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Post by King Gillibran on Sept 8, 2023 12:09:37 GMT
I have decided to start a second series of polls based on the Cover Artwork. The polls will be in groups will be split into 10 gamebooks and will include all Puffin, Wizard and Scholastic varients of cover art. I will not however be including a seperate porthole version of cover for Scholastic or Wizard 2 if they have an ordinary one. I have seen somewhere that there were full page cover art for Scholastic 7 -12 and you can look at those when voting on them. As obviously this first set of gamebooks will have more than most as almost all are reprinted in Wizard and Scholastic. I have decided however to stick with my standard 5 votes for simplicities sake. Feel free to voice your opinions and give reasons why you choose the ones you do. Have fun choosing your 5 favourite!
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Sept 8, 2023 13:14:29 GMT
I quite like some of the Robert Ball covers - City of Thieves and Citadel of Chaos in particular. It's a pity they went for the porthole format after the first few books.
Having said that, he's up against very stiff competition here so I didn't vote for any of his books. My choices were:
Warlock V2 - Peter Andrew Jones Forest - Iain McCaig City - Iain McCaig Island - Iain McCaig Caverns (Wizard) - Les Edwards
Narrowly missing out: Mel Grant's Deathtrap Dungeon (call me mad, but I find it more striking than the bloodbeast).
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Post by misomiso on Sept 9, 2023 7:56:57 GMT
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Post by scouserob on Sept 9, 2023 8:55:08 GMT
Great stuff, thanks Misomiso. And there is a link to the Wizard covers at the bottom of that page. 👍🏼
Good to have a poll in which I can vote for any book whether I own(ed) it or not thanks to those cover pictures.
That just leaves the Scholastic covers for this poll. Here they are. If you want the porthole versions of Warlock, Citadel, Forest, City and House then make your hand into a circle and look through it, ensuring that you can only see about 5% of the artwork.And here are the full Robert Ball images for Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King from his website. ( robertmball.com/filter/fighting-fantasy/Fighting-Fantasy) I can't find a full picture version for his cover for Caverns of the Snow Witch on there. 🙁 [Looking at this I think he just created the Caverns of the Snow Witch art specifically for a port hole: mendolaart.com/project/robert-ball-fighting-fantasy-2/)]
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trialmaster
Wanderer
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Post by trialmaster on Sept 9, 2023 10:46:08 GMT
I hadn't seen these full cover pictures by Robert Ball for Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King. They are actually better than I thought, so much better than the porthole covers. Up against stiff competition in these first 10 books though, including the classic Ian McCaig covers. I also particularly like Ian Miller's House of Hell cover and Martin McKenna's COTSW.
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Sept 9, 2023 11:01:40 GMT
The full cover, full colour covers for the Scholastic editions are great and it's such a tragedy that they opted for the porthole covers instead. A bad decision in every way.
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Sept 9, 2023 11:04:13 GMT
I hadn't seen these full cover pictures by Robert Ball for Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King. They are actually better than I thought, so much better than the porthole covers. Up against stiff competition in these first 10 books though, including the classic Ian McCaig covers. I also particularly like Ian Miller's House of Hell cover and Martin McKenna's COTSW. Didn't Les Edwards do both covers for COTSW?
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Post by CharlesX on Sept 9, 2023 11:12:10 GMT
Thanks misomiso and scouserob for the links to those covers - that's changed my mind, because the different style has grown on me a bit, although personally I still prefer the darker originals. What I still dislike is those portholes - I'd be amazed if even a handful of people here thought porthole art was 'average-to-good'. As scouserob puts it better than I, it reminds me of playing those 'poorly-designed' 8-bit games where the playing field is well below half the screen, only a bit worse.
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Post by scouserob on Sept 9, 2023 11:12:44 GMT
I really like that full picture for Island of the Lizard King. You have the Fire Island jungle and volcano, with a really rather intimidating Lizard King looking like he is is out doing some escaped slave hunting. (And he's just found you!)
I also like the bold yellows, oranges and greens in that art, nicely setting that sweltering hot jungle scene.
I think Citadel of Chaos is my favourite of his covers. Smoky blue Gangees on a red/black background with Bathus Dire's portrait looking on. I never thought I'd say this about a Scholastic cover but it is possibly my favourite of the four Citadel of Chaos covers. (Though I do have a nostalgic soft spot for the Wind Woman version, which neatly portrays a lot of the courtyard section of the adventure.)
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Sept 9, 2023 13:03:21 GMT
There should be a full cover version for Appointment with Fear and Creature of Havoc as well.
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Post by scouserob on Sept 9, 2023 13:06:28 GMT
There should be a full cover version for Appointment with Fear and Creature of Havoc as well.
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Sept 9, 2023 14:27:05 GMT
Now all we need is a Poll for these Scholastic covers as they should have been presented - full cover, full colour. A lot of the covers are pretty great even if they aren't as good as the originals and if they were confident enough to stick with their original format, they'd look a whole lot better as a set rather than having some full covers and some porthole covers then back to full covers. Biggest slap in the face in the fact that the full image is used on the inside page but it's in grey and white.
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Post by paperexplorer on Sept 9, 2023 23:58:22 GMT
Scholastic definitely should have kept with full page illustrations over the ugly design portholes, but even so, the cartoonish style doesn't appeal to me
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Sept 10, 2023 7:18:10 GMT
The full cover, full colour covers for the Scholastic editions are great and it's such a tragedy that they opted for the porthole covers instead. A bad decision in every way. Appointment with FEAR Compare them one next to the other. The full version has the artist telling a story, in a way. With the laboratory paraphernalia in the background and the glowing image of the city ... without even reading one word of the book the cover suggests: mad-scientist sort of supervillain hatching plans to exert his power over the city. With the porthole version, ALL this is lost. What a waste. I know i've been moaning a lot on this thread... but who makes these decisions? Dear oh dear! There's a Youtube video-essay [not too long at fourteen and a half minutes] by In Praise of Shadows called Horror Books Have Lost Their Identity which may be of interest to some folks on here, and relevant to what we are discussing.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Sept 10, 2023 7:30:08 GMT
If Scholastic were to do a book about Napoleon would they go for this: Rather than this?:
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Post by schlendrian on Sept 10, 2023 15:15:22 GMT
The arm pointing skyward and the bicorne would be sticking out from the porthole.
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Post by King Gillibran on Sept 11, 2023 7:10:34 GMT
I hadn't seen these full cover pictures by Robert Ball for Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King. They are actually better than I thought, so much better than the porthole covers. Up against stiff competition in these first 10 books though, including the classic Ian McCaig covers. I also particularly like Ian Miller's House of Hell cover and Martin McKenna's COTSW. Didn't Les Edwards do both covers for COTSW? Les Edwards did do the second. I will be releasing part 2 of the poll today.
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Post by King Gillibran on Sept 11, 2023 7:17:06 GMT
My votes on this poll are quite unoriginal. I voted for Iain Mcaig Deathtrap Dungeon which is one of my favourite covers for my favourite book. I voted for Iain Mcaig Forest of Doom which is possibly my favourite cover for a book I don't much like. I voted for Iain Mcaig City of Thieves. Voted for Ian Miller House of Hell as I love how spooky it is. In my opinion the wizard reprint has the poorest cover art for it which as I saw wizard first put me of the book for ages. Finally Ian Miller Citadel of Chaos. Iain Mcaig and Ian Miller are dominating this poll!
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Post by King Gillibran on Sept 11, 2023 7:17:19 GMT
My votes on this poll are quite unoriginal. I voted for Iain Mcaig Deathtrap Dungeon which is one of my favourite covers for my favourite book. I voted for Iain Mcaig Forest of Doom which is possibly my favourite cover for a book I don't much like. I voted for Iain Mcaig City of Thieves. Voted for Ian Miller House of Hell as I love how spooky it is. In my opinion the wizard reprint has the poorest cover art for it which as I saw wizard first put me of the book for ages. Finally Ian Miller Citadel of Chaos. Iain Mcaig and Ian Miller are dominating this poll!
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Sept 11, 2023 15:30:58 GMT
Didn't Les Edwards do both covers for COTSW? Les Edwards did do the second. I will be releasing part 2 of the poll today. Just checked. Les Edwards did the covers for both the Puffin and the Wizard editions.
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Post by hallucination on Sept 12, 2023 12:46:25 GMT
My votes here were utterly typical (Forest, City, Deathtrap, House of Hell — all very awesome covers imo), with an outlier being McKenna‘s Warlock. Honourable mentions include Grant‘s Deathtrap Dungeon. Not that I voted for it, but I prefer McKenna‘s Lizard King to the original. (Kinda surprised the original is doing so well btw.) Poor Citadel of Chaos could never pull a good cover imo. And McKenna‘s City of Thieves? Just—no
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