Fighting Fantasy - It's back

Courtjezter

Just read this on The Guardian.

My youth came flooding back to me when i heard this news and may try to pick up a copy, for nostalgias sake of course.  I dont think i ever completed one legitamately, but they were great fun and also a great tool to get young kids reading.

Theydon Bois

Have you seen the iPad versions?

App Store - Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

There are other versions by different people as well - I bought a couple in a sale a while back.

PoochJD

Hi,

I certainly think the Fighting Fantasy and Chose Your Own Adventures books were great for getting kids to read, even if it wasn't a proper novel. They were great fun, but as others have said on the comments section of that Guardian article, there was too many, and the quality slipped.

I have one question, which I hope someone can help me with: Penguin published a three-volume spin-off series, that was much more adult in tone, contained a lot more text to read, and was (I think) set in/around the time of the Vikings or maybe the Greek Myths. It was similar to the FF and CYOA books, but aimed at teenagers.

The books were thick (300-400 pages each), had red spines and back covers, and full-cover artwork on the front of them. They would have been available around 1985-1990, and were priced at £3-99 to £4-99 each. (Which, at the time when the FF books were between £1-25 and £1-99 each, was expensive!) Anyone have any idea what they were called, who wrote them, or anything else that might lead me to find out what these three books were?


Pooch

Courtjezter

If you had reaf a bit further down the Guardian comments it looked like they answered your question.  Cretan Chronicles sounds like the answer to your query

PoochJD

Hi,

Courtjezter - Thanks for that. Hadn't spotted the answer in the Comments section.

Who remembers the THE WAY OF THE TIGER gamebooks?! See here. I think some of these should be republished, for a bit of retro fun.

There's also a website dedicated to all of these adventure gamebooks - Gamebooks.org. It's a bit dated in style, but it's informative.


Pooch

Miss Mandy

I remember reading these books at primary school, they were the first books that really got me into reading and helped develop my skills. Such fond memories.

Apsilon

Remember this by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (before they got into RPG gaming dev). I completed this waaaaaaaaaaaay back when I were a youngster. Junior School I think. There were a few if I remember right and I always remember this one was tough because once you got in the mountain it was a labyrinth and a nightmare to get through.

Forest of Doom, Starship Traveller and Zagor something or other I remember were pretty good. Not sure I'd want to go back to them now as RPG's have pretty much made them redundant. They could work on the iPad though. but I'm just not sure the current generation of kids would take to them with the media they have available to them nowadays.

Smurfin

I confess I've just bought this:

Fighting Fantasy Collection 10 Books Set Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone NEW

For just over a quid each I thought I'd reminicse, and I want to get my nephew "into" these rather than playing on the X-Box.  I used to love these as a kid, but for me the Sorcery! series was by far the best.  There's 2 of them in the set above too

Battle

Ive still got about the first 50 books from when I was a kid.

I had great fun, but I generally cheated as I didnt like to die half way through and have to restart

I seem to remember Alway having to turn right when you got the option to go left or right as the left option generally lead to a horrible death

krish

Got The Warlock of Firetop Mountain when it was packaged with the Speccy game around 84. I could see the appeal of the book, but sadly it really bored me, as did the game, and I really hated text adventure games.