At the start of the Mass Effect 3 Playversation, Roger and I went on a nostalgia trip about various game books published by Nova Game designs (Ace of Aces, Lost Worlds, Bounty Hunter) – they’re a positional turn-based combat mechanic in book form. The picture above (borrowed from this blog) gives you a pretty good idea of what’s going on: on any give page (you’re only looking at one or the other of the two pages, not both), you can see the view of the opponent’s plane from your cockpit and whether or not one or the other of you is firing at the other, along with a list of moves at the bottom.

That got edited out of the podcast, but Roger dug up his copy of Ace of Aces, and I have one as well, so we decided to do it as our game this week.  (I have Wingleader; no idea which set Roger has, but they should be interoperable. Sinking into nostalgia, Powerhouse was the one I cut my teeth on, though I’m fairly sure I also had Rotary and Balloon Busters. I never should have gotten rid of any of the games I had when growing up…)

And, as I started writing this post, I found some Very Exciting News: right now, there’s a Kickstarter to reprint one set of these books! Seven days left, right now it looks plausible that it will make it but who knows. I really really hope it succeeds: a world where Ace of Aces books are available is far superior to a world where they aren’t. So: please consider buying a set!

Conversation will be over Mumble; leave a comment if you need the new Mumble server info. We may try to set up a Google chat hangout as well so people who are participating live can see the books, but we’ll need the Mumble for podcast recording purposes. Thursday, July 19th, at 9:30 EDT / 6:30 PDT.

Update: The podcast is up.