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OMG: Lone Wolf (remember GameBooks?) on Nintendo DS!

Mdk7

Member
I used the search engine and found no results, so i hope it's not old story... but somebody just released a DS version of the first Lone Wolf Gamebook (god they were so so cool back in the day when i was a little kid...)!!

This project has begun as a way to learn how to program on the Nintendo DS. After seeing how the DS was used vertically as a book by some famous games, I thought it would be really cool to have some old gamebooks converted on this system.

Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, it was not really easy to find good contents to use as a working base. Then I found the Project Aon site, which offered many books from the award-winning Lone Wolf series, fully converted to HTML by some loving fans.

For those who didn't know about Gamebooks, they were novels which had a nice success during the 80's, and which were allowing the readers to choose their own path by jumping from one numbered section to another, in a fun and interactive way. They were introducing the concepts of inventory, enemies fights, random dice results, and other nice ideas which were the precursors of what we find today in role playing video games.
The philosophy behind the port of the Lone Wolf books to the DS is to let the console handle all the rules related to combats, stats and so on, so the player can be really immersed in the story and doesn't need to bother with the gameplay elements.

For now, only the first volume of the series, called "Flight From The Dark", is available. If people show enough interest in this first book, other volumes will be ported too.

DO WANT, insanely awesome homebrew!

intro.jpg



http://www.projectaon.org/staff/frederic/index.php
 
OH FUCK!!! These were awesome back in elementary school. Only thing that sucked is that I grew up in a conservative christian household that was scared of anything that, to them, resembled Dungeons and Dragons in any way shape or form (though other media was up for grabs). I think I got through two of these books before I was told that I could not read them anymore.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
I read pretty much all of these. Great stuff, so much pencil eraser markings in the back with my inventory and stats. Plus, who didn't cheat when you accidentally died by choosing the wrong page flip!

Sunsword FTW!
 

CoffeeMan

Member
We use to have them in Elementary school at the library. I think i read all of those that were available. I hope we get to see more of these on the DS.
 
Eh, I read the title and thought this was about some kind of Lone Wolf & Cub gamebook for the DS :/

I was big into gamebooks when I was a kid, but I don't remmember any named Lone Wolf, I always used to play the Fighting Fantasy ones.
 

Mdk7

Member
Bootaaay said:
Eh, I read the title and thought this was about some kind of Lone Wolf & Cub gamebook for the DS :/

I was big into gamebooks when I was a kid, but I don't remmember any named Lone Wolf, I always used to play the Fighting Fantasy ones.
How come? Lone Wolf was the most famous one... It was pretty popular here in Italy in the early 90s.
 
Mdk7 said:
How come? Lone Wolf was the most famous one... It was pretty popular here in Italy in the early 90s.

I dunno, I just must have never come across them, and I was under the impression that the Fighting Fantasy series popularized game books - there were so many to choose from I never really went looking for any others :p
 

Ronabo

Member
Wow this looks awesome. I myself don't remember GameBooks or Lone Wolf, but it looks similar to the old Choose Your Own Adventure books I read when I was young.

I'll have to check this out later.
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
I remember GrailQuest... and a smattering of those Fighting Fantasy ones.

You know, I'd pay for a decent DS version of a game book or two. This software is still a little clunky for my liking, but it is rather impressive.
 

stuminus3

Member
That's really cool. Don't get why someone hasn't tried to do this "officially", seems like a no brainer to me.
 

Mdk7

Member
stuminus3 said:
That's really cool. Don't get why someone hasn't tried to do this "officially", seems like a no brainer to me.
QFT... i mean this could have been a winner even as a proper retail "game", especially considering the versatile nature of NDS.
 
This looks amazing... I've never tried Lone Wolf, this should make me do it. I was always more of a Fighting Fantasy fan; I still have some of my original books and crack 'em out and play now and then.
 
They weren't ever really called GameBooks in the US. We got the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. From Wikipedia:

The short gamebook series The Adventures of You was published in 1976-77. The two books, Sugarcane Island and Journey Under the Sea were written by Edward Packard and R. A. Montgomery respectively. Both authors went on to create the Choose Your Own Adventure, beginning with The Cave of Time in 1979, which went on to become the longest running gamebook series with almost 200 titles, popularising the gamebook format in America. The two Adventures of You books were revised and integrated into the series.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was published in 1982, the first of what became the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks, one of the first adventure gamebook series. With over 60 titles, including a variety of spin-offs, the series popularised the gamebook format in the UK and other countries such as Canada.
 

BooJoh

Member
I've never actually read any GameBooks, but I remember seeing them. I was a big fan of Choose Your Own Adventure, I had at least one book from a similar series called "Twist-A-Plot" I think, and then "Nintendo Adventure Books," which were the same, but also had some puzzles and used the inventory stuff to keep track of coins and whatnot.

I would totally buy games like these for DS... I was under the impression that they actually had some stuff like this in Japan, like the old Silent Hill novel on GameBoy.


EDIT: Just tried this on my DS using my Datel Games 'n Music. Seems to work just fine. It didn't load through the GnM menu, but did through DSOrganize... I think it just required DLDI patching and didn't mention it in the readme.
 

Mdk7

Member
Is it possible to edit the thread title?
We should celebrate this little gem and everybody has to check this out! ^^
 

DDayton

(more a nerd than a geek)
viralmarketeer said:
They weren't ever really called GameBooks in the US. We got the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. From Wikipedia:

There were a few different Game Book series in the USA (Grail Quest, Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and a few others... even a short-lived Narnia series!) -- all generally featured a dice system and character sheet, allowing for game/role play features. The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books predated them (Sugercane Island being the first... I have a copy of it somewhere.)

The guy who started the CYOA series started a new company in the past year or two and is in the process of reissuing the original CYOA books and writing new ones. It is odd how they seemed to completely vanish from the market after the early 90s.
 

MmmBeef

Member
Oh man, I loved these books. Especially later on, when you started gaining those Grand Master skills... God, I feel old.
 

justchris

Member
Wow, awesome. I still have a lot of the original books (although I never could find all the Magnakai ones). Actually, I've been meaning to pick up the Lone Wolf RPG, maybe I'll even have the money for it this year.
 
Media Works has had some of their Light Novels converted to the Nintendo DS in Japan. They sell 'em in book stores too which makes me wonder if Media Create can accurately track them.

I'd like a US publisher to localize and bring Iriya no Sora over here.

A DS book series would be new. Maybe we can persuade Atlus? Or a book publisher? I think it could be good business. Head over to Barnes Noble and check out the Nintendo DS catologue. :)
 
These books?

23st1lj.jpg




They were awesome, Deathtrap Dungeon even got a PSX game and all.

Writing shit on your book wasn't cool though lol
 
What's the difference between a Gamebook and a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

I remember having two of these awesome Mario Choose Your Own books. They were totally sweet, I remember one time I managed to get Luigi into the Olympics and we did the triathlon together and he fucking won because I wanted him to jump! Or something. And then another one where Mario blasted goombas and such. Freaking great stuff.
 
Son of Godzilla said:
What's the difference between a Gamebook and a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

Choose Your Own Adventure books were generally quite simple and when presented with the option you basically just decided on which page to go to next - Game Book's are pretty much the same except that you have a character sheet to fill out and you have a dice roll to decide certain factors (some required you to roll to decide which page you went to and some required you to roll to determine attack/defensive power etc).
 
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