We also use to play Fighting Fantasy in the playground/schoolyard as it was that popular (I always played a wizard). It was so popular, my friends and I would borrow each others books’ and it wasn’t particularly hard to find a friend that had a particular book you were after. You have to remember, this was the era before the Internet, where game consoles and computer games were primitive by design, so these books were a perfect form of escapism for its time.įighting Fantasy was extremely popular amongst young boys in the 1980s. I loved the fact that I could control the story, I could immerse myself into these fantasy worlds where I can go on an adventure, interact with various characters, go on quests, sub-quests, solve puzzles, make decisions and attack monsters etc. Yaztromo was the main quest giver of the adventure and he was there to help me, so let’s just say my quest and adventure ended before it had even began. On my first attempt of the adventure, I didn’t get far in to the story as I decided to attack the wizard called Yaztromo, which was a huge mistake.

My first memory playing a Fighting Fantasy book was back in 1983 with ‘ The Forest of Doom’ (number 3 in the original series, or FF3 for short). This article about my memories of the franchise and about my experiences collecting the series. These books are called ‘ You Are The Hero’ (Part 1 and 2) and I highly recommend them to any Fighting Fantasy reader. Author Jonathan Green, whom himself wrote a few of the Fighting Fantasy books and still does, has written two fantastic books on the history of Fighting Fantasy. I could write a huge essay on the history of the Fighting Fantasy book series but there’s no need. In recent times, some of these books have been reprinted by other publishing houses and some fan favourites have even been released as smart phone Apps and games on Steam! Between 19, a total of 59 books were published, with various spin-offs like the Sorcery! series and Fighting Fantasy novels. Puffin Books originally thought the book wouldn’t be successful, but the authors of the book, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone proved them wrong and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain went on to be a massive success, was reprinted 20 times in a year, and the rest is history as they say. ‘ The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ was the first book in the Fighting Fantasy series to be published by Puffin Books in 1982 with a very limited print run.

If you want to go right, turn to page 267.’ Remember them now? Eureka! No? You don’t remember them? How about ‘If you want to go left, turn to page 192.

If you’re a kid of the 1980s like myself, the chances are you may have played a few Fighting Fantasy books, you do remember those don’t you? The books ‘where you become the hero’.

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