Posted by Ross

Thu, 11th Aug 2011

Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death News + Part 2 of Our Interview With Steve Jackson

Hi Everyone,

With the European release of the officially licensed mini, Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death, only a week away, we’ve got loads of exciting news for you.  First up, we can confirm that while the SCEE release date of Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death will remain as 17^th August, unfortunately the SCEA release will now be slightly later on 23^rd August.  The game will be priced at just £3.49 in the UK and $4.99 in the US

To celebrate the European release of Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death, Laughing Jackal have lots of goodies to give away.  Keep an eye on our blog, Facebook and Twitter, as next week we’re going to be revealing how you can win a Fighting Fantasy poster signed by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, or even the Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death gamebook that we worked from when making the Fighting Fantasy: Talisman of Death PlayStation Mini, which has also been signed by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

Laughing Jackal also recently interviewed Steve Jackson, co-creator of the 16m selling series of gamebooks, and he gave us his thoughts on all things Fighting Fantasy.  The first part of this interview can be found here.

And now, for part two of our exclusive interview with the legendary Steve Jackson. Enjoy!

Do you have any favourite fantasy-themed videogames?

The first fantasy videogame I remember playing was an arcade game called Gauntlet. Then Dungeons & Dragons on the Intellivision home console. For its time it was brilliant. I remember Gary Gygax (designer of D&D) telling me how he’d met the programmer, who was in awe of Gary’s game design. Yet he considered the design of D&D to be nothing compared to programming the Intellivision game!

I spent many, many hours playing Dungeonmaster, the Amiga classic. It was obviously based on D&D but they had avoided a full licence. Then there was Dungeon Keeper, which I liked because of the Bullfrog sense of humour – you could even view the dungeon in 3D through the eyes of a chicken! Diablo as well. That was a long-time favourite. More recently I enjoyed Dungeon Siege. And of course Fable. The Lionhead team did a wonderful job with the art and animation, and the gameplay features…

Which is your favourite Fighting Fantasy book?

I shall always have a special affection for Warlock of Firetop Mountain as it was the first. And the excitement generated by its success was something I’ll never forget. But I must also say the Sorcery! series was what I would consider my ‘favourite’. I put so much effort into Sorcery. Each adventure was bigger than the one before until Crown of Kings (Sorcery No. 4) weighed in at 800 references – twice the size of a normal FF book...

Was Titan fully formed when you wrote The Warlock of FiretopMountain, or did the setting continue to develop as more Fighting Fantasy books were written?

When Warlock was published we had no idea it was going to be the first of a series. So the only part of the FF game-world was the area around FTM. I think it was after the first 3 books had come out that we began to think about having a consistent world into which we could set our adventures.

How influential do you think Fighting Fantasy was both in terms of Gamebooks and the gaming scene as a whole?

A difficult one this, as we were too busy writing the books to think about the series having some kind of lasting influence on gaming. And we still considered the real trailblazer was Dungeons & Dragons. It was a decade or so later when we started to realise just what sort of influence FF had had. As we both moved into videogames development/publishing with Lionhead (me) and Eidos (Ian), virtually every person we met in the industry told us how they remembered reading FF books when they were teenagers. And how in many cases it sparked their interest – and now their careers - in gaming.

Thanks for reading everyone and don’t forget to come back here next week for more news on how you can win some fantastic prizes as well as the lowdown on Cubixx HD and OMG-Z.