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This Steve Jackson wrote 3 Fighting Fantasy books - #8, #19 & #22...

I had some of these too.

I also had some Marvel Superhero 'Computer Fun' books, but couldn't find a link to them anywhere.

Can we get a FAQ please? Here are the common answers:

* Visually with Angry Birds characters: http://learn.code.org/hoc/1
* Scratch
* http://coderdojo.com/
* Minecraft mods
* http://www.learntomod.com./
* https://pragprog.com/book/ahmi...
* http://codecombat.com/
* http://boardgamegeek.com/board...
* http://boardgamegeek.com/board...
* http://www.gamebooks.org/show_...
* http://venturebeat.com/2014/06...
* http://meetedison.com/
* BASIC
* Vic-20 C64 Compute! magazine
* Raspberry Pi
* Arduino
* Logo

Robo Rally is like a multiplayer boardgame version of LOGO...

Robot Turtles is even better for younger players

Micro Adventures were some of the books that I started with as a kid

I've got one or two of those TutorText books tucked away from my dad's collection when he was studying programming ("data processing", as they called it back then) in the late 60s.

And here they are, "The Bytes Brothers"

http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series_images.php?id=1171

Wow, this really has everything. I found the one I was looking for - http://www.gamebooks.org/show_item.php?id=6242

Check out gamebooks.org and with luck, maybe you'll find the series you're thinking of. Demian Katz is a man among men (or a geek among geeks), to be sure.

I'm not sure which was first (too lazy to look it up), but I remember reading both of them in 1st or 3rd grade. CYOA books always seemed somewhat -- I don't know -- slim to me. Not much there beyond the gimick, and often times it was only a few pages between "choices". Twistaplot books seemed to have more narrative substance there, longer periods that allowed for the choices you made to develop in the plot before being forced into another one page branch.

But perhaps that's just time making things all fuzzy... Amazon used books to the rescue?

Check out Demian's gamebook site http://www.gamebooks.org/ and the pdf scans at the Home of the Underdogs http://www.the-underdogs.info/gamebook.php if you're feeling nostalgic.

Now, Tunnels and Trolls made this their focus for a while. I have a ton of Solitare dungeons for T&T.

Chaosium had their Alone Against series, though I think there were only two, Alone Against the Wendigo and Alone Against the Dark, I have both. Pagan Publishing published a similar solitare scenarion Alone on Halloween which I do not have, and looking at the current price probably never will.

Oh, and there is something called Fighting Fantasy which is apparently British, so I missed out on that.

Still, being an angry loner as a teenager really paid off for me, as you can see....

it's hard for me to say what might be appealing to a girl specifically. But relative to age range, I would suggest some stuff like:

1. the Madeline L'Engle "Wrinkle in Time" books

2. The Chronicles of Narnia

3. Some of the more sci-fi'ish "Choose Your Own Adventure" books

4. Any of the Tom Swift / Tom Swift Jr. adventures

5. The Mad Scientists Club

6. Any of the Doctor Who novelisations.

7. and while not exactly sci-fi, how about some of the "The Three Investigators" stories?

Ok, ok, I spent the thirty seconds with google...

Bionic Commando

Worlds of Power is the series, I owned several of these myself. And the surprising thing is, these really were better than most anything else in my age-ten reading collection. I haven't dusted them off in the last decade to make sure they still seem good, but I especially liked the Metal Gear and Infiltrator ones, I recall. Heh. Metal Gear - there was another (more frustrating) innovative game.

So... who wants to write the Metal Gear HL2 mod? I bet the physics engine could handle that nicely.

more engaging than linear presentations such as those in most movies today

I wouldn't underestimate the engaging nature of the narrative. Storytelling is as old as mankind and it's not likely to disappear just because we can suddenly take control of the story. In fact I would argue that if you could control the story, what's the point of readin/watching/taking part in it? The point of storytelling is to engage the reader and make him feel an emotion. It's a lot easier to do that if the story throws him a curveball that he didn't see coming, or if the story has a load of story arcs that end up being resolved in the most unexpected of ways.

I remember reading a series of childrens' books called 'choose your own adventure.' I seem to remember feeling a bit short-changed with these books. Sure, the writing quality was pretty good, but the use of the second person narrative just felt downright wierd, a book telling me what was happening to me. Maybe if they were written in the third person it would have been better. I digress. What was missing was the plot resolution. I was left wondering, 'what is this story about?' Is it about me solving the mystery (as happened when I read it on one occasion) or is it about me dying a painful death along with all my friends (as happened when I read it a different time)?

There is just something about a third person narrative that no interactive game can beat.

Choose Your Own Adventure #1: The Cave of Time

Man those were the days.

I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way.

To follow the pirates into the cave, turn to page 45.
To run away screaming like a little girl, turn to page 13.

Those were the days.