Alrightreads: TV XXII

Mark A. Altman, Captains' Logs: Supplemental – The Next Generation 6th Season Guidebook

1994 / Ebook / 128 pages

***

There isn't much need to read these old books when the best interview quotes are compiled in more comprehensive and up-to-date online equivalents, but sometimes it's nice to pretend I'm 12 again and treating Oracle Books as a library. There's only one season to cover this time, but they make up the page count with unabashed repetition.

Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Captains' Logs: Supplemental II – The Next Generation 7th Season Guidebook

1995 / Ebook / 128 pages

***

Amusingly inaccurate cover aside, this is another fine supplement to the other volumes, if weirdly separate.

Paul Leonard, Doctor Who: Genocide

1997 / Audiobook / 281 pages

****

Are we the baddies? If only Doctor Who was all about these convoluted time and moral paradoxes, but I appreciate them when they come around. It strikes a tasteful balance of hopeless morbidity and inappropriate levity and it's a good outing for Sam too, though I could have done without the past companion's extended cameo.

John Peel, Doctor Who: War of the Daleks

1997 / Audiobook / 277 pages

**

Almost a decade after their last redemptive TV appearance, the terrifying salt cellars return for a tedious continuity fest that re-establishes the status quo in the hope that other writers will think of something interesting to do with them.

Chris McDonnell and artists, Steven Universe: End of an Era

2020 / Ebook / 240 pages

****

The essential second half of the documentary artbook.

Alrightreads: Comixxxxxxxxxxxx

Walter Simonson and Sal Buscema, The Mighty Thor, Vol. 4

1986 (collected 2014) / Ecomics / 237 pages

***

I didn't think I needed more Asgardian antics, but Simonson pulled an irresistible gimmick for a few issues, before it gets back to normal, or the closest thing.

Everette Hartsoe and Rick Lyons, Razor: The Suffering

1994-95 (collected 1996) / Ecomics / 80 pages

**

Girl Crow for pervs. Put a cloak on, love.

James Tynion IV and Gavin Fullerton, The Closet

2022 / Ebook / 104 pages

****

The creature wasn't scary, but the anxious child and incompetent parent were disturbingly familiar.

Masaaki Nakayama, PTSD Radio 1

2012 / Ebook / 160 pages

***

If The League of Gentlemen were horror manga.

Abby Howard, The Crossroads at Midnight

2021 / Ebook / 320 pages

****

Graphic creepypastas with effort.

Fave: The Boy from the Sea

Ranking the Agalloch albums & EPs

Everything they did reminded me of other things, but their hodgepodge of blackened neofolk post-metal or something or other was still probably the most iconic soundtrack to my early wanderings in the harsh post-education world. And thanks to a premature break-up, their discography remains distinctive and digestible. Here are my The Top 11 Agalloch Things.

Ranking the Testament albums

With eerie guitar leads and tomblike production conjuring the sonic equivalent of horror movie video covers, these guys were the only other thrash band I really cared about besides Metallica, and they seemed to pull off their inevitable 90s decline and senior regrouping better than their peers, even if I didn't keep up with all of it.

Beware! For it is my Top 13 Old and New Testaments!

Ranking Star Trek: The Next Generation season seven

Turning on BBC 2 in early 1996 and witnessing a pale android cutting a slice out of his crewmate who'd been turned into a cake was my first memorable taste of this series, but there are still some episodes from this final stretch that I don't think I ever bothered getting around to in the near 30 years since, on account of them sounding pretty rubbish.

Time to complete the voyage, I guess, with tired mediocrity now in HD!

Alrightgames: Morrowind – Game of the Year Edition

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – Game of the Year Edition

2003 / PC game / 1 player

*****

Looking back to the formative and nostalgic games of my youth, Morrowind represented the end of the line. With its intricate character building, expansive map and seemingly endless things to do, it remains the most complex game I've ever played, or at least had a crack at before wandering off and doing my own thing before eventually getting bored. It was quite amazing, but just too much, and didn't make me enthusiastic to get into that sort of thing again, which is why I prefer small-box card games now.

But when I recently replaced my laptop with one that could handle early-21st century graphics, it seemed like something my daughter might enjoy messing around on during half-term break, and it only needs to be as complex as we want it to be. Discovering that the character speech is all stored in folders as replaceable files also introduced her to the joy of hacking.

Alrightgames: Barbie as the Island Princess

Barbie as the Island Princess

2007 / PC game / 1-2 players

*

A horrendous minigames compendium designed to disappoint little girls, but at least you don't have to pay for it any more. It's got nothing on the Game Boy Advance Barbie games and their dependable generic 90s platforming.

Alrightgames: Paperboy 2

Paperboy 2

1992 / Sega Mega Drive emulator game / 1-2 players

****

I remember when I first played the Amiga version of this pocket money/vandalism simulator – what couldn't have been any more than three years after its release – that it seemed a prematurely dated relic with its blocky graphics, limited movement and abominable looping soundtrack. My 2020s daughter didn't have these same hang-ups when enjoying the mildly anarchic classic, though we did play the Sega version that improves in some areas – mainly in the character's Bart Simpson-style wisecracks adding insult to injuries.

Alrightgames: Carcassonne – The Messages

Carcassonne: The Messages

2012 / Tile placement board game mini expansion / 2-6 players

***

It wasn't one of my more sought-after mini expansions from the range, but it's another fiddly distraction to add in for frequent rewards and a good bit of maths practice to help with our education and cognitive decline, respectively, and another chance to rescue wasted followers that doesn't involve getting gobbled by a dragon.

Alrightgames: Star Realms – Cosmic Gambit Set

Star Realms: Cosmic Gambit Set

2018 / Deckbuilding card game supplement / 2-4 players / USA

**

Not really worth buying without the extra goodies of the first set, but worth trying out for free with a handwritten list and a D12. There are fewer overpowered power-ups than in the first round, but only the Black Market and Hidden Base are really inspired concepts. But having to keep these in mind also means I invariably forget about something else, like the Scenario, so my star realm can do without more overcomplications.

Alrightgames: One Page Adventures – Nexus of the Four Seasons, Arctic & Fort

One Page Adventures: Nexus of the Four Seasons, Arctic & Fort

2022 / Roleplaying game adventures / 2+ players

***

A multiseasonal sandbox centred on a neat little gimmick that the six-year-old had no trouble getting her head around with the aid of descriptive hints. We saved a stranded giraffe kid, rescued the wizard, got moderately scorched by dragons and ate a load of burritos. Most of this wasn't in the prompts.

Alrightgames: One Page Adventures – Desert, Desert II, Pyramid & Mausoleum

One Page Adventures: Desert, Desert II, Pyramid & Mausoleum

2022 / Roleplaying game adventures / 2+ players

****

A desolate change of scenery from generic forests and plains, I was able to adapt most the physical, mental and mystical challenges from these D&D prompts to our kids' game, but swapped out the angry kobolds for an animated pharaoh mask and combined the two tombs into a parody of The Crystal Maze. I was especially pleased with myself when I noticed the Mumm-sey potential.

Alrightgames: Dixit – Anniversary

Dixit: Anniversary

2018 / Card game expansion deck / 3-6 players

***

Dixit and Stella are our favourite family games for evenings when both parents are around, so more variety is always welcome, but this ended up being our default Muse set when we discovered that.

We chose this as our next card supplement (after Memories and Journey) after checking out several flip-throughs on YouTube. There didn't seem to be as many creepy ones on the screen as in the flesh.

Alrightgames: Too Many Poops

Too Many Poops

2018 / Card game / 2-6 players

***

Enhancing basic set collection with educational scatological realism, this was a no-brainer birthday present when I saw it on sale.

The rules are a bit fiddly, but the six-year-old got it, even if she's squarely focused on the kawaii foreverhome building so far and not the more diabolical side where kitties are weaponised in neighbourhood feuds. Enacting the rule that whoever most recently scooped poop goes first could get me out of that chore in the future.

Alrightgames: Monster High – Share or Scare Game

Monster High: Share or Scare Game

2011 / Truth or dare game / 2-6 players

**

The usual crude pasting of franchise over stock game, with many questions and challenges either inappropriate or physically impossible for the minimum age recommendation, but with enough paraphernalia and poorly-proofread variations on the same tasks to keep it endlessly entertaining if they're into it. It was her favourite of her birthday games, unfortunately.

Babyliography CCXXVII

Mark Sperring and Tim Budgen, 20 Dragons at Bedtime

2025 / Library book / 32 pages

**

I don't know why it took them three years to find-and-replace this specific version of exactly the same thing.

Dana Simpson, Unicornado: Another Phoebe and Her Unicorn Adventure

Collected 2022 / Paperback / 176 pages

***

Cover didn't happen, never mind.

Suzanne Senior and Angelika Scudamore, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Not in Otter's Pocket

2020 / School book / 24 pages

**

Set 5 comes with a page boost and sentences that seem less like traps. She's encouraged to read them multiple times by the lure of raffle tickets, which hopefully won't lead to a gambling problem.

Unknown, Weird But True! 2025

2024 / Library book / 256 pages

****

National Geographic's annual junior cornucopia of oddities and interesting facts, favouring animals over human freaks.

Various, Usborne 100 Science Experiments

2006 / Library book / 96 pages

***

There seemed to be a few more practical suggestions than these things school holiday library loans usually have, but I still didn't get around to buying the missing ingredients.

Babyliography CCXXVI

Julia March, Rosie Peet and Victoria Taylor, The Amazing Book of My Little Pony

2017 / Hardback / 48 pages

**

An elaborate toy advert, luckily she got most of them for her fourth birthday already. It's Monster High now, granddad.

Roger Hargreaves, Little Miss Contrary

1984 / Library book / 32 pages

*

One of the less distinct concepts, I guess he'd run out of ideas now, especially as the story mainly revolves around established Mr Men.

Sarah Snashall and Alfredo Belli, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Harper and the Big Dog

2020 / School book / 16 pages

***

Painstakingly constructed alliteration and tricky trigraphs to catch early readers out, that's the spirit. The message might be helpful too, now that dogs are scary again.

Raina Telgemeier, Guts

2019 / Paperback / 144 pages

****

Mainly enjoyed as another instalment in her favourite tween drama, I thought this was going to be more about bodily functions than brain, so it was a bit more complex than the poo book expected, but was a helpful introduction to the idea of therapy.

Samantha Montgomerie and Elena Napoli, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Spook Night

2021 / School book / 16 pages

**

These cartoon ghouls might have creeped her out a year ago, but she's got five Monster High dolls now.