The Ancestral Trail is a now out-of-print long-form fictional story woven throughout a 52-issue partwork children's magazine series that was originally-published between 1992 and 1994 by Marshall Cavendish in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Malta, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa; as well as translated versions licensed to local publishers in France, Germany (where it was titled Im Reich der Urwesen), Italy (titled La Storia Ancestrale), Spain.

After a successful first year sales, with projections reported at over 30 million copies worldwide,[1] the series was extended to fifty-two issues, where Richard's adventures continued into a futuristic science fiction world known as the Cyber Dimension.

[2] The magazine was launched with a television advertising campaign in December 1992, playing off the series tagline "an epic story of myths, monsters, and magic".

Golan explains that Richard is the prophecised "Chosen One", and that the Ancestral World is being destroyed by a being known as The Evil One who is close to winning the battle against the forces of good.

[4] The first issue of The Ancestral Trail, titled The Moss Beast, was bundled with a four-panel presentation folder which outlined the series and a short prologue which set up the ongoing storyline.

The inner front cover of each installment featured a prophecy which referred to the events of that tale, these were later replaced by binary messages from a screen that appears on Robo's chest.

Fragments of the Evil One's mask and random other 'canon' imagery were also hidden in the background art, as well as then-contemporary computing tech within the Cyber Dimension artwork.

[5] Within the inside flap back cover of each issue, as well as aerial fragments of a graphic map, enabling the reader to create an illustrated layout of the Ancestral World.

Role-playing games based on the content were generated from both free trump card sets bundled with each issue and later printed within the inside cover.