![fighting fantasy books bay fighting fantasy books bay](https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/fighting-fantasy-books-credit-Steven-Burns-Alamy-Stock-Photo@2000x1270-1.jpg)
These Fighting Fantasy books seem to involve an awful lot of arithmetic, and pencils. The man with the terrible eyebrows is beginning to bore you.
#FIGHTING FANTASY BOOKS BAY SERIES#
Combat was resolved with a series of dice rolls. In titles like Deathtrap Dungeon and The Forest of Doom you had to keep track of your inventory and statistics by writing them in pencil in the back of the book (always in pencil, so you could change it with a rubber later). More than branching storylines, these books were closer to a game of Dungeons and Dragons for kids without any friends. If you’ve got nostalgic memories about these books then there’s a good chance it’s thanks to two people: Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, the brains behind the Fighting Fantasy series. The biggest name in choose your own adventure books, however, isn’t Choose Your Own Adventure. As your face collides with the ground below, you hear that the man with the eyebrows hasn’t stopped talking. From some magical, hidden compartment it pulls out a teeny tiny chainsaw, which it revs up and proceeds to use to chop off each of your fingers one by one. As you flail around, trying to find a new handhold, a friendly squirrel hops out onto the branch and scurries along to your fingers. As you get to the top of the tree a twig snaps under your weight, leaving you dangling from a great height by one hand. You climb the tree, hopping with ease from branch to branch. To listen further to the eyebrow man’s fascinating insights into choose your own adventures, turn to 5 You can tell the man with the unkempt eyebrows has much more to say on this subject, but behind him there’s a cool looking tree you’d like to climb. If you ever want a glimpse of the infinite myriad of ways a person can shuffle of this mortal coil, spend a while perusing You Chose Wrong, a selection of gruesome gamebook deaths. One thing all these books had in common was your tendency to die. It’s also a format that includes this, of which the less is said, the better.
![fighting fantasy books bay fighting fantasy books bay](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0557/3463/2623/products/fighting-fantasy-books-collection-6-books-set-pack-series-1paperbackscholasticlowplex-25587483_1800x1800.jpg)
I still think Michael Bay missed a trick there. I personally enjoyed the Super Mario Bros Adventure Books and a Transformers Dinobots Find Your Fate book where a fairground ride turned out to be a time warp that sent you to aid dinosaur Transformers in prehistoric times. As well as Choose Your Own Adventure’s own brand of books which covered space adventures, spy stories and monster hunts, for a long time you could find gamebooks for any franchise you cared to mention. If you grew up in the 70s, 80s or 90s you’ve probably read one of these on a rainy afternoon. Yes, we’re here to talk about choose your own adventure games. Looking up the path ahead you see that the bunny has started grinning at you.
![fighting fantasy books bay fighting fantasy books bay](https://d3ddkgxe55ca6c.cloudfront.net/assets/t1593178466/a/22/6a/204256-ml-1933274.jpg)
#FIGHTING FANTASY BOOKS BAY SKIN#
To your astonishment the road has magically transformed into hot magma, and your skin and muscles are being burned away from the bone as you start screaming in agony. Glancing down, you see your feet have sunk into the path up to your shins. Puzzlingly, you find that walking is becoming harder the further up the path you go. You stroll along the upward path, whistling a jaunty tune and waving to the cute little bunny rabbit. At the end of this road you can see a cute white fluffy bunny rabbit. The road to the South also leads into the woods, but along a high road still kissed with sunlight and lined with pretty flowers all the colours of the rainbow. He seems desperate to talk to you about choose your own adventure games. At the end of this dark road you can see a cackling mad man with unkempt eyebrows. To the North the path falls into shadow, the trees look more jagged and menacing, and the skulls of previous adventurers litter the ground. A brave adventurer, you have journeyed far from the Kingdom, but after many miles you approach the edge of a forest and the path branches in two directions.
![fighting fantasy books bay fighting fantasy books bay](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/8b/44/a8/8b44a8aaa9e4bad737dd9946f73f792a--fantasy-books-fantasy-art.jpg)
It is a warm, sunny day, and the air is filled with the sound of birdsong and the smell of flowers and animal droppings. Chris Farnell explains why the ‘choose your own adventure’ format is making a comeback in this special article, in which YOU are the hero It’s 30 years since the first mainstream interactive fiction hit our shelves.