin couldn’t pull a girl to save his life, Toxie has a bit more luck. True the woman of his dreams may be blind and not exactly the sharpest tool in the box, but love blooms in the strangest of ways. They may not be Romeo and Juliet, but they do make an oddly cute couple. You may need to be slightly drunk like I was to see them as cute I suppose.

I guess you can get the gist of the movie from all that. Nerd gets bullied, gets transformed into freak, rips villains to pieces, saves cute kids from maniac drivers, gets the girl and saves the day. Simple premise really.

If you’ve never seen this movie, then trust me you’re missing out on a rare and cheesy treat.

*Don’t try diving into toxic waste, it actually doesn’t work!

Street Hawk ~ The complete promotion of dangerous driving.

Back in the mid-1980s American TV finally achieved something it had been threatening to do for years, it reached the upper peaks of cheesiness. Television viewers the world over thought that peak had been reached with both the A-Team and Airwolf, but those shows while being inherently cheesy had a few qualities that lifted them into the lower echelons of comedy drama. But with Street Hawk the TV executives had struck the golden cheese!

It was bad, so terribly bad, yet I loved it. I suppose back in the 80s I loved anything to do with speed (still do I guess), and I was fascinated by the idea of detective work, whether that be by the police or a genius P.I. TV shows like TJ Hooker, CHiPs, Magnum P.I and The Fall Guy were all favourites of mine. Street Hawk combined the 2 and thus was instant success in my juvenile mind.

Basically Street Hawk was about a police officer and his pet, top secret government motorbike. This was a bike designed to go fast, now you may say that all bikes are designed for that, however Street Hawk was so fast that it could fucking outrace the Starship Enterprise! At warp 10! And with the guy riding it looking in no danger of ever falling off. In fact our hero looked so relaxed while riding the bike he could have been chilling in his favourite armchair with his morning newspaper instead of travelling at ridiculous speeds and enduring insane amounts of G force.

This is Jesse Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop, injured in the line of duty. Now a police troubleshooter, he's been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride Street Hawk--an all-terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime, capable of incredible speeds up to three hundred miles an hour...and immense firepower. Only one man, federal agent Norman Tuttle, knows Jesse Mach's true identity. The man...the machine...Street Hawk.

There we have the introduction to our hero, all around American nice guy Mr Jesse Mach. This introduction always followed on from the opening theme music:

If you’ve read any of my earlier blog posts, you’ll know just how much I enjoyed the theme music.

What isn’t said above is that while Jesse Mach is a police officer by day, at night when out breaking light speed records he’s a friggin’ vigilante, and his own daytime boss wants to arrest him. Said boss doesn’t know that one of his underlings is the ruthless vigilante motorcycle warrior. Well obviously otherwise he’d just slap the cuffs on him when he arrived for work in the morning and bitch slap him a few times just for the trouble he’s caused.

You have to wonder though, if he’s pulling a full shift during the day and riding around like a one man army at night, when does he find the time to sleep? Is Jesse Mach actually A) a robot, B) possessed by his own bike or C) a shit police officer who sleeps on the job? Due to America cancelling the show we’ll never know the answer. I like option B personally, so I’ll let myself stick with that explanation.

So there we have Street Hawk, a man possessed by a bike to hunt down criminals, while evading the law and acting like a criminal.

Choose your own adventure ~ Be the hero of someone else's story.

How many of you have read a book and imagined yourself in the role as the main protagonist? I’m guessing everyone, well everyone with an imagination at least. Imagine my delight back in my early years of reading when I first discovered the joys of the “choose your own adventure” books, it was probably similar to how a hormonal teenager feels when first discovering free porn online. They were a revelation, a chance for you to really be a hero, without ever leaving the comfort of your own room.

There were quite a few series’ of choose your own adventure, but me being the fantasy geek naturally gravitated towards the fighting fantasy stories written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (the founders of Games Workshop). I had a lot of fun with those books back in the day, and they are one of the reasons I took an interest in writing. So if I ever get published you’ll know who to vent your anger at.

The basic premise of choose your own adventure was simple. You start the book as you normally would and read a couple of pages. Then it would get interesting. A scene would end and you’d be presented with a list of choices. Usually it would go something like this:

The evil goblins have decapitated your best friend. Do you...

• Hunt the goblins down? ~ Turn to page 56.
• Try to stitch his head back on? ~ Turn to page 100.
• Shrug and go for a pint? ~ Turn to page 20.

Each choice you made had varying consequences, you could end the story rather quickly and boringly, come to a grisly end by being eaten by something nasty or save the day and become a true hero (in your mind of course). I have to admit, every time I met a grisly end I would skip back a few choices and try again, guess I didn’t like dying, even if it was on paper.

It’s a shame you don’t see these books around anymore, there is still definitely a niche in the market for them. I could quite easily imagine a Twilight choose your own adventure, where you had the opportunity to behead Edward Cullen (fake apologies to all Twilight fans here…).

Anyways there’s my little piece of nostalgia about a once big thing in my life. Look out for these books, then maybe you too can choose your own adventure and have some unforeseen fun.

Knightmare: the quest to learn about left and right!

“Enter, stranger”

And so it began, with those two simple words. They were an invite to great adventure, to undertake quests of world shaking import and to finally learn the difference between left and right.

The speaker of those words of invitation was Treguard of Dunshelm, a man with the beard of a super-villain and a shit taste in clothes. He was the dungeon master, the quest giver and he preferred the company of kids. Hmm not sure about you lot but that seems a bit dodgy to me.

So what was Knightmare? Well besides being about a creepy bearded guy who liked luring youngsters to his lonely castle, it was about sending those youngsters on quests in his maze and forcing them to solve stupidly fucking difficult puzzles. I’m pretty sure that Treguards’ maze was a major breach of health and safety regulations; it had crumbling walls, collapsing floors, falling ceilings and the place was infested with vermin, and he bloody well sent kids down there. The man was a bloody sadist!

“Oooh nasty”, said with a chuckle, was his way of greeting some poor kids death.

What would happen is 4 youngsters would be lured to Knightmare castle by the promise of riches, fame and the possibility of sex with an elf (or was it only me who felt that last?). Treguard the beard would “welcome” them and tell them what he wanted them to do. Only one hopeful adventurer could enter the maze, the other three were made to sit in a room and watch his progress with a weirdo stood behind them. You may ask why they were even there at all if all they were going to do is sit around and eat sweets, but they were very useful/useless indeed as you will find out. The youngster chosen to be the teams hero (from now on called the dungeoneer), would have a great big fucking helmet, with horns and no eye slots on it, called the Helmet of Justice.

Did it really bring justice though? I mean I’ve never heard of it being worn in a court of law, though given the state of our justice system these days, I’m sure it couldn’t harm anything to wear the damn thing in court.

So the helmet rendered the dungeoneer blind, poor little shit. But at least it gave the 3 remaining kids something to do, they became seeing-eye dogs (in most cases they had less intelligence than a dog). They would guide the dungeoneer through the deadly quest, using such complex instructions as, “sidestep left/right”, “walk forward”, “halt” and “oh fuck, run you’re going to die”. As these were children, and their knowledge of things such as left and right was a bit lacking, this could lead to some catastrophic fuck ups.

“Dungeoneer sidestep right”, meaning left. Dungeoneer falls into a lava pit and frys quicker than an egg.

Anyhow, with the helmet on and the trusty companions to give advice, the dungeoneer enters the maze known as the dungeons of deceit. I never knew of a dungeon that was deceitful before, I thought they were all quite open and honest about their overall purpose.

Let’s get one thing straight, this dungeon was fucking dangerous. Not only did it contravene health and safety regulations as I mentioned above, but it was full of nasty shit that wanted to kill people, quite of while gloating evilly. There were dragons, goblins, horribly monsters trapped in walls and there was even a giant spider. And what did the dungeoneer have to help him in his quest? Not a hell of a lot, some wimpy elves and dwarves and a group of friends generally possessing all the intelligence of a brick wall. I told you Treguard was a sadist!

The dungeon was all about the puzzles though, and they were hard, Stephen Hawking would probably have struggled with them. Usually if a puzzle was failed the dungeoneer would die, just another thing for the poor little bastard to worry about. Many a time watching I felt sorry for a dungeoneer, not only did they have morons guiding them, but also every goblin and his dragon was out to get them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there were only a few teams to ever beat the game. And what became of these mighty heroes? What glorious prize did they walk away with? Where are they now? The answer to all three questions is ….. I have no bloody idea. Which goes to prove that fame and fortune were just lies offered by a pervy old man who got a kick out seeing kids struggle.