Be an Interplanetary Spy No 1 Find the Kirillian

Be an Interplanetary Spy #1

by Seth McEvoy

More than a video game! You make the decisions!You are an Interplanetary Spy. Your mission is to capture Phatax, the Kirillian. He is a ruthless criminal who has stolen the Royal Jewels of the planet Alvare and kidnapped its young prince. You must recover the jewels and bring Phatax back alive.

Genres: Gamebooks, Science Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Games

Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1983

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really into gamebooks, such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series, as a kid. But I devoured this Interplanetary Spy series! The back cover proclaims that this book is “more than a video game, you make the decisions!” Book 1 was published in 1983, this is the same year that the original Mario Brothers and Spy Hunter debuted in arcades. Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi dominated the box office that same year too.

The premise of the story is that you are a member of the Interplanetary Spy Center, which is dedicated to stopping crime and terrorism in the galaxy. Your mission is to capture Phatax, the Kirillian. The ruthless criminal has kidnapped the young Prince Quizon of Alvare and stolen the royal jewels, which are imbued with magic powers.

Is it campy? Absolutely! Was it a blast for a preteen living in the mid-80s? But of course.

The book is filled with full page illustrations and over 30 puzzles to solve. Unlike most of the contemporary gamebook series, the story telling is mostly linear. It is pretty clear when you make a wrong choice in that you usually end up dead. In Find the Kirillian, you can expire in the following ways:

* Hit by a paralyzing ray and thrown into prison
* Blasted out of space by a planetary gun
* Crash into the spikes of a Megaron
* Sucked into a giant air purification vent
* Devoured by a giant robot dog
* Flying into the Barenga Vaporization Plant
* Kept as a pet until being eaten by a Genrex
* Smashed through the palace window as an unfortunate victim of Interplanetary Tennis by a giant alien
* Flying into a black hole
* Thrown into a waste chamber vaporizer by a housekeeping robot
* Teleported to a planet that is falling into the sun
* Frozen to death by an unknown beast
* Eaten by a Sandragon

And my favorite, “You make a mistake. Everything blows up!”

The books have been out of print for many years, but you can still find them on used book store sites. I loved this nostalgic trip down memory lane.

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first of a small series of gamebooks for younger readers. Unlike CYOA or traditional Fighting Fantasy-style gamebooks, these ones focused on solving puzzles instead of just making choices of which way to go. Because most of the puzzles only had a single answer this lead to many instant death or fail scenarios, although because the book isn't long it seems quite forgiving and it doesn't take long to backtrack to where you left off.

The first book of this series was a little disappointing because many of the puzzles (especially the mazes) don't require you do even do them to succeed. In fact there's no actual decision to be made on those pages; you're just expected to solve the maze and then turn the page to the successful conclusion. This seemed to be cheating the reader a little bit after purchasing a book that was meant to be encouraging you to act like a clever interplanetary spy, instead of just running on auto pilot.

I still have fond memories of this series though, and I couldn't stop playing them as a youngster. I also loved some of the artwork, which was often integral to many of the puzzles.

A decent puzzler for the young ones.

[Nate · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first and worst of the series. Dreadful.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be an Interplanetary Spy: Find the Krillian is equal measures Choose Your Own Adventure and kids' activity book, with a heavy early 1980s video game influence. Whereas the CYOA series has you progress solely through choices interspersed throughout the books, Find the Krillian generally has puzzles fulfilling that purpose, with incorrect answers leading to an ending and correct answers progressing the story. While this is a great idea in theory, it suffers from a few problems. Many of the puzzles are designed to have you to write directly on the pages, which would ruin the book after only one use. Several of the puzzles don't actually require solving, with the reader merely being suggested to do them and then turn to the only page available, creating merely an illusion of interactivity. The puzzles also vary in difficulty, from basic matching and mazes that might be too simple for the "age 9 and up" suggested age group to more complicated logic puzzles that might be a bit too complex for the same.

Something else of note about the book is that it uses a great deal of imagery reminiscent of (or rather, directly copying) video games popular at the time of its writing. The cover has evenly-spaced lines of ships as in Space Invaders, and when ships are depicted on computer screens in the book they are highly reminiscent of those in Space Invaders, , Galaxian, etcetera. At the time Find the Krillian was published video games were viewed with some suspicion, so the blatant iconographic appropriation may have been a cynical attempt to lure children away from arcades and back to reading.

Motives aside, the puzzle-based progression format was a good idea, if imperfectly executed, and the story is no worse than those found in the average kids' game book. It's decent for what it is, but hopefully the successive eleven entries in the Be an Interplanetary Spy book series managed to work out the kinks.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehh, the puzzles were much easier as an adult than as a child.

[Trent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of Nostalgic fun.