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Post by King Gillibran on Sept 15, 2023 12:33:55 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. 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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Post by CharlesX on Sept 15, 2023 13:19:15 GMT
Not really a fan of Scholastic, even though the covers of SOS and SOTG are better than interior, so went with top four and SOTG, which makes it look like it will be more sophisticated than some Livingstone (and it is).
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Post by misomiso on Sept 15, 2023 14:05:05 GMT
Some great ones here. I think Iain McCaig's Port of Peril is an unsung gem. Such a beautiful piece with so much detail. Wish the gamebook had been a bit better though!
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Post by scouserob on Sept 15, 2023 16:13:30 GMT
I like a lot of this bunch. The first two Wizard Series 1 covers are both great and Blood of the Zombies is very dynamic. I also like the two most recent covers. I'm not sure what is happening with the two different Night of the Necromancer covers so I've included both in the image below. [Edit: It looks like the second of the Night of the Necromancer covers below is using his Return to Firetop Mountain art for some reason. 🤷🏻♂️] And here is the full version of the Gates of Death art, pre-portholing:
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Post by CharlesX on Sept 15, 2023 16:52:01 GMT
Thank you very much scouserob I'd forgotten how average-style Night Of The Necromancer cover was, and the full-sized Assassins Of Allansia one looks cool (though never seen before) so changing my voting.
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Post by scouserob on Sept 15, 2023 17:06:31 GMT
Scholastic have rightly come in for some stick in these polls for reducing some very good art down to a tiny porthole.
However Wizard did the whole porthole thing first in their second series. Shame on them. 😉
I’d really like to see what a full cover version of Stormslayer and McKenna’s Night of the Necromancer would have looked like.
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Post by schlendrian on Sept 15, 2023 19:37:54 GMT
Ok, Robert Ball had some decent covers, but Gates of Death actually looks better in the porthole... It probably would even profit from making the porthole even smaller, to cover those ridiculous swords.
To me, this is the first batch where five votes is too much. The full cover Assassins and Shadow of the Giants are the only ones that do anything for me.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Sept 15, 2023 20:02:07 GMT
I'm not sure what is happening with the two different Night of the Necromancer covers so I've included both in the image below. [Edit: It looks like the second of the Night of the Necromancer covers below is using his Return to Firetop Mountain art for some reason. 🤷🏻♂️]src="https://i.imgur.com/RjYiUTS.png"] If memory serves, that was an Amazon mockup before the book was released. I don't think the printed edition actually looked like that. But I stand to be corrected.
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Post by scouserob on Sept 15, 2023 20:32:31 GMT
That make sense. Odd that even on EBay, the vast majority of stock photo ms used are of that, Return to Firetop Mountain art, mock up. (Every photo of the actual book is obviously the new art.)
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Post by scouserob on Sept 16, 2023 10:39:54 GMT
From a heads up on the official Fighting Fantasy page.
Here are the Brazilian covers for Stormslayer, Night of the Necromancer and Assassins of Allanisa.
There are plenty of other Brazilian Fighting Fantasy books here: jamboeditora.com.br/?post_type=product&s=fighting+fantasy
I particularly like the fact that the translation of their title of Freeway Fighter, Guerreiro das Estradas, (according to Google translate) is Road Warrior, which was the US title for Mad Max 2.
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Post by CharlesX on Sept 16, 2023 11:58:13 GMT
Wow scouserob those illustrations look amazing and actually probably better\as good as than our ones, at least the first two seem to. Just a pity most other (non-UK) countries don't publish all FF as we do; also from what I've heard their translations can be rather below-average and typical (perhaps though fantastic creatures just don't translate well across foreign countries). The ones in the link look competitive, 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 16, 2023 13:26:45 GMT
I'll be in the minority but I don't really like the cover for Howl of the Werewolf. The arms look weird, especially the left one and its positioning leaves a lot of empty space where the moon is. Speaking of which, I think Martin Mckenna used the exact same moon for Talisman of Death but rotated a little. It also looks remarkably like Earth's moon even though it's supposed to be for Titan and Orb.
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Post by linflas on Sept 16, 2023 19:17:54 GMT
Only two are valuable to me : McCaig's Port of Peril and Kopinsky's Assassins of Allansia.
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Post by CharlesX on Sept 16, 2023 20:15:52 GMT
Only two are valuable to me : McCaig's Port of Peril and Kopinsky's Assassins of Allansia. Interesting McCaig's Port Of Peril has had some 10 votes and none at all for Robert Ball's. Like the odd man in the room who likes Gates Of Death I think Ball's cover is good, it's colourful and threatening if unpretentious (never having seen McCaig's before doesn't help his one either). I also prefer the full version of Gates Of Death to the pre-porthole one. Those ungodly portholes partially make that massively cliche bullshit propaganda portrait of Napoleon look good.
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