A summary of Knightmare's appearances on Teletext, including the Bamboozle adventures available to play over Christmas in 1993.
Nowadays, Knightmare is occasionally mentioned on Teletext discussion pages, such as BBC Ceefax's 'ChatterBox' (this screengrab taken in 1999).
However, Knightmare has been associated with Teletext since the late 80s, with various multiple choice games.
Oracle Teletext
Knightmare was featured on ITV Oracle Teletext in the late 80s. They used the entire adventure game section from the first Knightmare book - 'Can you beat the challenge?'.
They didn't make full use of the Teletext functions (probably no use of the 'reveal' button), so you had to go to another page to see if your answers were correct, and even then they had the answers to all the other riddles on that same page!
During Christmas 1993 and New Year's Day 1994, Knightmare was again featured on ITV Teletext. Bamboozle was a multiple choice game which made use of those nice 4 multi-coloured 'fast-text' buttons on your remote control.
Usually Bamboozle was just general knowledge questions, but they put a complete Knightmare quest in on one occasion.
Eagle's Quest
Phil Colvin remembers a bit more about the Bamboozle adventures:
There were, to my knowledge, at least three and possibly four.
The first was called 'Eagle's Quest'. Basically the quest was a journey. After choosing your quest and getting a 'watchword' you had to decide whether to go into the mountains or down into underground caverns. Both paths merged in a forest where you met an Automaton (exact phrase they used) which you had to escape by running into a hut. There you found some gold which you could use to bribe a guard in a room afterwards to tell you which way to go.
However, if you'd followed the clues in the mountain/underground section you'd have been told already that someone else had bribed the guard higher than you so you had to choose the *opposite* of what he said.The next stop was a mountain peak, where you found 'The Eagle' who took you to the castle and the end of the quest with Hordriss. Eagle's Quest was a standalone adventure.
A year or so later, though, two or three more Knightmare adventures appeared in successive fortnights. First was defiantly the Quest in Winteria as I describe below (I remember it well as it was the most 'Knightmarish' of them all, having a lot of familiar characters such as Hordriss, Sidriss and Aesandre and even a clue room where you had to choose two objects from a group of possibilities).
The thing is I'm not *entirely* certain whether what followed next was just one adventure or two. There was *definitely* a section where you had to travel through a forest to reach a visit and (I think) deliver some vital food. There was also a section where you had to traverse a swamp. These may have been in the same quest or two different ones.
The only other thing I remember, is that all were penned my Michael Cule (so I guess they appeared around the time of Series 6).
Credits
- Nick Gates, for Oracle details
- David Goldstein, for reminders
- Daniel Pridham, for various facts
- Phil Colvin, for details of Eagle's Quest.
Update 2017
A whole Knightmare Teletext adventure, To the Ice Palace of Aesandre, has been recovered and made into a playable quest once more.
Update 2020
Three pages from another of the Knightmare Teletext adventures have been recovered from a 1994 videotape and shared on Twitter here.
