h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...'Midnight Rogue' has been missed from the list (I think it was in the mid-twenties), plus the list itself should have been a numbered one, not bulleted, because the books thamselves were explicitly numbered (even though they dropped the number from the spine later on).

Crikey, I really want to go and read some of 'em again. I realised I've got about 18 of the blighters, and knew friends who had *all* of them.

Alas, over-enthused Sub-Editing appears to have struck. The original article did indeed use numbered bullets - my migration out of the H2G2 on a daily basis meant that I really didn't have a proper look at this before it went 'live'.

And, 'Midnight Rogue' appears to have been excised between my version and the final one. It should come between "Phantoms of Fear" and "Chasms of Malice":

Midnight Rogue (1987) - Graeme Davis, John Sibbick

Anna - or whoever passes by from the editorial team - can you make the BIG list a numbered one and add the above book in the appropriate place. Thanks.

Nice to see you're reading through this stuff so thoroughly Nexus.

Ahh - fond memories - Warlock of Firetop Mountain got me through my Tonsilitus - and I still never completed it properly: Couldn't find the way to the last key for the chest. Deathtrap Dungeon, on the other hand, was technically impossible - you need thirteen of some thing at the end of the game, and there are only twelve mentioned in the book! I did beat Scorpion Swamp, though - the only one I ever managed to do so. They were vicious, those books...

Gone now though - obsoleted by computer RPGs like Myst and the rest. Along with the absolutely pathetic "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, now they *were* dire...

{maybe Midnight Rogue was removed because it was unsuitable for a younger audience... }

Rebel Planet!!!!! I had both the book and the text adventure. Book was okay, but in the text adventure I could never work out how to leave the spaceship you start on. So I just got to spend many an exasperating hour watching the spaceport through a window while typing in more and more obscure text commands. That drove me to distraction

'Starship Traveller' is absolutely impossible, because it's one of those 'get loads of numerical clues and add them all together' type affairs, and if you go the wrong way right from the start, you're sunk. The easiest one I've done is probably Robot Commando, which is also one of my favourites. Raiding the military base for the tank robot is great; it absolutely decks every other robot in the game, apart from the big bad guy at the end.

Does anyone remember the Joe Dever Mad Max-style series, where you play Cal Phoenix? I think it was called 'Freeway Warrior' or similar. The difference between Joe Dever's books and FF was quite marked, as Dever's stuff was very linear, with lots of key scenes that you had to go through and loads of really long entries. FF, on the other hand, did lots more alternative routes through a book and played much more mathematical games and so forth.

House of Hell! What a classic, although I never could work out to get to the end (even though I had read the end on page 400)... Inspired me to write my own (which if memory serves was very much like House of Hell..). If only I hadn't thrown it away all those years ago, I could have done with some entertainment on this dreary Thursday in London.

Quality series, really takes me back to my childhood. I must get them back off my cousins....

I dont know, but the hardest fighting fantasy Book I have ever come across is Creature of Havoc. I brought it and I cant even get past the first couple of paragraphs.

"Creature of Havoc" - I agree that this is a hard one. The amnesiac start, fumbling around in an area riddled with death traps and people keen on your destruction. I seem to recall getting about half-way through after five or six attempts and being led down a path I couldn't find a way out of (and running out of fingers to bookmark the alternatives).

"House of Hell" - If you read Warlock magazine you got this in a potted version that was reasonably easy, but then you got the full-sized version... Arrggh! It was a dozen times more complicated. I know that you need a Kris Knife to kill the demon at the end... I too have read the reference 400... but I can't get through the damned thing without a lot of cheating.

"Deathtrap Dungeon" - Was it coins? And then rings in the sequel - "Trial of Champions". I don't think I finished either successfully.

I have to admit to becoming painfully nerdy and combining a few elements of the Fighting Fantasy/D&D style system so that my adventurer could progress and gain experience from book to book. Warlock ran an article sometime after offering ideas on this, but I don't think Steve Jackson was convinced about it. The individual books were designed to stand-alone and the items and rewards involved were targeted at getting you to the end of the book - and would unbalance if you carried stuff over.

A couple of other reasons why that would be difficult to implement would be that 'doing' the books out of sequence would mean that you start against the advanced baddies and progress to the easy ones. Plus it wouldn't make much sense if, having just killed Cyrus in Space Assassin, you move on to kill Razaak in Crypt of the Sorcerer. Genre-bending would get a bit odd.

Isn't there an impossible loop in the final part of the Sorcery! series? I never did the whole book, but someone who had showed me one entry and told me to have a go from there onwards. Either the Archmage killed me or something else did whichever path I took. It still bugs me now.

Cor blimey, I remember these books. I very enthusiastically collected most of the first 13 then got very bored with them. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was really cool and I remember there was competition to draw a map of the place. One of my friends actually came runner up and he is now a graphic design artist!

BBS

I'm a little puzzled... I have a clear recollection of passing time in hospital playing "Warlock of Firetop Mountain", but as I remember it I was still at school which would make that 1980 - two years before the date of publication on your list...? It's possible I was at college, but that would still only make it the end of 1981 at the latest. Odd.

Yes, there was a loop at the end of Sorcery!, a side-effect of the big spell at the end of the spell list that sapped 7 Stamina to cast and allowed you to travel through time. The problem is that originally you can be too late to stop the Archmage's plans so you have the chance to use the ZED spell (I think it was ZED). Thing is it's unpredictable and there is the chance (it was random as I recall) that you'll end up locking yourself in a temporal loop from which you can never escape and the Archmage will win through. One of the other random options takes you back all the way to the start of the book, pretty much, allowing you to try again and avoid all the mistakes you made last time.

Hey Apprentice....


sorting out the list now

Ashley

I love all this innocent reminiscing, I can see the cover of the books in my mind to this day (well, at least to Trial of Champions when I eventually ran out of interest / pocket money).
I remember the cover to Appointment of F.E.A.R being particularly awful!

The only thing that worries me about trying to re-read them some 15 years later is that my fond, youthful memories are all blown to pieces by a terrible 'And I liked this rubbish' type feeling. Should I risk breaking this bubble or simply continue to reminisce and leave well alone?

Anybody got a top ten? What's the top three out of the books 1 - 21? (baring in mind I only have up to 21)...

Yes, go for it. Read on. I'd like to reread Warlock of Firetop Mountain, but I ditched them all years back. Maybe there'll be a copy down at the library. IMHO WOFT is the best. The rest are just pale imitations ...

What struck me the other day, thinking back on this, is how many of the books follow *exactly* the same formula as WoFM - in other words, battling one's way through a huge dungeon/spaceship/forest/city etc, collecting keys/clues/bits of hammer/spell components etc en route, some real others bogus, and ending up with a final scrap with the big baddy at the end. The clues etc might mean that the only way you can find the baddy (a la Appointment with F.E.A.R. - cover by Brian Bolland, who is fairly darned good IMHO) is by getting the right clues in the right order, or defeating him/it needs the right spell bits (a la City of Thieves) or just to get to that magic '400' you need the right bits and bobs (a la WoFM).

And that's the basic thread of a FF gamebook.

Wishing to wallow in nostalgia, I got the Sorcery series second hand (eBay or abebooks is the best way to get hold of them) and relived 18 years ago!
With regard to the ZED spell, when you're being held in the Archmage's tower, you encounter Jann the Minimite, who tells you the secret of how to control the ZED spell, so you can zip off and confront Farren Whyde, the old geezer who's actually the Archmage in disguise...

About a month ago, one of the girls I work with was wrapping up a birthday present for her 10-year-old nephew/godson. It turned out to a couple of these books. Amazingly I didn't spend very long looking at them, which looking back today surprises me as I thought I would have wanted to play the whole thing again!

BBS

erm, no mention of the 'Cretan Chronicals'....

bloodfeud of altheus etc... they were superb..... you had to choose a god at the beginning who would help you on your travels....

i think it was at the court of king minos and a third i cant remember the name of....

god, they were great....

fond memories....

Currently have plans to update this entry...

The Apprentice