Post originally by Torben Mogensen at 2004-08-24 01:25:36
Converted from Phorums BB System

I suppose the name was chosen because Mars is The Red Planet, so naming it after a reddish colour seems appropriate.

Anyway, the gamebook actually has some pretty good artwork (including some by the comic book artist Mike Grell, who is probably best known for his work on Green Arrow and Warlord). And there is a pretty good index to the book.

But the few positive sides of the game are to me completely swamped by the many examples of ill-thought-out ideas and the complete setting-aside of logic and consistency in favour of extreme munckinism. A few examples:

- You can play a robot or cyborg. There are places on the world where technology doesn't work, but robot players can still function there, just only at "human" levels, e.g., their electronic eyes can still see, just not in infrared etc.

- The map of the surface has features north of the north pole and south of the south pole. This could have been explained by a weird map projection, but there is no longitude/latitude grid nor any indication of scale. In light of the next point, I can only believe the autor has no clue about how map projections.

- The world is hollow, with entrances at the poles. The map of the interior surface wraps around both left-right and top-bottom, making the surface a torus rather than a sphere (and it is clear from the text that a sphere is intended).