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Post by bloodbeasthandler on May 25, 2024 10:20:49 GMT
Casting my mind back to the heyday of the 80's, FF used to be in the public libraries in Britain.
(The books also made happily a reappearance in the 2000s when Wizard reprinted them).
I certainly borrowed and read Caverns of the Snow Witch and The Rings of Kether, but can't definitely remember any others.
So...
Does anyone remember any AFTER FF15 (trying to work out how long the libraries were buying them for - I suspect the answer is all the way to FF59 )
What about other gamebooks - I do know they were lending Dave Morris' Golden Dragon books and RL Stine's 'Wizards Warriors and You'. But i don't recall ever seeing any 'Way of the Tiger', for example.
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Post by scouserob on May 25, 2024 10:35:27 GMT
I was a regular Fighting Fantasy library borrower until my Nan got wind of that fact and starting buying them for me in numerical order.
I borrowed the Lord of the Rings books from there so estimated from when I first read them, I was probably borrowing books up until about 1989ish.
Post The Rings of Kether, I seem to remember Rebel Planet, Demons of the Deep, Robot Commando, Trial of Champions (definitely) and Creature of Havoc being in there but have no recollection of anything after number 24.
(And it was a long time ago so I'd take all of those but Trial of Champions with a grain of salt.)
I borrowed one Way of the Tiger, I think it was Assassin from that snake man on the cover.
Flight from the Dark was certainly in there, as I borrowed that one, though I don't remember any further Lone Wolf books.
There were also a LOT of Choose Your Own Adventure books.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on May 25, 2024 10:51:39 GMT
Post The Rings of Kether, I seem to remember Rebel Planet, Demons of the Deep, Robot Commando, Trial of Champions (definitely) and Creature of Havoc being in there but have no recollection of anything after number 24.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bid of 24. Do I hear any advance on 24? I borrowed one Way of the Tiger, I think it was Assassin from that snake man on the cover.
Ah, glad to hear it! So WOTT was to be found. Flight from the Dark was certainly in there, as I borrowed that one, though I don't remember any further Lone Wolf books.
There were also a LOT of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Yes, now you say it, Choose Your Own Adventure was all over the place. I still don't remember seeing a single Lone Wolf though but good to see they were available. Another one i forgot was J H Brennan books - I definitely got and read: Sagas of the Demonspawn 2 and Grailquest 4 (published in 1984 and 1985 respectively. ) |
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Post by CharlesX on May 25, 2024 11:47:13 GMT
Post The Rings of Kether, I seem to remember Rebel Planet, Demons of the Deep, Robot Commando, Trial of Champions (definitely) and Creature of Havoc being in there but have no recollection of anything after number 24.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bid of 24. Do I hear any advance on 24? I borrowed one Way of the Tiger, I think it was Assassin from that snake man on the cover.
Ah, glad to hear it! So WOTT was to be found. Flight from the Dark was certainly in there, as I borrowed that one, though I don't remember any further Lone Wolf books.
There were also a LOT of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Yes, now you say it, Choose Your Own Adventure was all over the place. I still don't remember seeing a single Lone Wolf though but good to see they were available. Another one i forgot was J H Brennan books - I definitely got and read: Sagas of the Demonspawn 2 and Grailquest 4 (published in 1984 and 1985 respectively. ) Well, my library had both 54 Legend Of Zagor and even 55 Deathmoor. It didn't have many inbetween though. It didn't have other gamebook series such as CYOA WOTT Lone Wolf Golden Dragon etc. For some reason it had all or all but one of the Real Life Gamebooks which were average, below-average\awful or terrible. It had two Eternal Champions gamebooks, which are based on a video game (I never played it or heard of it), the gameplay and the narrative were average and unmemorable. |
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Post by edushie on May 25, 2024 15:05:12 GMT
Quite a few of the FF books I have bought from amazon sellers were ex-library copies including one of the Zagor novels.
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Post by CharlesX on May 25, 2024 17:07:18 GMT
Casting my mind back to the heyday of the 80's, FF used to be in the public libraries in Britain. (The books also made happily a reappearance in the 2000s when Wizard reprinted them). I certainly borrowed and read Caverns of the Snow Witch and The Rings of Kether, but can't definitely remember any others. So... Does anyone remember any AFTER FF15 (trying to work out how long the libraries were buying them for - I suspect the answer is all the way to FF59 ) What about other gamebooks - I do know they were lending Dave Morris' Golden Dragon books and RL Stine's 'Wizards Warriors and You'. But i don't recall ever seeing any 'Way of the Tiger', for example. I don't know so much about stopped, but mid 50s was a turning-point when instead of thinking "I look forward to the next FF" I would be thinking "Amazing, another FF, slightly surprised they are still going" (my thoughts when I saw Knights Of Doom). So, I'm saying the decline of FF coincided with fewer libraries selling FF in fewer numbers. FF ended with more a whimper than a bang in my opinion.
FF 53 Spellbreaker - Arguably atmospheric but overshadowed by completely ridiculous difficulty FF54 Legend Of Zagor - Not without good points at all, but too boardgamelike, a flawed magic system, questionable character system, some errors FF 55 Deathmoor - Average and not Jon Green's best FF 56 Knights Of Doom - Well-written, but overly difficult and with a lot of tests and combats FF 57 Magehunter - Hardly the worst FF but hardly one you'll want to replay FF 58 Revenge Of The Vampire - Overshadowed by many bugs, but not Keith Martin's best, anyway FF 59 Curse Of The Mummy - Plain, hard, lots of combats and tests
cj Out of those you mention, I recall Master Of Chaos was in my library (none of the others) |
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Post by hallucination on May 25, 2024 19:02:57 GMT
I was also a regular FF borrower from the library, though in the 90s. In Australia. Even so the library had a hefty FF collection. The most recent one I definitely remember borrowing was Legend of Zagor
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cj
Squire
Posts: 11
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Post by cj on May 25, 2024 19:40:17 GMT
Almost all the books I read were borrowed from the library in the period '92-'95. Beyond 24 I recall reading the following:
25 - Beneath Nightmare Castle
27 - Star Strider
28 - Phantoms of Fear
29 - Midnight Rogue
34 - Stealer of Souls
35 - Daggers of Darkness
36 - Armies of Death
41 - Master of Chaos
In fact, through the first 40, it was the single digits that I read very few of.
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Post by tyrion on May 25, 2024 22:28:21 GMT
I definitely got return to firetop mountain from a public library. Prior to that, the last one I remember is slaves of the abyss.
I also got out of the shadows (dragon warriors book 4), both herbie brennan horror books (frankenstein and dracula), shadows on the sand, all the cretan chronicles, castle of lost souls, one of the way of the Tiger books (I can't remember which one) and the fatemaster books from the library.
My copy of revenge of the vampire is ex-library.
Appointment with fear (scholastic) is in our library at the moment, but I think I'm the only person who has taken it out.
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Post by Gabe Fandango on May 27, 2024 1:18:11 GMT
The latest book I was able to find in a library was Tower of Destruction
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Post by daredevil123 on May 27, 2024 10:32:40 GMT
This is a very interesting conversation but has anyone noticed the title of the thread?
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Post by CharlesX on May 27, 2024 10:47:06 GMT
This is a very interesting conversation but has anyone noticed the title of the thread? Maybe I've lost the plot\being thick but most replies I can see seem pretty relevant to FF in Public Libraries, also mentioning whether they in particular borrowed FF or other gamebooks doesn't seem irrelevant and is even mentioned (suggested) in the opening post. Perhaps you mean present-day Public Libraries? We grew up and borrowed FF in '80s and '90s of course. My local Library today has some of the current FF and some unmemorable gamebooks which aren't a patch on when gamebooks were fashionable and popular. It had two of some gamebook series which I can't remember the title of irritatingly, you had to Survive zombies or something, it wasn't brilliant at all. |
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Post by scouserob on May 27, 2024 11:09:54 GMT
This is a very interesting conversation but has anyone noticed the title of the thread?
Even after you pointed it out it took a good minute.
I guess the mind can be an very (overly?) efficient auto corrector. |
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Post by CharlesX on May 27, 2024 11:20:52 GMT
This is a very interesting conversation but has anyone noticed the title of the thread?
Even after you pointed it out it took a good minute.
I guess the mind can be an very (overly?) efficient auto corrector.Now I get it. Unfortunately.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,527
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on May 27, 2024 12:01:16 GMT
Now half my mind is trying to work out what a pubic library might be while the other half desperately tries to discourage this.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on May 27, 2024 13:22:30 GMT
This is a very interesting conversation but has anyone noticed the title of the thread? Yes. Yes I had.
Thank you letting me off the strain of fighting my instincts to point this out with a string of probably unwelcome toilet humour gags whilst thinking that surely, surely other people had spotted by now.
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Post by evilwizard on May 27, 2024 15:16:50 GMT
The school library had almost every title from Warlock to Mummy, plus the Riddling Reaver and Introduction to Fighting Fantasy - the only ones I don't remember seeing are Night Dragon, Knights of Doom and Revenge of the Vampire, though I'm sure there were a couple missing from the lower end
The public libraries seemed to have patchier releases - though there was a larger number of people who could have borrowed the books and, as I visited them less frequently, more chance of missing copies. The last I remember seeing in one was Moonrunner, and Deathmoor in the other.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on May 28, 2024 7:43:47 GMT
I don't remember ever seeing a 1-59 FF book in the library, although from Talisman of Death onwards I was always buying them the moment they came out so it may not have registered.
I remember a couple of WotT and Lone Wolf books because I took them out to try them. There was a copy of Tasks of Tantalon too.
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Post by CharlesX on May 28, 2024 12:12:01 GMT
The school library had almost every title from Warlock to Mummy, plus the Riddling Reaver and Introduction to Fighting Fantasy - the only ones I don't remember seeing are Night Dragon, Knights of Doom and Revenge of the Vampire, though I'm sure there were a couple missing from the lower end The public libraries seemed to have patchier releases - though there was a larger number of people who could have borrowed the books and, as I visited them less frequently, more chance of missing copies. The last I remember seeing in one was Moonrunner, and Deathmoor in the other. My secondary school library had about 5 FF. It did have several Golden Dragon which really got me into that series. We didn't have a primary school library but I used to order CYOA as often as not from the school mailing service Bookworm, leading to arguments wi Mum and Dad about why I should be reading 'proper literature'. Many\most CYOA weren't well-written, but a lot of other books were pretty drossy (e.g. Demon Headmaster, Enid Blighton).
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on May 29, 2024 17:27:51 GMT
My secondary school had only City of Thieves.
In French.
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Post by mooncat on Jul 24, 2024 19:34:30 GMT
My public lib had them right up to Mummy. Not all at once though, just books here and there from throughout the whole series.
Libraries weed and rotate collections though, so it changed up often enough that I was able to read about half the collection from my lib.
Still have a library edition of Moonrunner with the library insert with the return dates stamped on.
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Post by The Editor (Alex B) on Jul 26, 2024 10:22:26 GMT
I don’t recall either the local public library or my primary school libraries having any. My secondary did however have a copy of Allansia and no other FF titles.
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