People love to harp on Space Assassin. It is a strange, almost pulp adventure. Like Warlock of Foretop Mountain but in space. I love it and think it is fun, even of pointless ride.
"Chasms of Malice" was ruined by a stupid scenario where, no matter how skilled you were, you fought lowly Orcs, one by one, on ledges. You rolled a die for you and a die for the Orc. The combatant with the bigger number tips his opponent off the ledge to their death. You either died or faced an identical fight next up. There was no accounting for your Skill score. You fought a whole bunch of these silly fights on equal individual terms and had to get the higher roll about 8 times in a row. There was a way to minimalize the amount of opponents, by taking certain paths, but the number was still too many foes to beat. It was impossible for me to do, so I gave up on this gamebook.
I wish I had been aware of this voting earlier, so I could have voted Creature of Havoc. Really hated that one, felt that Jackson was trolling us the whole time.
I agree. It's one thing to make a game challenging but that one had way too many points where you were snookered whichever choice you made. What's the point? It's just a waste of time.
I used to love these as a kid growing up (still do in all truth). Island Of the Lizard King was the first I got, and although it's certainly not the best, it holds a lot of nostalgia. It's a book that has a kind of King Kong feel to it, as you go about exploring the island. I think my fave might be Appointment With F.E.A.R, though Deathtrap Dungeon runs it close. I was actually inspired to write a short story inspired by the Fighting Fantasy books, in which You are the hero. Bunged it on Smashwords for free. The story is called "You Are The Monster" (see what I did there!). Also pretty sure it inspired another story (a little longer but written in a style that mixes things up a bit... like the books)... This one I entitled "26 Minds on Standby". It can also be downloaded for free on Smashwords.
Guess the new books are changing to meet the requirements for children's literature. It's the same as that AOE 1 used to be a pegi from 3 years old and today it's only 12 years old! So here we have stories almost for little ones and horrible illustrations. I'm a big fan of FF gamebooks and I'm very sorry that everything goes wrong and we lose beautiful and flawless illustrations and amazing to flawless stories. We sank very deep and ruined the series due to sales.
Creature of Havoc - Boy oh boy was this a frustrating experience. Make a choice and watch it go absolutely nowhere. I remember saving up my pocket money to buy it and regretting that idea shortly after.
Interesting how half of them are sci-fi titles. I think many of the readers of FF books found the fantasy setting more appealing, and yet they may have tried some of the sci-fi adventures without gelling with the setting. Thus they are more likely to be on a least favourite list.
For me it's the internal art which was intricate and gross...kind of reminded me of art by Kevin O Neill plus a simplistic combat system. Worst aspects are the insta death options and the fact the games end up being a mapping or flowchart exercise after a while
Sky LORD is the Best / most notorious! Glad to see it Win 1st place! I'm surprised by this list too, as you say Starship Traveller is liked by some but I think may be Steve's least popular book. Blood of the Zombies I love! But I guess a typical zombie slaughter theme wasn't fashionable on release after some zombie saturation at the time, and actually completing the book using the rules is actually numerically impossible! But I would have saved it from the Bottom 10 list and replaced it with perhaps Black Vein Prophecy which I've heard much more troubling things about, but am yet to confirm myself! As bad as Sky Lord is our gamebook loving community can see the joy in loving the book for its ridiculousness but it's a bit marmite in that respect! Still I would class Sky Lord as genius and as number #2 confirms, Chasms of Malice I'd say is the true bottom for being more lacklustre than divisive! Video Correction: Blood of the Zombies wasn't Ian's first return after the original series but his Second book released under Wizard. His first was Eye of the Dragon which was also revealed on the list!
thank you for the correction kail...I do only want to give out correct info, I still have the video to film for that book so I will mention that in the video.....I was very surprised by the list too and did not even input my own dislike list. Maybe once every two years we can do one of these lists and see how it changes with the times?
Deathmoor wasn't that bad. Incidentally, what was the likelihood of Otus having abused the princess? (I suppose that would not have been age appropriate material to include) Blood of the Zombies was completely broken and unplayable. Either play with loaded dice or with different rules (I can recommend my own custom rule modifications if you want) or you will hate it. Edit - Sebulba the dug was Anakin's main podracing rival (who bought Anakin's old pod).
On the subject of stupid deaths, I once saw where players were asked what their dumbest FF death was. Mine would have to be in Creature of Havoc. You get to play a creature so powerful that it can instantly kill with a double roll, and on my first outing I was slain by an opponent with a Skill score of 7!@@paulgibbons2320
I loved eye of the dragon I also have the same limited edition version, the art work may have been what brought me in I don’t know (I love that illustrator he’s the same as howl of the werewolf) but I love and old school dungeon thriller
I don't have ten FF books I didn't enjoy but I remember I owned Star Strider and I don't think I enjoyed it as much as the others. I must say I'm really surprised Starship Traveller made the list!
Possibly, it just took too long to roll up all the statistics at the start, some of which didn't end up getting used, especially if you fail the game early in the piece.
@@alfredagain _Starship Traveller_ can be completed without needing to roll a die once - which makes rolling all those statistics for your crew utterly pointless. I also recall reading somewhere (although I can't remember where, unfortunately) that Steve Jackson got bored writing and designing it towards the end.
@@nicholascampbell3259 That doesn't surprise me. I think both guys got bored in the end. The later books had so many numerical mistakes in them that you had to thumb through them to figure out the paragraph they meant you to turn to. And paradoxical situations like you needed to defeat the 'boss' villain with a silver dagger, but to get the silver dagger you had to have a gold ring, but to get the gold ring you had to defeat an enemy that could only be killed by a silver dagger. Also, the ridiculously hard to win ones were more in the later years, as if the guys were saying "This should keep them occupied long enough for us to think of something else to do".
Fang's of Fury and Daggers of Darkness need to be on that list. Masks of Mayhem wasn't even that bad...at least it had great artwork. Never understood the ending to that book either.
Wayne Daly yes, continuing straight from the final book 59, Curse of the Mummy, we will be going into the wizard books and then the Scholastic Books finally.
Strongly disagree with Sky lord been number one. It's one of the better Sci-fi books. Space assassin had some nice extra weapon choices. But it's pretty easy to finish. Not sure this makes it bad. Starship Traveller I can see why some did not warm too it. But I loved every minute of it. A few RPG fans not loving the sci-fi I think. If only trek had dwarves, elves and Goblins.
@@AdamJPestridge cool. Will check it out. You could do one, which is your favourite unique extra rules. Add on's to the adventure sheet. Outside of the skill, Stamina and luck. Personally I liked the ones with additional skill sets like Midnight Rogue and Dead of the night. Some of the extra rules were terrible tough. Like Daggers of Darkness were you start the game poisoned. That was horrible. Some of them were very tight with equipment. Then there were ones like Legend of Zagdor and Shadow warriors where you got to tool yourself up. I guess the added verriety kept it interesting.
Check out the entire LIVE series here:ua-cam.com/play/PLr4rKSoEPuBWJqjAQkUizLntYmrYf51cb.html
People love to harp on Space Assassin. It is a strange, almost pulp adventure. Like Warlock of Foretop Mountain but in space. I love it and think it is fun, even of pointless ride.
"Chasms of Malice" was ruined by a stupid scenario where, no matter how skilled you were, you fought lowly Orcs, one by one, on ledges. You rolled a die for you and a die for the Orc. The combatant with the bigger number tips his opponent off the ledge to their death. You either died or faced an identical fight next up. There was no accounting for your Skill score. You fought a whole bunch of these silly fights on equal individual terms and had to get the higher roll about 8 times in a row. There was a way to minimalize the amount of opponents, by taking certain paths, but the number was still too many foes to beat. It was impossible for me to do, so I gave up on this gamebook.
I wish I had been aware of this voting earlier, so I could have voted Creature of Havoc. Really hated that one, felt that Jackson was trolling us the whole time.
I agree. It's one thing to make a game challenging but that one had way too many points where you were snookered whichever choice you made. What's the point? It's just a waste of time.
It was one of the coolest ideas in the series, but the execution never quite got there. I still love it though.
I just got into these after "playing" 1 or 2 in my preteens. And tbh i was eying CoH as my next play.
@@ruhalfoyls If you do it without cheating, expect lost of replays!
@surnis9043 thats what im hoping for. Almost done with bloodbones and then its time to find out what horrid creature i really am.
The sci fi entries were always weaker than the fantasy ones. Sky Lord didn't jump out as a clear number 1 for me
I used to love these as a kid growing up (still do in all truth). Island Of the Lizard King was the first I got, and although it's certainly not the best, it holds a lot of nostalgia. It's a book that has a kind of King Kong feel to it, as you go about exploring the island. I think my fave might be Appointment With F.E.A.R, though Deathtrap Dungeon runs it close.
I was actually inspired to write a short story inspired by the Fighting Fantasy books, in which You are the hero. Bunged it on Smashwords for free. The story is called "You Are The Monster" (see what I did there!). Also pretty sure it inspired another story (a little longer but written in a style that mixes things up a bit... like the books)... This one I entitled "26 Minds on Standby". It can also be downloaded for free on Smashwords.
Cool. I wrote a short story inspired by the Fighting fantasy books too.
Guess the new books are changing to meet the requirements for children's literature. It's the same as that AOE 1 used to be a pegi from 3 years old and today it's only 12 years old! So here we have stories almost for little ones and horrible illustrations. I'm a big fan of FF gamebooks and I'm very sorry that everything goes wrong and we lose beautiful and flawless illustrations and amazing to flawless stories. We sank very deep and ruined the series due to sales.
it is a shame the original series stopped and changed the way the drawings are created with the new series.
Space Assassin was the first Fighting Fantasy book I played (a long time ago in the 80s)...loved it! Damn I'm old.
Matt Noy a classic within so many good books. I really enjoyed heading back into this one. Have you seen the top 10 worst books I did?
@@AdamJPestridge Space Assassin and Starship Traveller were fk awesome! How did they end up there?... :D
Creature of Havoc - Boy oh boy was this a frustrating experience. Make a choice and watch it go absolutely nowhere. I remember saving up my pocket money to buy it and regretting that idea shortly after.
Starship traveller is good!!!
One of my absolute favourites
❤💖❤
Interesting how half of them are sci-fi titles. I think many of the readers of FF books found the fantasy setting more appealing, and yet they may have tried some of the sci-fi adventures without gelling with the setting. Thus they are more likely to be on a least favourite list.
I had the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos and Forest of Doom when I was young and played the hell out of them
Personally, it was the cover art that made Fighting Fantasy so intriguing! 😁
For me it's the internal art which was intricate and gross...kind of reminded me of art by Kevin O Neill plus a simplistic combat system. Worst aspects are the insta death options and the fact the games end up being a mapping or flowchart exercise after a while
Rings of Kether, a book so bad that it would be an Insult to my backside to use it as toilet paper. 😂😂
I quite liked this one.
Sky LORD is the Best / most notorious! Glad to see it Win 1st place!
I'm surprised by this list too, as you say Starship Traveller is liked by some but I think may be Steve's least popular book. Blood of the Zombies I love! But I guess a typical zombie slaughter theme wasn't fashionable on release after some zombie saturation at the time, and actually completing the book using the rules is actually numerically impossible! But I would have saved it from the Bottom 10 list and replaced it with perhaps Black Vein Prophecy which I've heard much more troubling things about, but am yet to confirm myself!
As bad as Sky Lord is our gamebook loving community can see the joy in loving the book for its ridiculousness but it's a bit marmite in that respect! Still I would class Sky Lord as genius and as number #2 confirms, Chasms of Malice I'd say is the true bottom for being more lacklustre than divisive!
Video Correction: Blood of the Zombies wasn't Ian's first return after the original series but his Second book released under Wizard. His first was Eye of the Dragon which was also revealed on the list!
thank you for the correction kail...I do only want to give out correct info, I still have the video to film for that book so I will mention that in the video.....I was very surprised by the list too and did not even input my own dislike list. Maybe once every two years we can do one of these lists and see how it changes with the times?
Deathmoor wasn't that bad. Incidentally, what was the likelihood of Otus having abused the princess? (I suppose that would not have been age appropriate material to include)
Blood of the Zombies was completely broken and unplayable. Either play with loaded dice or with different rules (I can recommend my own custom rule modifications if you want) or you will hate it.
Edit - Sebulba the dug was Anakin's main podracing rival (who bought Anakin's old pod).
I've heard "Starship Traveller" can be won without having to throw any dice rolls.
It's true.
People say it's dead easy but I always meet stupid deaths in it.
On the subject of stupid deaths, I once saw where players were asked what their dumbest FF death was. Mine would have to be in Creature of Havoc. You get to play a creature so powerful that it can instantly kill with a double roll, and on my first outing I was slain by an opponent with a Skill score of 7!@@paulgibbons2320
How about the best intro pages, that first few pages that left you buzzing to " now turn the page".
I get the feeling that the least liked ones are GENERALLY Space Themed.
Tho, obviously, not exactly the rule.
I haven't read all of the series, but personally, I found the sci-fi ones and the later releases to be the worst.
Crypt of the Sorcerer always should be No.1 as the worst Gamebook ever, with worst gameplay ever.
Statistical analysis has revealed 'Blood of the Zombies' to be even more unplayable than 'Crypt'.
Anyone else on here also read/play the "choose your own adventure" series?
Isn't that just the genre of books?
No, there was a series called choose your own adventure
@@ez_scents I read several of those. My favourite was The Lost Ninja.
I disliked Demons of the deep.
Disliked Daggers of darkness.
Starting poisoned really bugged me.
Interesting list, space assassin mostly harsly done by imo
I loved eye of the dragon I also have the same limited edition version, the art work may have been what brought me in I don’t know (I love that illustrator he’s the same as howl of the werewolf) but I love and old school dungeon thriller
I don't have ten FF books I didn't enjoy but I remember I owned Star Strider and I don't think I enjoyed it as much as the others. I must say I'm really surprised Starship Traveller made the list!
Loved these books!! Does anyone know where I can buy the series from please? The original green spine ones.. thanks
eBay and second hand book stores is your best bet. Amazon do have them as well and I’d say start there.
Deathmoor is one of the very few I don't yet own in my collection!
Old gamebooks from 80 and 90 years are best. And new illustrations from scholastic are very very very bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, Starship Traveller is one of my favourites. Shocked to see it at number 3.
Possibly, it just took too long to roll up all the statistics at the start, some of which didn't end up getting used, especially if you fail the game early in the piece.
@@alfredagain _Starship Traveller_ can be completed without needing to roll a die once - which makes rolling all those statistics for your crew utterly pointless. I also recall reading somewhere (although I can't remember where, unfortunately) that Steve Jackson got bored writing and designing it towards the end.
@@nicholascampbell3259 That doesn't surprise me. I think both guys got bored in the end. The later books had so many numerical mistakes in them that you had to thumb through them to figure out the paragraph they meant you to turn to. And paradoxical situations like you needed to defeat the 'boss' villain with a silver dagger, but to get the silver dagger you had to have a gold ring, but to get the gold ring you had to defeat an enemy that could only be killed by a silver dagger. Also, the ridiculously hard to win ones were more in the later years, as if the guys were saying "This should keep them occupied long enough for us to think of something else to do".
This video actually made me want to read Sky Lord.
Fang's of Fury and Daggers of Darkness need to be on that list. Masks of Mayhem wasn't even that bad...at least it had great artwork. Never understood the ending to that book either.
Holden I think I’m planning on updating the list next year. Maybe revise it every three years to include new books
4:30 Starship Traveller .. are you serious dude !! 6:13 that looks like sh*t !
Do a worst cover art. I can already tell you that the original Citadel of Chaos would win
Michael like it. I shall start that today, thank you
@@AdamJPestridge God yes, that was a really weird cover!
You spelt 'best' wrong!
Deathmoor is a contender.
I hate the lurid green and pink cover of _Phantoms of Fear._
are you going to do the wizard books like howl of the werewolf and bloodbones.
Wayne Daly yes, continuing straight from the final book 59, Curse of the Mummy, we will be going into the wizard books and then the Scholastic Books finally.
Port of Peril too
Interesting video, thanks!!
Starship Traveller was awesome!
Strongly disagree with Sky lord been number one. It's one of the better Sci-fi books.
Space assassin had some nice extra weapon choices. But it's pretty easy to finish. Not sure this makes it bad.
Starship Traveller I can see why some did not warm too it. But I loved every minute of it. A few RPG fans not loving the sci-fi I think.
If only trek had dwarves, elves and Goblins.
Im going to be updating this list in the next few months
@@AdamJPestridge cool. Will check it out. You could do one, which is your favourite unique extra rules. Add on's to the adventure sheet. Outside of the skill, Stamina and luck.
Personally I liked the ones with additional skill sets like Midnight Rogue and Dead of the night.
Some of the extra rules were terrible tough. Like Daggers of Darkness were you start the game poisoned. That was horrible.
Some of them were very tight with equipment. Then there were ones like Legend of Zagdor and Shadow warriors where you got to tool yourself up.
I guess the added verriety kept it interesting.