Not-so-solo gamebooks

For me, solo gamebooks bring back countless happy memories, including a few that involve other people.

When I stayed over at my childhood pal DP's grandparents' farm, he and I slept in the caravan next to the house. There, he GM-ed me through the fifth Fighting Fantasy adventure, "City Of Thieves", which he'd already played and beaten himself. (He actually became mildly obsessed with it and used to draw pictures of the undead villain, Zanbar Bone.) D. furnished me with extra scene-setting description and clues, but also ridiculed missteps. It was kind of stressful - like taking a test of one's FF proficiency! Fairly sure I didn't complete the quest that night before we retired to our bunks.

Another time, my buddy SV and I had both managed to get hold of the 20th Fighting Fantasy, "Sword Of The Samurai". I was heavily into "AD&D" at this stage. However, he was one of those kids who forever preferred gamebooks - he was a born reader (the most voracious I ever met), not an amateur actor/tabletop gamer. Anyway, we decided to race to the end of "Sword". I recall it took 2-3 hours. We'd compare progress across the room: "Have you fought the kappas?" I wanna claim I reached entry 400 first. I've no proof, but S. was a year younger and I usually won our contests.

You may be aware selected FF titles were converted to digital form for the Commodore 64. My mate LC got the conversion of the second FF, "Citadel Of Chaos". We were SO excited to play it. Surely the incredible graphics and sound of the C64 would take it to a whole new level. Well...erm...those were fine for the era. The problem was that we could no longer cheat like we did with the paper original. The fact I recollect us digging it out of his cardboard box full of tapes on more than one visit suggests we never conquered the bloody thing. Unlike "Friday The 13th" (L. was a horror nut).