Publication History
In 1980, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone attended a Games Day, and after meeting with a Penguin editor decided to create a series of single-player gamebooks. Their first submission, The Magic Quest, was a short adventure intended to demonstrate the style of game. The Magic Quest was eventually accepted by Penguin Books, although the authors devoted a further six months to expanding and improving upon the original concept.
The end result was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and after several rewrites, the book was accepted and published in 1982 under Penguin's children's imprint, Puffin Books. The original cover of the book was illustrated by Peter Andrew Jones, with the interior illustrations by Russ Nicholson. Jackson and Livingstone approved all artwork.
The title, like the game books that followed in the Fighting Fantasy series, distinguished itself by featuring a fantasy role-playing element, with the caption on each cover claiming each title was "a Fighting Fantasy gamebook in which YOU are the hero!"
The success of the Fighting Fantasy series (distribution in over 17 countries) allowed for numerous reprints of the original title, although the cover of subsequent versions changed due to deliberate redesign, printing errors, and releases in different markets. When the franchise was acquired by Wizard Books in 2002, the title (as with others in the series) was the first to be reprinted, again with a completely different cover, the rationale being that the old cover did not suit the modern market.
In 2007 Wizard Books released a special 25th anniversary edition, which included supplementary material. In 2009 Wizard Books released another edition of the original book, with yet another new cover.
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