Worlds of Power
Encyclopedia
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
s of video games for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
released in the early 1990s. The series was created by Seth Godin
Seth Godin
Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.-Background:...
and is characterized by the fact that they are mostly "male-oriented titles," that take creative liberties with their source material. They usually include game hints written upside down at the end of chapters (some also had a tear-out "trading card" in the middle with a tip in mirror writing on the back) and are written in a simplistic, easy-to-read style.
Books in the series
Books in the series consist of novelizations of- Blaster MasterBlaster MasterBlaster Master is a platforming and run and gun video game released by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a localized version of a Japanese Famicom game titled , which was released on . The game was released in North America in November 1988 and in Europe on...
by A. L. Singer - Metal GearMetal Gear (video game)is an overhead military action-adventure video game originally released in by Konami for the MSX2 computer standard in Japan and parts of Europe. Considered to be the progenitor of the stealth game genre, it was also the first video game designed by Hideo Kojima, who also directed many of the...
by Alexander Frost - Ninja GaidenNinja Gaiden (NES), known in Japan as and as Shadow Warriors in Europe, is a side-scrolling platforming video game. It was developed and published by Tecmo for the Nintendo Entertainment System ; its development and release coincided with the beat 'em up arcade version of the same name. It was released in in...
by A. L. Singer - Castlevania II: Simon's QuestCastlevania II: Simon's QuestCastlevania II: Simon's Quest, known in Japan as , is an action-adventure role-playing platform game produced by Konami. It was originally released for the Family Computer Disk System in Japan 1987 and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1988. It is the second Castlevania...
by Christopher Howell - Wizards and WarriorsWizards and WarriorsWizards & Warriors is a platforming video game developed by UK-based company Rare for the Nintendo Entertainment System . It was published by Acclaim and released in North America in December 1987 and in Europe on January 7, 1990. It was also released in Japan by Jaleco on July 15,...
by Ellen Miles - Bionic CommandoBionic CommandoBionic Commando may refer to the following video games:* Bionic Commando , the original arcade game released in 1987* Bionic Commando , a 1988 NES video game, partly based on the arcade game...
by Judith Bauer Stamper - InfiltratorInfiltratorInfiltrator is a 1986 video game published by U.S. Gold/Mindscape. It was developed for the Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, DOS, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System and ZX Spectrum by Chris Gray Enterprises....
by A. L. Singer - Before ShadowgateShadowgateShadowgate is a 1987 "point-and-click" adventure video game originally for the Apple Macintosh and is the most popular in the MacVenture series. It was also ported to the Atari ST home computer and was also released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it garnered mild success. The...
by Ellen Miles
Junior Edition Books
- Mega Man 2Mega Man 2Mega Man 2, known in Japan as , is a platform game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the second installment in the original Mega Man series. The game was released in Japan in 1988, and in North America and PAL regions the following years. Mega Man 2...
by Ellen Miles - Bases Loaded II: Second Season by A. L. Singer
Production
The producer of the series, Seth GodinSeth Godin
Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.-Background:...
, used the pen name "F.X. Nine." Godin said one day that when he talked to his nephew he discovered that the boy did not read for pleasure. Instead the boy played NES games. Godin decided to create books that appealed to children who played video games. Godin, the head of a book packaging company, created the series idea, selected games to novelize, found writers for the books, and contacted the publisher for approval. Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
negotiated with Godin but negotiations failed. The other video game creators successfully negotiated and Scholastic Books approved the project. 1up.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
described Godin's role in publishing as "similar to that of a movie producer in the film industry."
The video game companies did not assist Godin as they were too busy. Godin set the production schedule, selected the video games, and selected the authors. Then he set to create one 40-page "bible" for each game outlining the plot, characters, and level layouts to assist the authors' creation of the dialog and narratives. 1up.com stated that assembling the bibles was "quite a challenge." Godin and the authors played through the games without strategy guides in order to reverse-engineer the stories. All of the books were indexed by Godin's pen name; Godin said that he chose the pen name due to the way bookstores arrange books as children looking for books related Nintendo would see Godin's books indexed by the letters "n-i-n." Godin said that his most serious frustration was playing video games for too long, as he would experience headaches. He added that the success of the Worlds of Power series outweighed the drawbacks; around one million copies of the books were sold. 1up.com added that this was "especially remarkable" as the target audience, young boys, were not considered to be a large market for book series. Godin said "We sold a million copies to kids that may not have read for fun before. That's a huge success (and) a home run!"
One author, Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis is an author of children's and young-adult fiction.-Career:Lerangis's work includes The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the New York Times–bestselling children's-book series The 39 Clues, the historical novel Smiler's Bones, the YA dark comedy-adventure novel wtf,...
, used the pen name "A.L. Singer" and wrote the novelizations of Bases Loaded II: Second Season, Blaster Master
Blaster Master
Blaster Master is a platforming and run and gun video game released by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a localized version of a Japanese Famicom game titled , which was released on . The game was released in North America in November 1988 and in Europe on...
, Infiltrator
Infiltrator
Infiltrator is a 1986 video game published by U.S. Gold/Mindscape. It was developed for the Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, DOS, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System and ZX Spectrum by Chris Gray Enterprises....
, and Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden
is a series of video games by Tecmo featuring the ninja Ryu Hayabusa as its protagonist. The series was originally known as in Japan. The word "gaiden" in the North American Ninja Gaiden title means "side-story" in Japanese, even though the Ninja Gaiden series is not a spinoff of a previous series...
. Godin approached Lerangis when the project began and asked Lerangis to be a writer for the project. Lerangis, who admitted a lack of skill in playing video games, took the offer. Lerangis wrote each book in about four weeks. One of Lerangis's two favorite books, Ninja Gaiden, was one of the most popular books in the Worlds of Power series. He liked writing the book since he "was able to get into the character's head pretty quickly," especially while writing the beginning. Lerangis said that the book reveals Ryu's father to be alive at the end since he and Godin believed that the revised ending was consistent with the Worlds of Power character and as real-life fathers they felt reluctance to leave Ryu without a father. Bases Loaded II: Second Season , Lerangis's other favorite title, is considered to be more obscure. Lerangis liked baseball and, since the game had no plot, he created an original light comedy storyline; Lerangis said that Bases Loaded was the most fun book to write. Lerangis described Blaster Master as the most difficult book to write; since the game does not have a strong middle plot, Lerangis fleshed the story connected the beginning and ending of the games.
Godin said that he would have liked to novelize the game Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
, a personal computer game, into a book. He said that "I think that stories never go out of style. I think we need a series like this now more than ever & kids need to learn the habit of reading" and that "I think the lesson of each book was that there is a hero in everyone. You just have to set it free."
Editing of video game stories
The Worlds of Power series omitted violent elements in the video games. Video game covers were adapted into the book covers after weaponry was omitted. For instance in Ninja GaidenNinja Gaiden
is a series of video games by Tecmo featuring the ninja Ryu Hayabusa as its protagonist. The series was originally known as in Japan. The word "gaiden" in the North American Ninja Gaiden title means "side-story" in Japanese, even though the Ninja Gaiden series is not a spinoff of a previous series...
Ryu Hayabusa
is the protagonist of the Ninja Gaiden video game series as well as a player character in the Dead or Alive series, both published by Tecmo. According to the game canon, Ryu Hayabusa is a ninja and the leader of the that has spiritual, physical and magical ties to ancient dragons...
held in front of him is no longer visible. In Metal Gear
Metal Gear
Metal Gear is a series of video games.Metal Gear may also refer to:*Metal Gear , bipedal tanks appearing in the Metal Gear series-Metal Gear video game series:...
Solid Snake
Metal Gear, initially released in 1987, introduces Solid Snake, the rookie recruit of the elite special-forces unit FOXHOUND. Snake is sent by team leader Big Boss into the rogue nation Outer Heaven to rescue his missing teammate Gray Fox and discover who or what the "METAL GEAR" mentioned is, and...
no longer holds his gun; 1up.com
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
gesture." Within the texts death and violence were not inflicted on humans and animals. In the Blaster Master
Blaster Master
Blaster Master is a platforming and run and gun video game released by Sunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is a localized version of a Japanese Famicom game titled , which was released on . The game was released in North America in November 1988 and in Europe on...
book the bosses appearing like mutated animals are holographic projections placed on formless blobs. In the Metal Gear book Snake, described as a "walking arsenal," uses his guns only to shoot off locks on doors. In the Ninja Gaiden book Ryu Hayabusa's father, seemingly killed in the prologue of the game and said to be dead in earlier book chapters, is revealed as alive by the end of the book. In the Infiltrator
Infiltrator
Infiltrator is a 1986 video game published by U.S. Gold/Mindscape. It was developed for the Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, DOS, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System and ZX Spectrum by Chris Gray Enterprises....
book an agent scheduled to be "voided" either has his memory wiped clean, receives exiling, or receives a demotion. In Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando may refer to the following video games:* Bionic Commando , the original arcade game released in 1987* Bionic Commando , a 1988 NES video game, partly based on the arcade game...
the protagonist's gun shoots "stun bullets" and the protagonist uses karate chops to disable enemies. Towards the end of the book Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
kills the enemy leader; the protagonist feels no sympathy since the leader was, as stated by 1up.com, "an evil man being eliminated by an even more evil man." In addition, overtly magical and occult references were omitted from the Before Shadowgate
Shadowgate
Shadowgate is a 1987 "point-and-click" adventure video game originally for the Apple Macintosh and is the most popular in the MacVenture series. It was also ported to the Atari ST home computer and was also released in 1989 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it garnered mild success. The...
book.
Godin described the editing as "stylistic in nature" and that he intended to "minimize the death" in the adapted games. He added that Scholastic asked him to remove witchcraft several years before the release of Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first novel in the Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard...
in the United Kingdom), which was published by Scholastic in the United States.
Legacy
The PlayStationPlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
game Blaster Master: Blasting Again
Blaster Master: Blasting Again
Blaster Master: Blasting Again is the fourth game in the Blaster Master series. It was released for the PlayStation on February 7, 2001...
, a sequel to the original Blaster Master, canonized some of the original elements from Peter Lerangis' novelization of Blaster Master. Particularly the character Eve, who was not in the NES game, appeared in Blasting Again. Lerangis stated that he felt "honored" for the privilege.
External links
- Everything2Everything2Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
nodes of the Simon's Quest and Wizards & Warriors novelizations - Castlevania Dungeon: Worlds of Power - Castlevania 2 - A review of the Castlevania 2 novelization
- Blaster Master: The Legacy - explains the storyline of the Blaster Master series, with several canon and non-canon additions
- Blaster Master Underground (BMUG) - a complete record of all games in the series, including external media and background development history on each game
- About Worlds of Power - a background information page about these books, published on tsr's NES Archive
- Demian's Gamebook Web Page (F.X. Nine) - a list of books written under the name 'F.X. Nine'
- 8-Bit Lit: Inside the NES' Worlds of Power Series - a retrospective on the series with interviews of the series creator and one of the authors
- Worlds of Power: Mega Man 2 read in its entirety by James D. RolfeThe Angry Video Game NerdThe Angry Video Game Nerd , is the main character and title of a series of farcical retrogaming video reviews created by and starring James Rolfe...
.