ME: You know, I rather think the whole Photoshopping thing is getting a bit predictable these days.
MYSELF: I was thinking that myself. I mean, it’s almost getting to be a schtick, isn’t it?
ME: And you’ve got to figure there’s more interesting things to Photoshop than just grabbing a selection of some element of pop-culture nostalgia…
MYSELF: Like Pele bicycle-kicking a buffalo in the nuts.
ME: Whoa. How did I think of that?
MYSELF: My creative process is something of a mystery. Even to me.
ME: That is true.
MYSELF: So I’m settled then. No more pastiches of Photoshoppery. From this point forth, my next Photoshop project is Pele bicycle-kicking a buffalo in the nuts.
ME: Or possibly an elephant.
MYSELF: Or the late Generalissimo Franco.
Enter FLAPJACKS.
FLAPJACKS: Hey, dude, look what I just scored: a whole whack of those old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks!
ME: …God dammit.
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I have the whole set of these beauties. Long did I battle the farting sluggoth.
That poor manticore. It just needs a hug.
Never seen any of these before. But the ‘shopping is exactly what I needed to see this morning. When your day — maybe even week — is ruined before 7:30, it’s pick-me-ups like this that make survival possible. Danke.
Thanks. I’d seen the news of the previous entry elsewhere, which was a hard hit for a Monday morning. This had me laughing.
Lizard-Man Robin Hood … somehow, I think that could work …
Man, I used to have most if not all of those.
Adrian: That was the original concept for Green Arrow – he wasn’t “green” because of his costume. True story.
The guy riding the tigers in “Attack of the Impractical Horde” looks absolutely terrified. Which, I guess, is probably only natural considering the situation.
Shit, I used to have that Seahawks one. What was the real title?
“What the Fuck: The Penis of a Vengeful God vs The Monster that was a Vagina.” With an introduction by the Farting Sluggoth.
“Penis of a Vengeful God” got me to bust a gut laughing. Bravo, MGK, bravo!
What’s odd is I kept reading the “an adventure YOU…” blurbs on each and every one of those books.
Superb!
On “Triumph” is that a sword with an unusually wide hand-guard or is that the world’s most impractical shield?
Next on the list: Choose your own adventure books.
If you serve the giant ogre waffles, turn to page 13
If you take the pencil and jam it into your coratid artery because you are bored to tears, turn to page 47
If you put down the book and go watch porn instead, turn to page 83
Great as usual, poor Manticore.
Please, can you do the photomanip with Franco being kicked by Pele. I beg you.
If ‘Me’ and ‘Myself’ were having a debate, where was ‘I’? Self-centred git…
ALSO: Strangely enough, I have a copy of “Robot Commando” and it was actually the best thing Jackson & Livingstone ever wrote…going beyond the old genres and working in creative ideas for robot types along with actual Dinosaur species – a gratifying addition to a die-hard Dinosaur nerd like myself.
I can do you one better: I think I STILL HAVE all of those. The “Seahawks” one was called “Starship Traveller”, and I believe it was their first SF book. The trouble with the SF ones is that they didn’t fit in a consistant universe like the fantasy ones (well, if you consider that a flaw).
As I recall, the “What The Fuck” had something to do with being a dream-shaman who could move back an forth between the real world and the dream world. Damn, that was a pretty imaginative series. And those are pretty awesome covers, with a couple of exceptions.
@ karellan
I suppose that perhaps HE’S TERRIFIED OF HIS OWN CODPIECE! OMGANGRYCATCROTCHWTF?!
Thanks for the info. I remember that now. Bloody insane it was.
Robot Commando (aka Best Gamebook of All Time) is one of maybe half a dozen of those I never read (there were more than 50 by the time I stopped reading, before the ignorant start wondering). Although I have no idea what the fuck the Loneliest Manticore was originally.
And you have to admit – if you can pull it off, riding two tigers into battle trumps Bear Cavalry any day of the week.
What The Fuck was – I can’t remember the title, but you played an elf warrior-shaman who had to hunt down this goat-headed demon prince. There was dream combat and a lot of weird shit, but I only read it once and cheated the fuck out of it (who didn’t?), so I can’t really give a review.
Some of these were awesome, though. At least when I was 11.
Some of these were awesome, though. At least when I was 11.
Heck, yes. Deathtrap Dungeon (aka Pit of the Farting Sluggoth) in particular was made of awesome. It lead to lots of enormous tree diagrams amongst my friends in elementary school.
(It was a lot like the old Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Infocom game, in that you could play for ages, then discover that you’d actually lost because you neglected to do something several hours earlier. These days most RPGs have given up on the “You didn’t collect the mail before the earth was destroyed, so you’ve been playing a lost game for 18 hours and need to start over” trope.)
That was just awesome. I think my favorite is “The Kitty’s Name is Mr. Murder”, but I love them all.
Led, even. Apparently I need more coffee.
I love you for the Dokken thing more than you can possibly know.
@Joysweeper: Note that the Lizard-King’s crown is actually a giant crab-spider-thing.
Gonchong?
(I swear, I just have a really good memory. Or, as it may turn out, a crap one)
Omg, I had Lizardman Robin Hood when I was a kid! What a wave of nostalgia…
The lonliest manticore lives in The Shamutanti Hills, the first of Steve Jackson’s “Sorcery!” four-part series. The Farting Shuggoth gets his revenge in the second book of that series, Kare: Cityport of Traps. The third book is The Seven Serpents and the last book is The Crown of Kings, one of the most sadistic gamebooks ever set to print. It has about 800 entries and the series used a magic system just to ratchet the complexity up a notch.
So much distilled awesome though, the exclamation mark, the printed dice at the bottom of each page so you could flick through the book rather than geek-roll in the library, the magic system, the artwork…the time I had to play them when I was twenty years younger…
There are some scary intronweb sites out there for these bad-boys BTW. Sequences of numbers as paths through books anyone?
Oh man, it makes me want to learn how to use photoshop.
You sir, are a deity.
[...] I really hated getting killed by The Farting Sluggoth A stash of charmingly goofy adventure book covers from Christopher "MGK" Bird. Previously on Mefi for his Marvel Comics Civil War remix [...]
Wait. The most awesome game ever does not just have dinosaurs vs. robots, but Dinosaurs vs. Robot COMMANDOS?
How much is it on E-bay these days?
Well, I HAVE THE FIRST FOUR OF THEM IN SWEDISH!
Then I had to switch to english. Oh how I loved them. Except in one of them, where you were inside a mountain labyrinth there was a typo that led you round and round and round again so me and my brother actually had to sit down and map the entire labyrinth.
Which turned out to be surprisingly small.
Unlike the penis of a vengeful god… *snickers*
I agree with Zenrage– you *must* do this for some of those old CYOA books. Awesomesauce.
So I’m all “Hey, is that Steve Jackson of GURPS and Steve Jackson fame?” And I find out it’s not, it was another SJ who wrote gamebooks from the UK. Except that US SJ did some of the books. So it might be. Gah!
Love the Photoshops…and I had quite a few of them as a lad.
The first two ‘Farting Sluggoth’ ones…never got a chance to play ‘Evolution’.
I also loved ‘Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!’ the first two books of which were ‘Loneliest Manticore’ and ‘Farting Sluggoth II’.
Wow, this takes me back. In the fifth grade at least half the boys at my school were into these books, including me. The first one I ever read/played was “The Monster That Was A Vagina”! I think the real title is “Citadel of Chaos” but not 100% sure.
Oh yeah, this is also hilarious.
Poor Manticore, it can come live with me, I would feed it marshmallows
Onion: It is a spiked shield! So you can use it as a buckler or punch with it and spike somebody. No, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then again you have to realize everybody on that cover is also wearing a mask and fighting blind for the “privilege” of going through Deathtrap Dungeon. That is how awesome that book (Trial of Champions) was.
Bret: Between two and fifteen bucks, depending on the auction.
Rob Brown: You are correct; that is the second cover for Citadel of Chaos. There was also an earlier, crappier one, which I almost did but I was getting bored.
Nice Sherlock Holmes reference.
I can just imagine the people who didn’t get it scrolling up in confusion.
Bret: No, the Awesomest Game Book Ever features Robot Commandos that TRANSFORM INTO ROBOT DINOSAURS. And battle Dinosaurs.
God I loved that book, even if the best robot in it was the Dragonfly, which isn’t even a dinosaur.
[...] Posted by strawberryluna . Jeez, i remember these from when i was at school __________________ [...]
My fave was “Form 22.1(B) of Malevolence”. Awesome!
These are brilliant, but I hold a special flame for one of them in particular.
The Robot Commando one. Man I loved that book as a kid. It had it all, the cover promised awesomeness and right from the start it delievers. Dinosaur ranchers who use robots? Why is this one not a role playing game? Why?
…….
Wow.
There are no words.
I am laughing so hard I’m crying. Clash of the Genres is what got to me.
[...] More fun with goofy book jackets over at MightyGodKing [...]
[...] Posted by strawberryluna Mightygodking.com
I really, really liked these!
How boring most are shopped titles. Not even that funny retards
Hilarious! Great stuff and I hope to see more!
FYI Links:
Fighting Fantasy official site:
http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com
Online FF Adventures:
http://www.ffproject.com
FF general discussion:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/fighting_fantasy_gamebooks/
Discussion about Titan, the FF world:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/titan_rebuilding/
FF Wiki:
http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
And, lastly, the original Farting Sluggoth can be found here:
http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Bloodbeast
gracias
Andy
Aw, the poor sad manticore.
Damn, I definitely had the manticore one when I was a kid. That cover just brings the memories flooding back.
I remember those books well… I read loads of them, and I still have a few.
I just got a whole bunch of weird looks from my co-workers. These were a mainstay of many winter nights as a kid and I just about wet myself laughing seeing them again like this. Great stuff
[...] Mightygodking.com » Blog Archive » Bad habits. “Attack of the Impractical Horde” seems the winner in my book (tags: books rpgs Steve-Jackson amusing photoshop vintage) [...]
I DO have all of them. The only book from the series I now don’t have is the Riddling Reaver, so as a fighting fantasy fan of long standing, here are the names of all of them al. yes, I’m shamelessly
1) #6 Deathtrap Dungeon
#24 Creature of Havoc
2) #9 Cavern of the Snow Witch
3) #7 Island of the Lizard King
4) #15 The Rings of Kether
6) #18 Rebel planet
7) #46 Tower of Destruction
9) #11 Talisman of Death
10) #2 of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! Khare – Cityport of Traps
11) #21 Trial of Champions a sequel to Deathtrap Dungeon
12) #4 Starship Traveller.
13) #1 of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series The Shamutanti Hills.
14) #3 The Forest of Doom
15) #34 Daggers of darkness
16) #2 Citadel of chaos
17) #22 Robot Commando
18) #8 Scorpion swamp
19) #28 Phantoms of Fear
Funny, funny, funny! I was literally laughing out loud.
Unpublished: attack of the badly edited gamebook….
Those are really great! Thanks for sharing! I should get some of the originals for my 9 year old. I forgot how much fun they were.
you saved the best title for last – Benjamin Koshkin
Truly one of the best photoshop fantasy sites ever. – Michael Adkinson
Brilliant, even the zombie hordes laughed their heads off. they may spare you for amusement.
“The Loneliest Manticore” sounds like a Tom Holt novel.
Ciekawa strona, trafilem tu przypadkowo, ale od dzis bede wpadal czesciej, pozdro
these are fantastic! great post
Dude, you made my night. I’m sending these off to my old D&D buddies. I’m still laughing just thinking about El-Roidicus !
The Penis of Vengeful good and the monster that was a vagina. I’m going to have to use those.
I, for one, am greatly offended at the misrepresentation of my people, the farting sluggoths.
Ciekawa strona, bede ja odwiedzal czesciej, pozdro
I never played these (I stuck to the Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure series, and cheated the hell out of them), but the many-eyed, bloated beastie on the first Farting Sluggoth cover looks oddly familiar. I think it was on the bookshelf in my French class. Were these books ever published in French?
Bricks were shat
[...] a small update to prove that I still exist and have not been eaten by a Farting Sluggoth or other mythical creature. I have been rather busy at work and at home, but I have been spending [...]
[...] Capas de livros de ficção.• Quer publicar sua própria revista? A MagCloud ajuda.• Todas as capas [...]
[...] So first you did those Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. ME: Yes. FLAPJACKS: And then you did all that nerd-lit from years gone by. ME: Yes. FLAPJACKS: You [...]
loved these
the Impractical Horde, particularly
If only these guys had been around when we wrote the books! Thay could have helped with coming up with the titles and saved us a lot of time. Twitter @ian_livingstone
@frilledshark: “I think it was on the bookshelf in my French class. Were these books ever published in French?” you bet my childhood they were ! -some frenchie
Okay , enough ,stop this! my jaw’s still hurt of laughing!