The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew meet Dracula

 Not sure if this one is going to be made into a PDF yet, but its not half bad.

The premise is that Fenton Hardy has gone to Transylvania  to catch some museum crooks but instead gets whacked when looking through Dracula's Castle. The Hardy's turn up in France along with Nancy Drew, who's looking for Fenton also. 

There is a band called Circus which the boys join, to travel to a gig in Transylvania. Nancy and Bess go along with them. 

Oh and did I say it's based on a TV show of the same name from the 70's. I should really watch it as Nancy posed for Playboy, back when it was at it's heights. For the ladies there is Shaun Cassidy and in this Elton John's producer, Bernie Taupin, which means there's going to be a terrible English accent. They've already tried to convince me that Eau De Cologne is rhyming slang for Phone. So will have to see if any more crimes against the English language are committed here.

Edit: Yes it did get made into a PDF. But time for some more elaboration.

There are two other stories here. The Hardy's going to an Amityville house of horrors repurposed as a diner and disco to track down a kid, whilst Fenton Hardy visits a graveyard.  And the last story has the boys help a rockstar Tony Bird, to find his missing sound recordist. 

They're not bad stories, and for once we actually know who wrote them. A few out of character arcs here. I never knew Joe had the appetite of Chet Morton here in the haunted house story but there you go. Also Callie Shaw seems to be the P.A. to Fenton Hardy in this rather than Frank's sometime girlfriend. I wonder if the old man is knocking her off as well as Frank, just  a thought. 

Anyway for reading averse people the Dracula story is here on Youtube. The other stories are probably there also, if I can be arsed to look.

Secret Panel

 Looking down the past few posts on here and it seems I've spelled out TMNT in the titles. Total accident, but made me chuckle for a bit. One for the turtles fans.

Anyway back to the main topic, we have a new book for you all typed up for you. It's The Secret Panel one of those that have a condensed version as a revised edition. Which means every other sentence is altered to within an inch of its life. We still have work to do on this edition but the original is already done. Both will be up when they're done.

The plot to this is that the boys have picked up a man calling himself John Mead, who has a strange mansion out of town with concealed locks. A bunch of crooks have settled on using the place as a hideout and when one of their crew gets shot, they kidnap an old friend of Laura Hardy to take care of him.

Depending on the story, these crooks are targeting museums (original) or electrical warehouses (remake) and bypassing all locks and alarms in the building.

Chet is sold a lemon of a boat that was festering away in the Mead mansion boathouse. As a subplot and in the original book there is interest in a mini sub which feels more like it should be in the remakes rather than the original.

Lastly there is a locksmith robbing his victims while installing new locks on their property. The original has a lame premise about rare locks but the remake nails it with some antiquities and Mr. Hardy's list of fingerprints on the case.

All in all the original stands up and the remake, though condensed actually has a few areas where it improves on the original. Chet actually has a girlfriend of sorts in the remake, she's called Helen Osbourne and, in the original is more of a pity date, out of convenience, whereas in the remake, she goes to the cinema and a strange chemist shop / diner for sandwiches along with his sister, Iola and Callie Shaw.

Original and remake can be found here  and here. 

Twatter

 I know the world and his dog has an opinion on this, but, Twitter has been unbearable for ages now.

I get it, as a fellow robot with a thin skin , I know what Elon's doing as a fit of pique and that. I also know that him falling into the soft right / mid ground political side of things is also where  I am.

For those in who have been in a hole for the past few weeks. Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44 gorillion dollars, and has managed to piss of the verified blue check marks, the far left and a few of my mates who have decided to jump ship to Mastodon. As a final brilliant move, he's reinstated Donald Trump and am prepared when I log in next for an almost unparalleled amount of autistic screeching from the left.

The downside is some of the people I follow who post rare game stuff going away. And the fact the weird left wing types I follow for balance, posting Chicken little style, Twitter is falling, due to him laying off so many, malding leftie types.

That and posting on going to Mastodon daily. I've looked at Mastodon and it's OK for what it is. Never anything else. No poa.st no Gab or Parler, no minds or even good ol Facebook, just Mastodon.

Like one of my mutuals on there say, I'll be there till it burns down.

Malder's Gate

 Love that I can come up with a consecutive bad pun two weeks in a row. For your information mald is a contraction of mad and bald. Hence Malder's gate.

You'll need some info as to what I've been up to as well to get a bunch of godshagging malders after me. I'm on Instagram but rarely post, one of the people I follow is James Lindsay who you may  know from the Sokal hoax amongst other things. Me  I know him from posting cringe on Insta. 

His market seems to be a tide of bible belt bollocks believers. That trannies are proselytizing to your children and turning them gay. That the World Economic Foundation are the axis of evil and worst of all Covid lockdowns.

Where as I have no problem with a few of these things, I know little about the WEF, and its boss Klaus Schwab or globalization to care. But a few of these are about the promotion of god which as an atheist and liberal fence sitter really grind my gears. So I did a comment saying that god didn't exist and got a few godshagging malders saying that he definitely does exist and that a only a fool says that god doesn't exist.

I've a question for you. If you are buying into an afterlife sight unseen on the promise that believing in a guy with no shred of evidence ever existing, will grant you eternal life in a gilded cage just so that, someone else who doesn't believe all that, will suffer for eternity.

Then who's the fool?

Neverwinton Nights

Joke titles aside, I've been playing Neverwinter Nights both the original PC version and the Switch modern remake. 

First impressions on the PC version is that it works on the old laptop running Win 7 and that despite cut scenes not showing (no movie only audio.) It's not bad can't think why there is not a decent remake for Win 10 or at least a facelift / remake patch so it runs without error. 

The plot is rather up to date, seeing as there is a plague ravaging the city of Neverwinter and you've been tasked to hunt down some escaped critters that may have a bearing on a cure and that. 

The city is divided into the criminal run docks, the poor quarter with its whopping undead problem and the prison and noble quarters which I've yet to explore. 

The Switch version which is a modern remake for modern consoles and PC has its own issues, in that its reliance on doing everything by the shoulder buttons and control sticks makes it ten times more fiddly than it already is, And its already fiddly. Seemingly ignoring that the Switch has a touchscreen to deal with matters such as this. Its still a good game, just lesser than it should be.

Talking of Dale Winton (our title reference, yo.) I wonder if Beamdog are going to cover the Icewind Dale games.

Toxic revenge

Not much doing this week. Found another Hardy Boys book in the wild, it's Toxic Revenge which can only be described as the Hardys do Extinction Rebellion, but with the focus on Recycling instead of Climate Change. I'm only a chapter in so far and for some reason it's given us the heights of Frank and Joe Hardy. Frank 6'1 and Joe 6 foot, now all they'll need is a six pack and a well paying job and they can join the 666 club on dating apps.

Picked this up in Barking along with a Jim O'Rourke single (Halfway to a Threesome) which ain't bad. Ignore the numbering and covers in the link above, this is the weird 2000's reissue when Simon and Schuster decided to reprint a bunch of the casefile books seemingly at random. This is the sort of thing you should be getting.

Like I say I'm only a chapter in at present and as I'm not transcribing the Casefiles series, there's no DL link for you this time. We'll be up and running next week with The Secret Panel as our chosen target.

Junk

 Not a junk tour but a tour on a junk

This is the 34th Hardy boys story and the boys have pitched in to buy a Chinese Junk to ferry people across the summer season. It seems that Jim Foy a Chinese pal of theirs has a lead on a cheap ship to buy and with a load of interest from various parties. You just know there is going to be a mystery attached to it.

This is the one that makes up to the Chinese community at large, for the way they were depicted in the original Footsteps Under the Window. No funny accents and no dragging up of a hapless Chinese here. The representation seems pretty good for the time, and it seems that this is the only book Jim was in. 

The gang is all here, Biff Hooper, Tony Prito (who's the same age as Frank here, 18) Chet Morton with a caving hobby that you know will be used in the mystery. Also Callie Shaw and Iola Morton get a look in, too. 

The junk they've bought is of course stolen and several parties want it back, Add in a mysterious doctor who's been robbing people, while passed out, this includes their aunt Gertrude, who can normally spot a wrong'un from several yards away. You have the making of a pretty good mystery. 

You can read it here.