Get That Plane!
Here’s some fun fluff. It’s a short choose-your-own-adventure/puzzle manga loosely based on Diddy Kong Racing (always fun to see Rare’s games given the manga treatment). It comes from the Feb 1998 Ninensei edition of Shogakukan’s Shogaku Gakushu Zasshi magazines. Raw scans again thanks to Ragey. I’ve translated these into English with Horseypope’s help.
The comic is by Hiroshi Takase and is part of the “Super Mario Wonderland” series, later known as “Super Mario Game Land”. This is the successor series to the original “Super Mario-kun” manga that Takase started in 1986. This chapter sees Mario, along with Peach and Toad, meeting up with Diddy Kong who is showing off his vehicles. Dialogue implies this takes place before DKR begins… it’s a prequel to Diddy Kong Racing, somehow! Figure that one out, fans. Bowser then shows up and steals his plane, and the chase is on.
The comic is to be read in its original right-to-left format, and you’ll skip around between pages a lot if you’re treating it as a proper gamebook and following the directions! Some of the puzzle segments were literally untranslatable, so I included a note for these that tells you the solution. If nothing else, enjoy the cute character designs.