Adventure Call

July 2, 2011 4:27 AM

If you ever watched the 80s/90s UK children's TV fantasy show Knightmare, you may enjoy Adventure Call, from Limmy's Show, demonstrating the eloquence and imagination of the Scottish fantasy fan...NSFW

Kill the Jester
When's ma son gettin' his money?
Disadvantaged Children
Inside Caller
Previously...

posted by Pilly (13 comments total)

It's funny cos it reaches deep down inside you and grabs your hope by the ball sack and crushes it, slowly crushes it, till it dies of the sheer existential pain of it; all the while gently caressing your hair and making soothing noises.

Also cos it's true.
posted by titus-g at 5:25 AM on July 2, 2011

Here is a boggling thing my housemate told me the other day: one antecedent to Adventure Call, along with shows like Knightmare, was F.I.S.T., which stands for Fantasy Interactive Scenarios by Telephone. F.I.S.T. was an actual real roleplaying game that you played by telephone. It was designed by Steve Jackson (the UK Steve Jackson, not the US one) using technology originally developed for delivering telephone horoscopes. You could use push-button phones or rotary dial (a computer at the other end would count the number of clicks), and the game let you do things like saving your character between sessions.

This was 1988. The game had thousands of players a day, and there were several follow-ups, including a gladiators-themed fighting game.

The number you have dialled is not of this earth. You have opened the gateway to an alternate reality. You are being connected to another world in another time, where you are another person. Welcome to the world of FIST!

May I stress again that this was an actual real thing that actually really existed?
posted by severalbees at 5:40 AM on July 2, 2011 [8 favorites]

"Let's...take another call.

...See if you can escape the well."
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 AM on July 2, 2011

Let's keep this old school.

Sidestep to your left. Sidestep to your left.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:14 AM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh man I want to find that "Kill Jester" guy and give him a big hug he's amazing.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:32 AM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow I just figured out this was a sketch. Well done stuff mates!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:36 AM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

These are absolutely hilarious! Thanks for sharing.

Couldn't they just get better call screeners?
posted by cman at 10:25 AM on July 2, 2011

This is a bit arbitrary.
posted by vanar sena at 10:40 AM on July 2, 2011

Hah, disappointingly followed the Limmy's show link to find out it's just a sketch. It's still pretty good though.
posted by cman at 11:22 AM on July 2, 2011

Funny. Never saw Knightmare, still enjoyed Adventure Call. Thanks.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 4:56 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

What's really great about this is that it works as a satire on porno-chat and shopping channels and all of that, without wandering into lazy Little Britain grotesque. The discomfort, misery and humiliation of Falconhoof are totally accurate, as is his abuse of his power over the callers. The fact that Adventure Call doesn't really exist is really quite surprising, I wonder if we live in the only alternate world without it.
posted by howfar at 5:01 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Back on F.I.S.T - when my family visited, when I was very young, I was often left with my Welsh grandmother. She was old, and sweet, and indulgent, and I exploited this to call F.I.S.T, which seemed the most exciting thing in the world - a game, but by phone!

The messages were recorded, but that was fine - a real adult on the other end of the line would have been terrifying. But what I realized even at that age was that the rock-paper-shotgun combat system was a terrible way to squeeze money out of the system. Even then, I could see the racket. Perhaps over time one could discern the difference between a giant scorpion and a hostile retarius, but at 50 pence a minute, when a book cost £2.99, what sort of maniac would spend enough to master the system? My grandmother was well-to-do, in the greater scheme of things, but whose pockets were that deep? Every time, my desire to escape into a world of monsters and heroes was choked by guilt after ten minutes or so.

Later, my grandmother started to suspect that she was being robbed. Things she remembered were no longer where she put them. Logically, it made sense that people living in her attic space were coming out by night and moving them. I knew that, even if those telephone bills were years past, that I had common cause with those phantom thieves.

I've been deeply dubious of any disruptive service that relied on escapism for its funding ever since. "Adventure Call"'s joke is a pretty harsh one - 0909 numbers cost about $2 a minute, and the "Scroll of Honor" shows the petty rewards for playing the game.

I'm amused but slightly traumatized. Howfar is bang on.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:21 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

These are fabulous.
posted by Theta States at 11:53 AM on July 5, 2011 [1 favorite]