Fantastic Fights

It’s TARDIS time again on Fantastic Fights as HJDoom plays through the 1986 Make Your Own Adventure gamebook The Search for the Doctor by David Martin with art by Gail Bennett. It’s a strange and incoherent little book with plenty of authentic Doctor Who touches but can a screen writer successfully turn his hand to game design? Listen along to find out. If you’d like to support the show you can do...

It’s a bumper sized episode of Fantastic Fights as HJDoom tackles Daggers of Darkness, the third book from Star Strider and Chasms of Malice scribe Luke Sharp. Neither of those books exactly tickled the fancy but perhaps third time is the charm. Listen along to find out. Daggers of Darkness features illustrations by a very young Martin McKenna and a cover art by Les Edwards. It was released by Puf...

We’re back for a positively brobdingnagian bonus episode as HJDoom tackles Destiny Quest: The Legion of Shadow by Michael J Ward. This 800 page epic takes the player on a grand quest filled with deadly monsters, a host of special skills and loot, loot, loot!  This episode also celebrates the release of my new RPG Crown of Crimson, a game of deranged cultists seeking martyrdom in a fantasy emp...

After the last short but sweet bonus episode this one is a bit of a monster. HJDoom bravely takes on the latest challenge in the Fighting Fantasy series, Stealer of Souls by Keith Martin with illustrations by Russ Nicholson. There’s plenty of excitement to be had and could this be the first book in the series which will see the adventure actually be completed? Listen along to find out. If you fanc...

It’s another bonus episode for Fantastic Fights and this time we’re exploring outer space once again as part of my ongoing quest to find a really good spaceships and lasers gamebook. Will we become a brave space ace or suffer the ignominy of death at the hands of a book aimed at the under 12s? Listen along to find out. Star Challenge: Planets in Peril was written by Christopher Black and illustrat...

It’s a bittersweet episode of Fantastic Fights as we bid farewell to the science fiction strand of the series with book 33 Sky Lord by Martin Allen with illustrations by Tim Sell and cover art by Les Edwards. Will this be the book to break the curse that seemingly hangs over science fiction in the Fighting Fantasy canon or will it go out the same way that it came in? Listen along with HJDoom to fi...

It’s another bonus episode brought to you by the generosity of my backers over on www.patreon.com/hjdoom. This episode we’re taking a look at one of the most resilient toy lines of the 1980s, the ever popular Transformers. These robotic sneaks were a big part of my childhood but how well will they adapt into the format of the adventure gamebook? Peril From the Stars was written by gaming legend Da...

It’s our first proper episode of 2023 and HJDoom is tackling book 32 in the Fighting Fantasy series which is Slaves of the Abyss by Paul Mason and Steve Williams with illustrations by Bob Harvey and cover art by Terry Oakes. Things start off with some fairly hackneyed kingdom in peril stuff but things rapidly get quite a bit stranger as the book progresses. Featuring a time mechanic and an extreme...

We’re kicking off 2023 with a bonus episode featuring Tunnels of Fear by Stephen Thraves with art by Terry Oakes. This was one of two fantasy gamebooks published by Hodder and Stoughton in the early 90s (along with a whole host of licensed gamebooks featuring characters like Asterix, The Famous Five, and Biggles). It originally came with a whole bunch of cardboard and plastic peripherals and a spe...

Well, here we are at the end of 2023 and there’s just time for one more episode of Fantastic Fights featuring Battleblade Warrior by Marc Gascoigne with art by Alan Langford. A city under siege from the evil lizardmen empire and a desperate race against time to find a magic weapon that can end the war. Battleblade Warrior features battlefields, jungles, mountains, and of course lots and lots of li...

It’s almost Christmas and what could be more festive than trying to escape from a vampire’s castle? In this bonus episode we see the return of the Endless Quest series, the Dungeons and Dragons spin off product intended to act as an introduction to the franchise for younger readers. The last one we covered was very poor indeed but Dungeons and Dragons has changed a lot since the mid 80s and maybe,...

We’ve hit book 30 and this episode is very much a game of two halves. The playthrough of Chasms of Malice went very smoothly but the analysis of the book took me forever. Regardless, here it is, my playthrough and review of Luke Sharp’s Chasms of Malice. It was illustrated by the great Russ Nicholson with cover art by Les Edwards. It was released by Puffin Books in 1988. If you enjoy my nonsense t...

Midnight Rogue, book 29 in the Fighting Fantasy series, finally takes on the classic fantasy gaming archetype of the thief. Ever since Bilbo Baggins half-inched a fancy geegaw from under the nose of a psychotic dragon gamers have dreamed of purloining shiny things without legal consequence. An added bonus; this gamebook takes you back to Port Blacksand, one of the great fantasy city and the perfec...

This episode we’re playing Phantoms of Fear by Robin Waterfield with illustrations by the amazing Ian Miller. This is one of the more ambitious Fighting Fantasy books we’ve seen as you play an elf warrior shaman capable of existing in both the physical and dream worlds. An awful menace has arisen, as they do with astonishing frequency in Fighting Fantasy books, and it’s up to you to track through...

Note that the playthrough portion of this episode sounds like it was recorded in a tin bath. I’ve no idea what went wrong but if you want to skip it then the review portion of the podcast starts at 56:50 The past isn’t what it used to be in this episode as we take a trip into the past as seen from the distant future. In 3033 time travel is a recent invention and five self-important LORDS OF TIME h...

Episode 27 of Fantastic Fights finds us back in science fiction territory with Star Strider. As a rogue tracer our hero is tasked with roguishly tracing a kidnapped politician on a future Earth that has become considerably weirder than our present day. Will the rogue tracer be able to dodge deadly androids and some brutally random dice based challenges and escape to save the galaxy from the wily G...

HJDoom plays through the 1987 adventure gamebook Crypt of the Sorcerer and offers his thoughts. Two apologies, one for the lateness of the episode and the other for the sound quality which is very uneven throughout. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this tour through some familiar areas in Allansia and a classic Ian Livingstone list of items and other clues to find.

It’s time for another bonus episode brought to you by the generosity of my patrons over at patreon.com/hjdoom. This time we’re playing Sagas of the Demonspawn Book One: Fire*Wolf written by the tireless JH Brennan. We’ve tangled with this creator before, he’s the author of the well regarded Grailquest series and a very, very odd riff on the story of Frankenstein. Where does this land in terms of h...

Episode 25 of the podcast means two years of regular episodes and what better way to celebrate than with Beneath Nightmare Castle, the 1987 Fighting Fantasy book written by Peter Darvill-Evans with interior art by Dave Carson. This is an interesting book because it feels like a return to classic Fighting Fantasy tropes while still pushing the design in new and interesting directions. Will our hapl...

It’s bonus time again and this epiosde is a bit different because the book in question, The Cruel Game, was actually specially written for me by my husband as a birthday present last year. It’s a gamebook about playing in the finals of the World Snooker Championship, a grueling best of 35 frames that is played over two days. As well as the on table action (including a shot at a 147 break) the game...

HJDoom is back with the second part of Creature of Havoc. Our bumbling and monstrous hero has successfully traversed the dungeons of Zharradan Marr and made its way out into the big wide world. What happens next? Listen in to find out. There’s also a mildly exciting announcement of a new patreon reward, and the even more mildly exciting announcement that I have a new EP out. It’s 4 tracks of dunge...

Creature of Havoc looms large in the canon of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. It’s often considered as the single best book in the whole run. Join HJDoom as he plays through the opening half and tries to keep a clear head in the face of a book throwing all manner of different things into the mix. The more observant among you will also have noticed that this is labelled part 1. That’s because this is a...

It’s bonus episode time again! This time we’re playing through Dave Morris’s seminal Heart of Ice, often touted as the very finest adventure gamebook of all time. It’s the 24th century and Earth has gone very strange indeed as a quixotic computer messes with the climate and the human race clings to an increasingly precarious existence. These bonus episodes, which are free to everyone, are only mad...

This episode was recorded in a haze of painkillers and sciatic pain but edited in a much clearer frame of mind thanks to having spinal surgery last week. Hopefully this means that something approaching normal service may now be resumed for the rest of the year. We’re playing through Masks of Mayhem this episode, which was written by Robin Waterfield, the author of Rebel Planet and illustrated by t...

We’re back of familiar ground after two bonus episodes with Fighting Fantasy book 22, Robot Commando. Aside from having the single greatest elevator pitch in the history of Fighting Fantasy (“What would you do if you were a rancher on a distant planet using robots to herd vicious dinosaurs?”) Robot Commando sees a welcome return to the series for the American Steve Jackson, these days most famous...