September 2006 Archive

D.K. Mattocks, S.J. Ball and art by Law Graphics. Music W. Robinson. (c)1984 Puffin Books.

Can’t find the speccy version (update: download all the XZ specrum FF gamebooks) but managed to unearth the C64 (press ‘Q’ after combat to proceed).
The loader (above) opens with a scene depicting a gate leading to a walled citadel, a moon and raven on either side. Not quite illustrating the text the book opens meeting a dog-headed ape and an ape headed dog at a gate. But it’s quite atmospheric nontheless. It plays exactly the same way as the Forest of Doom Spectrum version - but with the added bonus of a magic system which requires the user to remember three letter codes for each of the spells selected (incidently this is the same mechanic as in the book version and Steve Jackson’s later Sorcery! series).

There isn’t much else to be said about it really, except that if you hold
down space the words appear faster - which negates the crippling reading speed issues mentioned in the Forest of Doom. …[more]

Thanks to Dr Freud for the inspiration, for the new witch cover a bit obvious perhaps? Hopefully not too overt.
Outside the psychosexual dynamic, the broomstick, flying to the witches sabbat and all that stuff has been theorised and deconstructed to death elsewhere (hint: it’s largely considered to have roots in hallucinatory shamanism) so I won’t repeat it here.
What? It’s not halloween yet? Well, with a high ranking “witch costume” in google image searches, a lot of people have started visiting at the earlier halloween witch cover. Traffic is usually quite steady for those kinds of phrases, but there has been a real increase since the beginning of September - so I’m guessing the fancy dress industry must really start kicking off about now!

Last year’s halloween outing had a bit of a MySpace effect but that didn’t occur ’till much nearer the event.

D.K. Mattocks, S.J. Ball and artwork by Stevie (c) 1984 - Puffin Books

We open to an atmospheric picture of a forest-scape and a hidden doorway - with gigantic ‘fantasy’ scrolling text (which also tells us ‘Citadel of Chaos’ is released in the same series). Then straight in to dice-rolling and the iconic Fighting Fantasy character sheet. It’s all there, skill, stamina, luck, (the three statistics which describe your characters attributes) dice that play tunes as they roll! Brilliant! Except that bit when you finish and it says “prepare to face the turmoils of hell itself” - which seems a melodramatic thing to say at the best of times, but doesn’t seem quite fitting for the ‘find the runic hammer of the dwarfs’ quest either… …[more]

It’s hard to guess what N.Mottershead and S.Brattel were thinking when they created this version of Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1984, Puffin ZX Spectrum). The resemblance between it and the original Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy gamebook is so distant, it probably makes more sense to think of them as being two completly different things which just happen to have the same title and some shared cover art. …[more]

’tis the season to get spooky, so another bunch of notes on my HDD finally get an outing.

The above images are stills from an advert for John Frieda shampoo which ran on TV and in cinemas a while back.

…[more]