Game Books (…Child of the Screen Names Thread :-))

OK, mine is stupid but here goes:

When I was an adolescent (12-14 years I think) some friends and I had a "book club" where we would write our own "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories. You know those kids books that had branching multi-path stories and endings …

Anyway, one of my books was called Galactic Hunter and the main character was this Boba-Fett type guy named "Robert W. Elkston". So that's where the "elkston" comes from ….

Originally Posted by elkston
where we would write our own "Choose Your Own Adevnture" stories. You know those kids books that had branching multi-path stories and endings …

Fine! I absolutely loved these books when they came out en masse in the 80s and 90s, I have a library of 70+ of these gems (from different series), and I still love them .

@Jaz
Really Do you have the Lone wolf books too ?
I suddenly had a severe attack of Nostalgia…

Hmm know of abywhere I can older the english versions online ?
(kind of hard I imagine) I still have the first 5 translated somewhere
on my shelves… Heh that brought back memories.

Originally Posted by JonNik
@Jaz
Really Do you have the Lone wolf books too ?
I suddenly had a severe attack of Nostalgia…

Hmm know of abywhere I can older the english versions online ?
(kind of hard I imagine) I still have the first 5 translated somewhere
on my shelves… Heh that brought back memories.

I have exactly one (1) Lone Wolf book, the first one; I played and didn't really like it back then, so I never bought another Dever/Chalk book. But I own about 50 Fighting Fantasy books (really loved those by Steve Jackson) and a few Narnia, LotR, D&D, Sherlock Holmes… etc. books as well as several badly-written local books from the late 80s (and two brand new ones). I also have a set of two books you could either play alone or with two people at the same time, each one playing one character book, and occasionally meeting the other player/character. Fun fun fun.

It seems you can get Lone Wolf books - used and new - from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

@Jaz

Well the only ones of this kind translated to my native language were the
Lone Wolf books. It was something unique for the Local Market so I havent
got my hands on any of the other series you mention (didnt occur to me that
it actually was a genre back then, heh, must be at least a decade). Especially
that one with the multiple characters seems an intriguing idea.
How is it called ?

Also thanks, it occured to me to have a look over at Amazon after asking
but it seems most things there, are sold used (I like to avoid buying used
stuff, especially via internet). Play.com has an obscure link for a yet to be
released Lone wolf gift set but they often have erroneous entries on their
site…

Originally Posted by JonNik
Well the only ones of this kind translated to my native language were the Lone Wolf books. It was something unique for the Local Market so I havent got my hands on any of the other series you mention (didnt occur to me that it actually was a genre back then, heh, must be at least a decade). Especially that one with the multiple characters seems an intriguing idea. How is it called ?

The series was called Combat Heroes, my books were The Scarlet Sorcerer/The Emerald Enchanter (written by Joe Dever, coinidentally, but not illustrated by Gary Chalk IIRC). They were decent, yet not the best I have read - my favorite series was the Fighting Fantasy sub-series 'Sorcery!', and FF No. 24 (or was it 25?), 'Creature of Havoc' - brilliant.
One Fighting Fantasy was made into a computer game - Deathtrap Dungeon. Sigh. I was severely disappointed. The game was nice, but it just wasn't Deathtrap Dungeon (ot Trial of Champions, the successor, for that matter). Even though Baron Sukumvit was in it.

Also thanks, it occured to me to have a look over at Amazon after asking
but it seems most things there, are sold used (I like to avoid buying used
stuff, especially via internet). Play.com has an obscure link for a yet to be
released Lone wolf gift set but they often have erroneous entries on their
site…

I have bought many items used over the net, mostly from Amazon, and I was never disappointed. Amazon marketplace = nice. So far.

Originally Posted by JonNik
@Jaz
Really Do you have the Lone wolf books too ?

I remeber those, they were my favourites of all the series I could get my hands on.
Someone did NWN modules based on the character and setting.

Oh, and I played the Lone Wolf Series until around Book 12 or so… fun, but couldn't hold a candle against "The Warlock of the burning Mountain" from Steve Jackson (Back-translated from German - the Name might differ)

Originally Posted by Cormac
I remeber those, they were my favourites of all the series I could get my hands on.
Someone did NWN modules based on the character and setting.

Don't know about the NWN mods, but the books themselves are available on the net here http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home with various other additions. Originally, I had one of them for years in my native language and I recently found it and replaying it was quite fun, though, since it was not the first one I thought I had been robbed something from the experience. I started playing the series from book 1 in the above site, but the 2nd book was quite frustrating for some particular in-game events.

Originally Posted by Arma
Don't know about the NWN mods, but the books themselves are available on the net here http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home with various other additions. Originally, I had one of them for years in my native language and I recently found it and replaying it was quite fun, though, since it was not the first one I thought I had been robbed something from the experience. I started playing the series from book 1 in the above site, but the 2nd book was quite frustrating for some particular in-game events.

Here's the first, and the second.

I don't know if he made more, not so long ago I reinstalled Windows and that did not agree with NWN, which reverted to version 1.00 with no way to patch it back, so I uninstalled it.
I think I own most of the books, in french translation. Yes, they're best played/read in order since it's a continuous story.

Originally Posted by Fenris
Oh, and I played the Lone Wolf Series until around Book 12 or so… fun, but couldn't hold a candle against "The Warlock of the burning Mountain" from Steve Jackson (Back-translated from German - the Name might differ)

"The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", the first book in the FF series, was by Ian Livingstone. Livingston and Jackson were the founders of Games Workshop, by the way, and later Livingston became a board member of Eidos.

Thanks for the lnks!

Indeed, Many thanks for the Links and the info.
Especially Arma this is a very nice project.

P.S @Jaz How very appropriate

"Creature of Havoc" was by far the best fighting fantasy book. Surely it would an excellent video game as well. I must have played that book about 20-30 times and not sure if I ever got the "perfect" ending.

I had the first 2 complete series of the lone wolf books and a few of the later ones - they weren't nearly as good as the first 2 series (1-12).

After all the high recommendations I decided to give Fighting Fantasy
a try :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Fan…958530-4337205

(Damn and I promised myself I would not buy anything untill my to-read stack
lost skyscraper proportions )

Now only if I could find a way to squeeze this along with my regular reading
pc gaming and occasional Movie watching in the 2 hours free time I have each
day I would be a happy man…

Oh, the Sorcery! series is good . You can play all four books in a row, they're different chapters of a story… and since you play a sorcerer, you must memorize your spellbook before you start playing (unless you cheat, that is, but I'd recommend you not to).

A local fantasy author recently started two series of game books based on his fantasy worlds; he wrote the first book in each series, then I was commissioned to write game books for one of the series. I had written a short 'game book' inlay for a Fanzine he had published stories in about 12 years ago ^_^.

Originally Posted by Jaz
Oh, the Sorcery! series is good . You can play all four books in a row, they're different chapters of a story…

That is what caught my eye about this one too ,along with a lot of
recommendations saying that they consider them to be the high point
of the series (some coming from Pros no less )

Generally I like ongoing sagas and epics more than one shots in various
genres. Regardless of the risk of flunctuating quality between parts…

I read the sorcery series when I was about 13 years old. Very good, espically the final book where it is significantly different depending on what you did in the previous books. I never actually managed to kill all 7 serpents in a single play through but it doesn't stop you "cheating" and pretending you did

The fact that these books are still selling is a testament to how good they are, and that they have stood the test of time, even against computer games.

Originally Posted by Jaz
"The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", the first book in the FF series, was by Ian Livingstone. Livingston and Jackson were the founders of Games Workshop, by the way, and later Livingston became a board member of Eidos.

Thanks for the lnks!

Argh… well it was a long time ago

Well… I remembered this one:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view…Detail&id=2531

A nice H&S module with some mean puzzles, but - IIRC - only loosly based on the Book.