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Fighting Fantasy was a series of fifty-nine gamebooks released by Puffin books from 1982 to 1995, created by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone. Together with a dice, pen & paper, each book would take you on an adventure though a fantastical land. The subject matter varied, but most fitted into either the medieval style fantasy, science-fiction, or horror categories. So far so good, but what's it doing on an Evil Dead fansite? Well I've posted the below material around a number of internet forums, but forums being what they are, I also wanted to give it a permanent home just in case they ever went down or lost content.
Each book would begin with the rules of the quest, and some text to introduce the world in which you'd find yourself, then you'd make a choice. You might choose to take one path ahead and need to turn to a certain page number and continue reading, or another path turning to a different page. Each choice would progress your quest, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. You also collect objects to use elsewhere, and occasionally cross paths with a adversaries which you need to fight using the dice in order to pass. Ultimately you either complete your quest and finish the book, or die in one of a number of varied and horrible ways and have to start your quest again.
Most of the books in the series are readily available second-hand on eBay or Amazon very cheaply depending on their condition, but some of the final rarer books will cost a lot more should you want to collect the whole set. Books 55. Deathmoor, 56. Knights of Doom, 57. Magehunter, and 59. Curse of the Mummy usually sell for between £40-90 each depending on interest, and 58. Revenge of the Vampire from £80 up to £150 and more. This is due to the fact that by the release of the final books, interest in the series was greatly waning, so there are far fewer second-hand books out there, and command higher prices than the more popular & plentiful earlier books.
While I did have a small assembly of the series of books as a child, it's only now later in life I've been able to collect virtually a complete set. A personal favourite is book number 10; House Of Hell. This is the only horror book in the series, to be set in something approaching modern real life. You're struggling though a desolate dark and stormy night, having crashed your car in a ditch. You're cold as the driving rain has drenched you through. Suddenly you spy a flickering light off in the distance, getting closer you make out a house; old and dilapidated. An oil lamp is burning upstairs. Do you boldly knock on the front door and see who answers, or creep round to the back of the house and investigate further? Either way, the House of Hell will make sure this is a night never to be forgotten!
As an aside, those who remember these, probably remember a similar TV show called Knightmare, shown on UK ITV's children's segment called CITV in the late 80s and early 90s. Corgi published seven Knightmare books released alongside the TV show, which worked virtually identically to the Fighting Fantasy series, save for the fact they were set in the Knightmare dungeon. These books can all be picked up second hand today quite cheaply on eBay or Amazon.
Below you can download high resolution cover (front, back & spine) scans of all the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks in my personal collection. That's numbers 1-59 complete, missing only book 58. Revenge of the Vampire which I do not yet have. The condition of the books scanned ranges from excellent down to fair, with some original editions and some later re-prints.
Fighting Fantasy Gamebook Cover Scans (62 images, 279mb - Various Dimensions at 600dpi 85% compression JPEG)
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'Fighting Fantasy' and all related characters & titles © 2018 Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone.
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Please note, You cannot download the books themselves here, these are just personally created cover artwork scans. I don't wish to tread on anyone's toes, simply to preserve material for future fans. If there are still any copyright holders out there would rather their images/scans were not included, please send an email to
, and they'll be immediately removed.
In March 2021, I used the above scans to create a life-size front cover collage poster; 55cm x 210cm including a 1cm white border around the edge. The books run in chronological order from 1 to 59, along with the introductory book. I printed mine at 44cm x 175cm; just a bit smaller to fit on a door. You can download the printable file above, although you'd need to take it to a printer who could print large banners, or resize it for your own home-printer.
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