The Griper's Times

FIGHTING Fantasy - a gateway to geekery for an entire generation - officially marks its 40th birthday this year. It was 1982 that the first instalment in the definitive "Choose Your Own Adventure" series - The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - was published. The gamebook, co-written by Games Workshop founders Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, offered an entry-level RPG experience. It was shield-bashing on a budget (RRP £1.95 - seriously). "Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are you all need," exclaims the rather breathless back cover.  The simple mechanics were no doubt reassuring when weighed against the very many models you needed to build a Warhammer army and the hefty set of rules attached to D&D. Twenty years on they also appealed to me when I got my hands on a re-release of the same book, brought out to cash in on the fresh wave of sword and sorcery euphoria in the early noughties. At the time I was only just starting to make friends with a similar interest in

MIGHTY pirate Guybrush Threepwood is officially making a comeback - and it's the second biggest we've ever seen. If you get the reference perhaps like me you spent some part of the early 90s somewhere in the Caribbean, swigging grog, insult sword-fighting and trying to hire a ship from the dodgiest vendor in the Tri-Island area TM. To this day The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel can stake a claim to two of the "greatest of all time" awards from the annuls of video game history. First, the best ever point-and-click adventures - even if it's fair to say the genre rapidly declined with the end of the 2D era. Perhaps more impressively the titles - 16 bit, subtitled and made by the sort of small team you could comfortably fit in a skiff - are the funniest ever released. It's a disgrace that more than 30 years on so few games have shared a sense of humour. So imagine the delight of fans when an April Fool's Day post a few days - casually confirming a long