twisty on 20/3/2010 at 12:15
There have been a number of threads on GG about this beloved series over the years. The good news for fans of the FF series is that Ian and Steven are finally releasing up to 40 FF books on the iPhone. Although these books have only received minor enhancements in their transformation from book form to digital format, at A$3 a pop these instalments are very affordable.
At the time of writing, only The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Deathtrap Dungeon have been released. I purchased DD a couple of hours ago...so far, so good.
Shadowcat on 20/3/2010 at 13:06
I loved those books when I was a kid, until I realised that I'd fallen into a really bad habit of automatically buying them as they came out despite not keeping up with the actual playing part, and a good number of them were just sitting in my book shelf untouched.
(Luckily this problem didn't transfer to computer games at all, so I don't now peruse game sales despite having a stupidly-large pile of unplayed games in my collection which I could play for free.)
I'll be interested to hear if they have aged well enough to still enjoy!
icemann on 20/3/2010 at 15:50
I absolutely loved those books back when I was a kid. That said though, the only thing I didn`t like about them was that each is a stand alone book on its own, and so all your gear etc doesn`t carry over to other books.
Incomparison Lone Wolf (my fav gamebook series of all time by leaps and bounds) had the persistant inventory and your skills/abilities (or kai disciplines if you want to be technical) get better with each book. Shame that series of gamebooks stopped at book 27.
Last I had checked long ago, the fighting fantasy books had passed 100 and were still going strong. Wonder how much further they got.
Shame that gamebooks died out. Were a heap of fun to play. Basically like playing a rpg text adventure in book form.
Shadowcat on 21/3/2010 at 01:43
Quote Posted by icemann
Last I had checked long ago, the fighting fantasy books had passed 100 and were still going strong.
Egad. I think I bailed out somewhere around #30. I do remember at least one of them being amazingly awful, which told me that there was no kind of quality-control happening any more (assuming there ever was in the first place -- perhaps it was always just left up to the author to do a good job?).
Quote:
Lone Wolf (my fav gamebook series of all time by leaps and bounds)
I never bought one of those ones. My loss, I guess. I did enjoy Joe Dever's "Combat Heroes" books, though -- they were a clever two-book system for one or two players. In two-player mode, your combined choices determined the next page that each of you moved to, and there was always an illustration of the current situation on each page. It was really quite intricate (or gave that impression, at the very least).
twisty on 21/3/2010 at 02:56
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
I'll be interested to hear if they have aged well enough to still enjoy!
Sure; for nostalgic reasons anyway. They haven't changed any of the original story so there are still those annoying, illogical instant death choices in DD.
Quote Posted by icemann
Incomparison Lone Wolf (my fav gamebook series of all time by leaps and bounds) had the persistant inventory and your skills/abilities (or kai disciplines if you want to be technical) get better with each book. Shame that series of gamebooks stopped at book 27.
Yeah, the Lone Wolf series was awesome, although I only ever purchased the first 8 instalments. There was a mod released for NWN years ago that recreated the first 3 or four books. It was definitely one of the best mods that I played of that series.
Speaking of recreations, there was also a planned PC game version of the Way of the Tiger series, but that project disappeared without a trace.
Shadowcat on 21/3/2010 at 04:36
Quote Posted by twisty
Speaking of recreations, there was also a planned PC game version of the Way of the Tiger series, but that project disappeared without a trace.
Ha, that was another series that I collected. I really liked it, right up until the conclusion, which was the single worst game book I've ever encountered. I don't know what the hell happened there. The original authors' names were on it, but maybe that was purely for marketing, or perhaps they had absolutely no enthusiasm for the project any more and just wanted to see the back of it.
Speaking of PC-based remakes, I noticed this "Freeway Warrior"-based Fallout 3 mod while looking up Joe Dever on Wikipedia: (
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9635)
Oh, hey... check this out:
(
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/FAQ#faq8)
(
http://www.projectaon.org/en/kgs/2009/08/call-of-nature.html) ha :)
Renzatic on 21/3/2010 at 05:14
Since we're on the topic here, maybe you all can help me remember the name of one of these RPG choose-your-own-adventure style books I read back when I was a kid. I've been trying to remember it for years now, but I haven't found a single thing about it online.
My memories of it are pretty vague, but I'll try my best. First off, I bought it back during one of my old elementary school book fairs, so it had to be published sometime during the 80's. It was a series of books, and the one I picked up began like it was continuing immediately after a previous adventure. It took place in a giant cavern kingdom, and the first couple of pages had this nice cutaway map showing the depth and passageways between the various levels of the caves (similar to the cragscleft prison map from Thief, but more detailed). Unfortunately, that's about the most vivid my recollections are here. I just remember loving it, and finding it pretty damn hard to do everything right without cheating.
Now I doubt if anyone can tell me what it was I played based off the few small clues I've given. But if someone can, and they give me a name or a link, I'll forever be in their debt and let them borrow my car indefinitely or something.
Matthew on 21/3/2010 at 19:09
I can't actually remember ever playing the true FF books, but I do remember playing the Marvel-based knock-offs.
Al_B on 21/3/2010 at 21:07
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Now I doubt if anyone can tell me what it was I played based off the few small clues I've given.
Perhaps someone can help - but part of the problem is the absolutely vast number of books that were around then. I'd check (
http://gamebooks.org/index.php) Demian's gamebook site if you haven't already - it helped me track down a humorous series I'd enjoyed (Grailquest) that I coudn't remember a while ago.
twisty on 23/3/2010 at 11:00
Quote Posted by Al_B
... it helped me track down a humorous series I'd enjoyed (Grailquest) that I coudn't remember a while ago.
Grailquest rocked actually. There weren't too many made of them and I only purchased a few of them.
Renzatic, regarding that game you are trying to recall, did it have a picture of some creature within a tomb on the cover?
