Titannica
Register
Advertisement
Titannica "Fighting Fantasy" Gamebook Database
Titannica-logo
Commercial? No
URL http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/gallicus/FFGamebookDatabase
Type of site database
Registration required? Not required to add entries
Owner Baseportal
Created by Alexander Ballingall
Available language(s) English
Launched October 6 2008
Current Status Active


The Titannica "Fighting Fantasy" Gamebook Database was founded in 2008 by Alexander Ballingall with the aim of becoming the most definitive, comprehensive and accessible repository of information relating to the Puffin Books publication of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

Classification[]

The books were broken down to several characteristics for classification purposes. These characteristics were as follows:

  • Puffin Book No.
  • Book Title
  • Cover Format
  • Dragon Back Cover "X Million Copies Sold!"
  • Printing Impression
  • Barcode Indicator
  • ISBN #
  • Price (£)
  • No. of Regular Gamebooks in List
  • Year of Impression (If Known)
  • Notes
  • Gamebook Data From

Some are self explanatory, but here are some further details.

OldPrint

Old style of printing information

NewPrint

New style of printing information

Printing Impression[]

This is which print run of the book we are looking at. The information for this can be found on the copyright page of the book.

Prior to late 1988/early 1989, in the Fighting Fantasy books this was set out as seen to the right. In this style of information each year of printing is given, with the number of print runs that year indicated in brackets "( )". In this example, the book has been printed a total of 10 times. The printing impression is thus noted as "10" and in the notes section the following is added: "*Print History: 1984 (1st); 1984 (3x); 1985 (2x); 1986 (2x); 1987; 1988"

In the second example, the only year of publication given is the original. Instead a series of numbers is presented. Essentially, the lowest number to be seen is the humber of that print run. In the example to the right, this is the 8th print run of this particular book. The numbers appear in lots of ten, so once a book is onto its 11th run, the numbers 11 through to 20 appear.

Barcode

Barcode of a book

Barcode Indicator[]

As well as displaying the ISBN at the top, books often have a second barcode section to the right. Until late in the Puffin run, this number was the generic, standby "90000". After that however, this number would change to indicate the print run of the book. An indicator number of 90101 was a first printing, 90108 was an 8th printing. This throws up some interesting clashes between the indicator number and the print run information on the copyright page.

Notes[]

This is for any other distinguishing marks on a book, such as absent or reversed logos, errors (such as the misspelling of book titles on the list or wrong illustrators noted), and if the list of gamebooks is numbered or not.

See Also[]

References[]

Advertisement