Talisman of Death

Long ago, a Talisman was made with supreme magical powers capable of destroying all life on the medieval world of Orb. The protagonist, a contemporary denizen of modern-day Earth, is brought there by some strange enchantment in order to retrieve the Talisman and remove it from all possibility of misuse. Numerous individuals and groups will try to stop the player, hoping to exploit the Talisman for their own ends, and the world of Orb (also the setting for the authors' Way of the Tiger series) is just generally a dangerous place, so -- hero beware!

That was the state of affairs back in 1984, when it was first published as number 11 in the line of original Fighting Fantasy gamebooks; 27 years later, it makes its way to its first computerized adaptation as a PSN mini for PS3 and PSP. The gamebook's complete 400-section text has been retained with selectable hyperlinks (and lots of reading!), along with its original interior illustrations, but there is interesting new material as part of the presentation: character generation is enacted through (shades of Ultima) a tarot card reading of sorts; additionally, players can choose to resolve combat and test against their stats (the FF gold standard SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK) through the total randomness of simulated die-rolls or by participating in a more involved tile-matching memory minigame. Of course, inventory and stat adjustment are fully automated.