Bad habits.

That poor manticore. It just needs a hug.

Thanks. I’d seen the news of the previous entry elsewhere, which was a hard hit for a Monday morning. This had me laughing.

Man, I used to have most if not all of those.

The guy riding the tigers in “Attack of the Impractical Horde” looks absolutely terrified. Which, I guess, is probably only natural considering the situation.

“What the Fuck: The Penis of a Vengeful God vs The Monster that was a Vagina.” With an introduction by the Farting Sluggoth.

What’s odd is I kept reading the “an adventure YOU…” blurbs on each and every one of those books.

On “Triumph” is that a sword with an unusually wide hand-guard or is that the world’s most impractical shield?

Great as usual, poor Manticore.

Please, can you do the photomanip with Franco being kicked by Pele. I beg you.

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.

@ karellan
I suppose that perhaps HE’S TERRIFIED OF HIS OWN CODPIECE! OMGANGRYCATCROTCHWTF?!

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.

That was just awesome. I think my favorite is “The Kitty’s Name is Mr. Murder”, but I love them all.

I love you for the Dokken thing more than you can possibly know.

Gonchong?

(I swear, I just have a really good memory. Or, as it may turn out, a crap one)

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?

[...] 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 [...]

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*

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!

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.

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.

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.

My fave was “Form 22.1(B) of Malevolence”. Awesome!

…….
Wow.
There are no words.

[...] More fun with goofy book jackets over at MightyGodKing [...]

I really, really liked these!

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

Damn, I definitely had the manticore one when I was a kid. That cover just brings the memories flooding back.

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

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
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
#24 Creature of Havoc
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

Unpublished: attack of the badly edited gamebook….

you saved the best title for last – Benjamin Koshkin

Brilliant, even the zombie hordes laughed their heads off. they may spare you for amusement.

Ciekawa strona, trafilem tu przypadkowo, ale od dzis bede wpadal czesciej, pozdro

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 !

I, for one, am greatly offended at the misrepresentation of my people, the farting sluggoths.

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?

[...] 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 [...]

[...] 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 [...]

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