Mostly because I think modern conception of the unicorn has dulled its fierceness. I think the prime image that springs to mind (aside of countless cartoon versions) is of the unicorn laying its head in the lap of a maiden. Gentle. Quiet. And here’s this book, where it is illustration after illustration of the unicorn kicking your ass. Literally you are on the business end of the ass-kicking, thanks to the first person perspective. This brings me joy.

I also think it is funny because the earliest Lost Worlds books used combatants from the Society for Creative Anachronism as visual reference for the the various maneuvers. Makes sense, what with the SCA being all about armor and medieval combat. But I also like to envision what sort of farcical violence might emerge in attempting to get similar reference out of a real live ornery horse.

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Unlike the Samurai, who is a conventional combat character, the Ninja, of course, comes with a number of trick cards — blinding powder, caltrops, itching powder, kusari-fundo, poison, shuriken, sleeping powder and a smoke bomb — that can be used in place of typical attacks. These draw on a special pool of gimmick points and give the Ninja…I don’t want to say unfair advantage, but like the spells introduced in the Tome of Red Magic, they introduce tactical problems that are challenging to nullify.

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This is Lizard Man with Scimitar and Buckler (1984). Lizard folks are cool. This one is kind of giving me Whiplash from Masters of the Universe vibes.

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Ace of Aces is a genius idea. It’s a box containing two books, one for the Ally plane, one for the German plane. Each book contains a mind-boggling number of illustrations of a cockpit from a first-person perspective (always locked on the enemy plane) and, by calling out the numbers at the bottom, you “perform” dogfight maneuvers. And that’s basically it — use the books to fly around and try to shoot the other player out of the sky. A two-player analog flight simulator.

This thing astounds me. Like the design of it. It is so brilliant and cumbersome at the same time. I can’t imagine the work that went into this. It’s so cool! I will probably never play it!

This is the first product by Nova Games, who would go on to produce the Lost Worlds series of one-on-one fantasy combat gamebooks in the same vein. The form would be periodically imitated by other game makers — West End knocked off both versions in a Luke vs. Vader lightsaber dueling game and an X-Wing vs. TIE fighter dogfighter.

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The Cold Drake is kiiiiinda doofy. I get way more “puppy wants to play” vibes than “terrifying dragon going to eat you” vibes. Shades of Falkor from Neverending Story, too, maybe? I am not real sure when this was actually published, so it is hard to say if there is a direct influence from the film.

Oh, one more thing about Lost Worlds, at least the ones published by Nova: they smartly included coupons for corresponding Ral Partha minis. Good marketing synergy!

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The art in these books must have been a real pain in the butt, but mostly I think it comes off well. There is something real unnerving about the images in which the blade comes right to the front edge of the composition. Arne Starr is the guy behind the illustrations. Not only is he an artist, but he’s an actor, too, specializing in playing sketch artists. He was on 21 episodes of Mad Men, apparently!

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A couple other companies have lifted the mechanics of Lost Worlds for their own games. West End Games comes immediately to mind — they have a lightsaber dueling game and an X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game. I think there are some Game Workshop variants out there too.

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The Lost Worlds books are fun for like the ten minutes it takes to play a battle, but there isn’t a ton of depth beyond that. You aren’t going to play this game for hours on end (probably?) and that makes the investment of buying multiple books a bit steep. But it is still a pretty fun novelty filler game.

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These are combat books and totally modular, so you can pick your favorite fighter in the line and square them off against any other fighter, or monster. You can even party up 2 or 3 on one for tough monsters. When you play, you hand your character book off to you opponent — the pages inside are their first person view of you character attacking. You choose maneuvers from a card and resolve them simultaneously. Sometimes they result in you scoring a hit or being hit, other times you’ll whiff or reposition. Most of the time, a given move you select and the move your opponent used restrict your options for the following turn — getting knocked down is going to make it hard to charge next round, for instance.

This is a pretty standard human fighter type — Barbarian with Two-Handed Sword (who looks vaguely like Alan Moore?).

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