A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post over on Film Junk about a movie in development based on one of the Fighting Fantasy books from the mid-’80s. I was a big fan of these books when I was younger, as they combined Choose Your Own Adventure-style branching stories with role-playing elements… a brilliant concept if ever there was one. They eventually died out in the early ’90s (most likely thanks to video games, among other things), but in writing the article for Film Junk, I discovered that Fighting Fantasy is actually going through a bit of a revival again. A number of the original books have been re-released, and the first new titles in over a decade have been published. On top of that, the first book The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was recently turned into a Nintendo DS game, and London, Ontario developers Big Blue Bubble just put out a couple of Fighting Fantasy iPhone apps as well.

Intrigued, and eager for a quick hit of nostalgia, I decided to download the Deathtrap Dungeon app, one of the books I had never played before. At $2.99, it’s certainly a lot cheaper than the books themselves, and much more convenient to play too. Even when I was younger I wondered why no one had decided to turn them into computer games (little did I know, apparently there were a handful of Commodore 64 adaptations at the time), but being able to handle the combat dice rolls and inventory automatically is obviously ideal. Plus it prevents you from cheating, which anyone who has ever read / played these kinds of books will know is pretty difficult to resist sometimes.

The weird thing is, once you start automating things and adding a GUI, it starts to feel a lot more like a game. And the more it starts to feel like a game, the more it seems kind of disappointing that you can’t have a map, animated characters moving around, and full motion graphics instead of still images and text. But because they kept it simple, it also preserves the experience of reading and letting your imagination create the world for you. This has always been one of the coolest things about pen and paper role-playing games in my opinion: the fact that after you’ve played, it kinda feels like you actually were there. I definitely think that a lot of kids nowadays who have grown up on realistic 3-D video games don’t get to use their imagination as much, which is a shame.

The end result is that this feels like you’re reading an interactive eBook on your iPod. Admittedly, the adventure itself seemed a bit pedestrian and dull to me all these years later. There is not much depth to the story (it is intended for a younger audience, after all) and as a game, most of your choices simply rely on random dice rolls and blind luck. If I remember correctly, the later books in the series did get more ambitious and creative though. Did any of them have multiple endings? Hmm, I wonder now.

Anyway, if you grew up on Fighting Fantasy and want a quick and convenient way to revisit the experience, these iPhone apps should do the trick. I doubt that anyone from a younger generation could really get into something so minimal, but hey, if you’re curious about what us old timers did back before things like Heavy Rain ever existed, why not give it a try? For another walk down memory lane, check out Fighting Dantasy, a blog written by a guy who decided to go back and play through each book one at a time. Now that’s time well spent!