That’s Deathtrap Dungeon, the 6th Fighting Fantasy book that was published way back in 1984. It’s a classic title, one of the most famous books in the range, and has inspired countless other gamebooks and video games.
Here’s some more editions from my collection:
Clockwise from top left they are the 2017 Scholastic version, the 1984 Dell USA version, the 2009 Wizard version and the 2002 Wizard version.
And here’s another version:
The above has been one of my ‘Holy Grail’ gamebooks for years. It was published in 2009 by Hobby Japan, and as you can see it’s definitely not like the others.
It’s still Deathtrap Dungeon, although obviously translated into Japanese. This isn’t the first Japanese version either, since FF books were published there during their original run too. But in 2009 Hobby Japan gave the books a distinctive anime makeover with a short-lived reprint series.
Whereas in FF books you are the hero, and therefore the player character is rarely described and even less commonly named, in this edition the player character is this adventuress named ‘Philia’ (according to my translation software). She still challenges Baron Sukumvit’s evil Deathtrap Dungeon for fame and fortune, but her experience is distinctly different from the one I first had in 1984.
For instance here’s the ninja I encountered in the original version:
And here’s Philia’s ninja opponent:
What about the iconic Manticore? Whereas originally it was the focus of the art during its encounter, now it seems to be photobombing a Philia selfie:
The fighting hobgoblins:
What about the disturbing (to my 12-year old self in ’84) one-handed man:
There are other cases where opponents switch gender (a crazy old man becomes a young witch etc.) but most of the illustrated sections are actually new and don’t correspond to the old ones.
I can’t read Japanese, so I can’t determine if the text itself changes. But it must if only slightly to accommodate the gender switch of some of the encounters? I wonder if it’s still in the first person though, or if Philia is directly referenced in the text?
As for the makeover, it’s undoubtedly because Hobby Japan was trying to market these to otaku in the wake of the success of the Queens Blade series. The all-new art is possibly due to the original art becoming pricey to license since the artist (Iain McCaig) had become quite famous in the intervening years (he designed Darth Maul for instance).
As best I can tell, there were three books in this reprint series. Deathtrap Dungeon is #1, I also have #3:
And #2 was House of Hell, advertised here in my copy of Deathtrap:
As I suggested, these are both difficult to find now and pricey when you do. My Deathtrap cost me $40 and took three months to arrive from Japan. One day I hope to get House of Hell, but I’m not sure it’s worth $50+ to me. Further books in the same series exist, but don’t seem to be FF titles (for instance one is an AD&D gamebook (?) based in the ‘Eberron’ game world).
As a curiosity though it’s lovely, and I’m extremely pleased I finally own it 🙂
(I obtained a few other gamebook curiosities this year. Maybe I’ll do a future post on them…)
