Gex

by Michael Teitelbaum

He's hip, green, and a master of disguise. Meet GEX as he leaps out of the video-game screen and into the pages of his very own book. In this exciting story, GEX journeys to the Media Dimension to battle his archenemy, Rez. So grab your remote and let the adventure begin!

Genres: Media Tie In

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 2000

About the author

Michael Teitelbaum has been a writer and editor of children’s books for more than thirty years. He worked on staff as an editor at Golden Books, Grossett & Dunlop, and Macmillan. In addition to The Scary States of America, Michael’s fiction work includes The Very Hungry Zombie: A Parody, and The Very Thirsty Vampire: A Parody both done with artist extraordinaire Jon Apple, published by Skyhorse. His non-fiction work includes writing Jackie Robinson: Champion for Equality, published by Sterling, and The Baseball Hall of Fame, a 2-volume encyclopedia, published by Grolier. He is also the series editor of Great Escapes, true-life acts of incredible courage, published by Harper Collins.
Michael has always had an interest in the paranormal, despite a rather normal childhood in Brooklyn, NY. These days, Michael lives with his wife, Sheleigah, and two talkative cats in an (as yet unhaunted) 180-year-old farmhouse in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.

Reviews

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

rudest, wildest 'zard out there. this might be the most perfectly obnoxious and free prose of my lifetime. what a gift.

[Max Engarde · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short novelization that summarizes the plot of the three Gex video games from the 90's.

Even though it is a good little piece of merchandise from the underrated and niche Gex franchise, this is not a good book, it's flawed and very repetitive, especially when using Gex's catchphrases. You will read "It's tail time!" and "deja-ouch all over again!" more times than you can count. This gets a bit of a pass though because it's a kid's book and considering Gex's sense of humour of parodying and referencing pop culture, this could be a humor resource... or not.

I give it 3 stars mostly because I'm a fan of Gex, and the nostalgia it brings to fans can have a certain value, but I wouldn't recommend it for people that are not fans of the franchise, objectively it would be 2 stars. Now that's a deja-ouch for ya Gex.

[James Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

So.. this is a hard one for me to review, as I'm probably threefold the intended age for this book. Still, I wanted to check it out as Gex is the namesake for my pet gecko, and the original videogame was my very first exposure to Playstation back in 1995. That said, this book was cringe-worthy on many levels (such as oft-repeated catchphrases and abhorrent sexism) but still had a few moments that made me smile. To its defense, it pretty well summarizes the game series and even acts as an accurate strategy guide for defeating the final boss.

If I had read this back in the mid-90's, I'd be giving it a higher rating for sure. :)

[Naomi · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is a children's book.

Unless you are the target age or a fan of the video games, you can probably skip this one. I did play the demo multiple times back in the day, but never played the full version: and I felt like this was a waste of time.

Gex does make a lot of corny jokes however, and some are mildly enjoyable. But even that ends up with making it less accessible to actual children. It's all dated pop culture references.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Today on Gexie Stewart's Living—how to make your own invitations out of that clear wrapper that comes on slices of American cheese. It's a good thing!"

The best way I can describe this book is "if someone made Ready Player One aimed at children, but also made it based off of a 90's video game that no one remembers".

And, as you can tell by my four stars attached to this review, it...actually kinda works? It was a fun book.

That being said, I'm more rating this based off of my idea of how good an adaptation novel of Gex could possibly be, rather than grading this book by comparing it across all of the written literature created by man. I knew this was going to be dumb. It had a CGI lizard covered in gold body paint on the front cover. This was never going to be Shakespeare.

The story of this book goes as such - after a chapter summarizing the events of the first two games, including some brief paragraphs describing some of the bosses of Enter the Gecko like Mooshoo Pork, this book basically goes through the plot of Deep Cover Gecko. Gex, a talking gecko who sometimes works with the government as a secret agent, is watching television when he hears that an evil cyborg named Rez has kidnapped his girlfriend, Agent Xtra, and has trapped her in the Media Dimension as bait for Gex. Gex, the cunning, wise-cracking lizard with an encyclopedic memory of pop-culture references, follows suit, and he has to go through each of the television worlds until he's able to get to the final level where Rez is hiding out.

There is no character development, no real plot beyond what I just described, and it's very obvious that they're just summarizing what happens in a PS1 game, but at the same time, what else did you expect.

The Gex novel is notable for doing these two things to the deep lore of Gex the Gecko.
1. It considers what Rez said at the end of the second game to be canon, meaning that yes, Rez is Gex's father. This is the most hotly debated piece of Gex lore among the Gex fans, so it was kinda fun to see something involving the Gex name take this idea and run with it.
2. At the end of this book, Rez hints that there's a far greater enemy than him right before exploding, possibly for good. This is a sequel hook that never comes to fruition considering Crystal Dynamics - which as of 2019 still exists and is owned by Square-Enix - never made a fourth Gex game.

It's stupid, it's silly, and it's chock full of 90's references, but it was also pretty fun to read. Four remotes up.

[The Book Sale Scrounger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean, it beats paying six hundred bucks for a 3DO.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was so dumb that I loved it.

It's Tail Time.