i've been thinking about bad novels lately, partially because of this post. there's this list on wikipedia:
and it is full of some truly astonishing choices. page after page of games that have absolutely no business being turned into novels. really worth letting it sink in. but in particular, i'd like to call your attention to the only Build engine game considered to be worthy of novelization:
it's shadow warrior. and they wrote two of them!
(they wrote the tekwar novels before they made that game. doesn't count).
of course getting a hold of out-of-print paperbacks from the 90s is not easy, but i am delighted to inflict upon you share with you the first chapter from the first book, courtesy of the 3d realms website, where they've kept all kinds of interesting tidbits online.
and this is quite the exercise in writing. it's like they gave this poor guy the 5 minutes of one liners that were recorded in the game and very little else to go on. to be fair, there really isn't anything else to go on. but the oneliners (like "revenge is a dish best served raw") even creep into the third-person narration. this is completely needless commitment to the bit and honestly i kind of have to respect it.
there's certainly a chance that there's a questionably sourced electronic copy that could be found, but i'm not sure i'm strong enough to deal with the consequences of finding it. perhaps it's best to leave things here for now.
