grailquest

A series of gamebooks by J.H. Brennan.
It was published in Japan from 1985 to 1987 by Futami Shobou[1] under the title "Dragon Fantasy Series."

A guy who was working at Futami at the same time, handled that edition's illustrations using the pen name of HUGO HALL[2]. His impressive graphite artworks were well-received, and there are enthusiastic fans even today. The most popular was the Poetic Fiend, which was modeled on Klaus Nomi[3].
He has stated that because the editor-in-charge was unwilling to pay the copyright royalties for the original illustrations of John Higgins[4], the editor asked him to do them because he just happened to be close by. Moreover, it seems that because the illustrations were for foreign books, in order to create a certain tone he made sure to use a foreign type of PN. He is currently active as an illustrator, tabletop game designer, and game book writer.

Additionally, a message from the author to his Japanese readers was published in "Voyage of Terror" ~You can add 5 life points to this adventure, but in exchange 'You are forbidden from using judo or karate against the monsters that you encounter.' ~

Soudosha[5] began republishing the Japanese translation in 2004 using the original title of "グレイルクエスト".

Characters

[1] Wikipedia(JP): Futami Shobou
[2] http://twitter.com/GotoHugo
[3] Wikipedia: Klaus Nomi
[4] Wikipedia: John Higgins (comics)
[5] Wikipedia(JP): Soudosha

Posts