Category: Gamebooks

Happy Birthday To Me

March 3, 2026

For a time now I’d been wanting to reduce my collection of gamebooks. This was partially for space, and partially so I could concentrate on the series that mean the most to me. I found potential buyers online but the (very fair) offers received for the books I had decided to sell hardly covered the cost of shipping them. I had no regrets when I decided to toss about 200 books into a recycling bin a few weekends ago.

The silver lining of this process was that in the process of searching for potential buyers I found a store that had some items for sale I was very interested in. I hastily made a purchase, and a box arrived in time for my birthday (today). These were inside:

The core of my collection is the Fighting Fantasy series, which I have loved since childhood. I’ve got hundreds of volumes, which means many copies of each since there are only about 70 unique books. It’s been many years since I’ve found an imprint I didn’t have, so I was surprised to see the above for sale. Of course I already own each book – in fact I already had 8 different copies alone of City Of Thieves – but I didn’t own the ‘Green stripe’ edition. Now I do 🙂

As happy as I was with these, I also bought this:

I was absolutely amazed to see they had this. It’s issue #2 of the Fighting Fantasy magazine from 1985. This was a ‘holy grail’ item to me, and given the scarcity of these I had essentially given up ever owning one.

It’s a fairly slim publication, sparse on editorial content. It reprints (half of) Warlock Of Firetop Mountain with beautiful large reproductions of the art, and also contained an original new solo adventure called Caverns Of The Snow Witch:

It’s short at only 190 entries, but would eventually be expanded and become the 9th FF book. I recall when I learned this as a child being amazed a magazine existed with gamebook adventures in it!

Indeed Warlock magazine was almost unobtainable in Australia. I somehow knew of it and looked for it in newsagents but only ever owned one copy, specifically #11 (which Adam inherited from me and graciously returned to me decades later). Much later I learned the magazine was poorly distributed even in the UK, so it’s a miracle any ever made their way to Australia at all.

So you can imagine how fast I clicked that ‘submit order’ button when the store I bought the above at didn’t just have one Warlock, but had eight:

These are all from 40+ years ago, and represent about two-thirds of the entire run of the magazine (which ended at issue #13). I was so happy to open the box when they arrived, and learn they were all in great condition. Whoever owned these took care of them!

These magazines are a delightful window into the early years of gamebooks. Full of news, reviews, artwork and advertisements, they also contain many original adventures – almost none of which were ever republished.

These magazines were never distributed to the USA so I remain amazed I found them for sale at an American hobby store. I wonder if they came from the same collection, and why the owner sold them?

And if you’re wondering, yes they were expensive 🙂

The above is a photo of my current Japanese Warlock magazine collection. I’ve got almost all of them, and you can see the magazine survived much longer in Japan than the 13-issues it ran for in the UK. Here’s a photo of the first dozen issues in two different languages:

Just holding and flipping through these brings a big smile to my face. Happy Birthday to me 🙂

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

January 14, 2026

I bought the above four on this recent trip, which now takes my Japanese Fighting Fantasy collection to over 75% complete. These were purchased at Mandarake in Osaka, which is where I had the conversation with the Japanese collector, and I couldn’t help but note that each of the above cost more than the total cost of the four books he was deliberating on buying. I sympathized with him that people like myself were the cause of the prices of these books continuing to go up every year.

The Freeway Fighter is notable. The used shops in Japan bag all the books with notes about their condition. Usually these are simply things like ‘missing obi’ or ‘damage on cover’ or ‘writing inside’ but for this book it simply translated to ‘this is new’. I can believe this is literal, because the book is in absolutely pristine condition, especially for something 38 years old!

Incidentally all four of these contained their original unused adventure sheets. The same store had a second copy of Rings Of Kether without the adventure sheet that was ¥2000 cheaper, so I suppose that’s the ‘value’ of the sheet!

I also picked up the above 9 issues of Japanese Warlock magazine. I could have even purchased more (at another store), but I didn’t expect to find so many and hadn’t kept track of the ones I had already bought. I paid a pretty penny for these (about $25 each on average), and even the cheapest issue cost more than any I had bought on previous trips. I’m very happy that I bought large lots of this magazine before the prices started becoming unreasonable!

These are all in immaculate condition. When I first learned Japan had published their own version of Warlock I never imagined I’d ever see a copy: now I own 92% of the 63-issue run! I think completing the entire series is possible, since most of the ones I am missing are random issues from the middle years, which remain some of the less-expensive issues.

I don’t know much about this, except that it’s a Japanese version of a very limited and difficult-to-obtain recent (Australian!) board game based on Fighting Fantasy. This was a bit big and a bit heavy but also not very expensive (about $40) so of course I had to get it. I haven’t even opened it so that’s all I can say for now 🙂

Temple of Flame is the second in the Golden Dragon series of gamebooks from 1987. I’ve actually got a few imprints of this book, but this one was very inexpensive (only $2) so I couldn’t pass on it. To my surprise it came with a tiny insert about gamebooks!

It folds out into 16 pages of dense micro-font text with game reviews and previews and discussion of how to enjoy gamebooks. I would have loved something like this included with the books I bought as a child, and I’m happy it survived all these years and is now in my collection.

I bought the above four Queen’s Blade books this trip. Almost every trip I usually buy one of these, and I now have about half the entire series. This trip they seemed more common, and unlike many other gamebooks the prices seem to have gone down – I didn’t pay more than $6 for any of these four.

Queen’s Blade is a weird thing, derived from a western gamebook series (Lost Worlds) and yet having taken on its own identity in Japan. The books are attractive and if the prices continue to drop I may start buying more in the future.

I saw more gamebooks than on any previous trip. Not just old ones, but brand new publications as well (like the Mashle one above). I saw evidence of collections being sold – Surugaya in Osaka had maybe twenty different Lupin gamebooks – as well as a higher awareness on behalf of sellers of the rarity and collectibility of what they had, such as Dragon Quest and Gundam books that I’d previously seen – even bought! – sitting on shelves for under ¥500 now in showcases for many times that price. Many of these Japan-only books often catch my eye, but I usually move on since I have no history with the series. This trip was the exception.

The above were in a showcase in Surugaya in Akihabara. I had bought a Wizardry item from the same case (it’ll be in the next post) and something about these books intrigued me. There’s precious little information online but I determined this was the complete three-book ‘Sexy Game Book‘ series from 1986 and that they are rare and sought after. While they were expensive I’d never seen them before and doubted I’d ever see them again, so I bought all three!

Astonishingly, this is a combination of gamebook and gravure pinup. Almost every entry has a photo – many in colour – and the stories feature monsters in real-world settings and seem to be evocative of something like Kamen Rider or other 1980s Japanese science fiction. The books are written in first person and despite the imagery seem to have a serious tone.

They’re also, to use the Japanese word, ‘ecchi’, which means they contain (tame) nudity! These are extraordinary books, obviously for adults, and are evidence of how big the hobby was in Japan in those days. I doubt I’ll ever own anything else as unusual as these, and I’m happy to have them in the collection!

Some Gamebook Reviews

December 2, 2025

Back in the summer when our bathroom was being renovated, I ‘lived’ downstairs with Zoffy. I took the chance to grab some unread gamebooks from my shelf and play them. Here are my thoughts.

Star Bastards, successfully kickstarted in 2016, is supposed to be a newly rediscovered ‘long lost’ gamebook from the 1980s. I think it largely misses the mark both as a work of fiction and a game.

You choose one of two roles before you begin (law enforcement or a fugitive) and the story involves the cop chasing the criminal through space. I played the fugitive and in my first playthrough won (I think?) in fewer than 25 entries. The ending was vague enough that I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad one, but I had no interest in trying again.

The game has lots of overly complex systems, almost none of which (including combat!) I used in my playthrough. The writing, while verbose, often lacks detail and the comedy is weak and breaks the fourth wall in a way that doesn’t really work.

While the book has more art than most modern gamebooks, it’s fairly amateur and in some cases visibly pixelated as of the source files were low resolution.

This book is a miss. I actually own the second in the series (a fantasy tale) which I’ve read isn’t ‘as good’ as this one so it’ll probably sit on my shelf a while before I read it.

Secret Of White Monks Abbey, released back in 1985, is a strange book. It’s unlike the others included in this post in that is is (almost) systemless and every entry is a single full-colour page. But while brief, it’s a little more complex than your typical choose-your-own-adventure.

There are only 46 entries, and a single playthrough includes only about 10 to 15 of them. The entries are very short and as a result the story is very disjointed with frequent and unbelievable location changes.

It’s not a difficult book, and trial-and-error alone got me all the endings in well under an hour. None of the endings made any logical sense, and in the end it’s not ever even fully explained what’s going on in the titular mansion.

While obviously written for children, I wonder if a young reader would have enjoyed this even way back in 1985?

The House On Sentinel Hill is a Lovecraftian book released in 2022 which of the ones in this post is closest in format to a Fighting Fantasy book. It’s a well written and structured book which suffers from a very high difficulty.

Set in 1926, you play an investigator visiting an abandoned (or is it?) old house in New England and quickly getting mixed up in all sorts of cosmic horror. The story and writing are both strong from the start, and its cinematic in style and very faithful to the works of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s also got lovely, creepy art.

But it’s difficult. Not only does it have a punishing sanity mechanic (like the Call Of Cthulhu RPG), but the default player stats lead to failed rolls 58% of the time. There’s a lot of instant deaths, many of which have no preceding hint or warning, and most of which are distinctly grim.

When I played these books – since I was taking notes to review them – I decided to play them faithfully and not cheat. For this book this meant many deaths. I was so intrigued by the setting and the story that I kept trying and ended up playing it over half a dozen times before putting it down. I kept getting stuck at the same point: entering combinations into a weird alien machine. While several of my attempts had me visiting bizarre dimensions and being killed by various cosmic beings, flipping through the book showed me there was still a lot I never saw.

I wondered what I had done wrong and eventually sought a hint online. I managed to find a Reddit post by the author himself who gave a vague hint which didn’t help at all. Other reviews commented on the difficulty as well, and some specifically cited the same combination that stymied me! I never did find the solution.

It’s a good book, but too difficult.

Western gamebooks aren’t common, and Raining Hammers may be the only one I own in a collection that now numbers well over 500 books. This is a book written for adults, with mature themes and writing, and takes a realistic (as opposed to fantastic) approach to its story of a lone gunman on a mission of revenge.

From the start this one works against the reader. The author made the unusual choice of writing the book in third person, which doesn’t work in a gamebook. It doesn’t feel like a gamebook either, as if the author wrote a normal book and then tried to turn it into an interactive one.

The first entry is almost a novella at six dense pages of tiny font, and sometimes I went from entry to entry with no decisions to make. It’s mostly linear, but also has occasions where you can revisit areas which don’t work in the context of the story. The gambling system also feels like it should have been cut, but perhaps if it had been this would have felt even less like a gamebook.

I think this one tries hard, and almost works, but in the end felt more like reading a novel than playing a game. I didn’t win, but I also didn’t care to try again. I think its legacy is that at 26 years old now it remains one of the very few gamebooks in its genre.

Nightshift is the best of these five by a wide margin. I was dubious at first since this is a book with no combat or even dice, but the puzzle-based gameplay is clever and the story well-written and very creepy.

You play a hospital worker who finds themself trapped in a hellish dimension full of demons, witches and all sorts of other weird denizens. You wander the hospital seeking a way out, and must solve many puzzles to find the true path to victory. I’d liken the story to Silent Hill or Hellraiser and it can be genuinely creepy at times.

As mentioned the writing is excellent, and the author skillfully avoids the usual pitfalls of gamebooks set in the modern world. At first the cause of the madness is unknown, but the slow reveal of what’s actually going on is done skilfully. I was particularly impressed by how well this worked through multiple attempts, where initially innocuous events sometimes take on a very different meaning.

The puzzles range from typical inventory or codeword based ones (do you have the brown key?) to math puzzles, word games and some that are more complex and clever. While dice are not needed, you will have to keep careful notes if you hope to beat this one.

This is the first in a series of six books by the same author, although I don’t think the stories are related. I was impressed enough I bought all the others, and look forward to playing them. This one is recommended.

Robot Claw