Slashdot Mirror
Choose Your Own Adventure Books Return
KermodeBear writes "Eight of the original 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books are to be republished this summer. From the Article: 'First published in 1979, the books let readers remix their own stories - and face the consequences. [...] the original titles return to bookstores, revamped with 21st-century references (cell phones!).'" For me, it's all about 1987's Space Vampire , by series originator Edward Packard. "Do you eject the vampire through the airlock?"
Every time I looked at Hypercard -- and HTML -- I thought "gosh, what an unnecessarily complicated Choose Your Own Adventure Book!"
"If you look at hard core porn, turn to page 12.
If you post to Slashdot, turn to page 14."
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Choose Your Own Adventure books introduced me to the concept of memory limitations in early computers.
:) I ended up "porting" my attempts to the C64, but never bothered finishing after realizing how boring that much typing really was :)
Back when I was single-digit aged, I thought it would be pretty cool to "program" a CYOA book into our Vic20. A buttload of print statements, with function keys acting as the choices at the end of a section.
Needless to say, when you get your first "?Out of Memory" error, just when entering in a program, you start thinking hard about just how this computer is storing things. Pretty much started my obsession with computer architecture at a very low level.
Even with only a few dozen pages of large print text, these books were well over 3500 characters
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Isn't that pretty much what RPG console games are now? A series of canned responses to a limited choice of options, but with some combat graphics thrown in?
These were fun when I was a kid, but that was before computer games really took off. I don't see the young whipper-snappers these days being excited by a book with simple either/or choices.
Still if the came up with a good story that was interesting and compelling, (I seem to remember the plot of these things being pretty weak, even as a kid) I don't see why they wouldn't be successful.
Actually having an interesting and compelling story could sell a few console rpg's too, or movies, or tv shows, etc. etc. It all comes back to that in the end, not the gimmick.
If yes is wrong, I don't want to be right.
[Page 3]
To read the article on "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" turn to page 117.
[Page 117]
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
You have died.
The End
Those were the days! Tiny oil eating shrimp that grew larger than a house, did you find all the possible endings?
Maybe those books lead me into computers... Taught us loops and branching as kids, no wonder I used GOTOs for so long.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I used to read these alot, and bookmark all the big choices, so I could go back when I didnt like what happened, or maybe was just to curious of what might happen if I chose a certain path.
After about 10 bookmarks its gets out of hand!
I do think these kind of books help kids think think about the way a simple pc program works.
I don't need this, I've got a Master's Degree in folklore and mythology!
I always thought it was really entertaining (and funny) to read them as if they were a normal book. The confusion that ensues if you read it out loud was always hilarious, especially if "you" die, but then are fine on the next page. This was especially amusing with the Goosebumps CYOA books.
About halfway through, though, it gets boring because you know all the storylines.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
...is it's the *only* genre of books I can think of told in Second Person.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I absolutely hated Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was in junior high. Instead of spending 200-300 pages on plot and character development, these books were basically just a serious of 4-page stories. Even if you did find a longer path through the book there was just no substance there to keep your attention. Besides, I ran out of fingers trying to mark all my places so I could go back whenever I died. Basically the books had all the plot and storyline of a first-person shooter game without any of the graphics or weapons.
It was like D&D for people without friends!
What's the other kind of D&D?
paintball
As I submitted my last comment, I remembered that during this time when the choose your own adventure books were all the rage, I was showed a bunch of very well-written books from a Canadian author named Gordan Korman. These books are targeted to teenagers mainly, and are at a much more advanced reading level than the choose your own adventure books. But kids are a lot smarter than they look and they do take well to intelligent, well-written fiction. Korman's books include a number of series aimed at, I'd say 12 year olds, called the McDonald Hall series, and then a bunch of very good books aimed at slightly older teenagers including "Losing Joe's Place," "A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag," "Don't Care High," "No Coins Please," and so forth. Great books. I also remember reading "Interstellar Pig" by William Sleater. Around that time I was also introduced to a great collection of science fiction short stories by various famous authors, edited by Asimov. I can't remember the title of this book, but it has some great thinker stories in it.
In short there are *lots* of good books out there that are intellectually stimulating as well as entertaining and won't insult kids' intelligence. Although perhaps the age of shoot-em-up games and FPS have ruined kids for that kind of thing. So maybe CYOA's 10-page stories will be well-received.
I really liked the Lone Wolf series. It was quite sophisticated with you being able to keep track of your characters health and choose different powers. Sometimes you'd find a spell or item that had a number attached and at various points in the books you could add that number to your current number to pull off a hidden course of action.
But I don't think anything compared to Steve Jackson's Sorcery series. Lots of detail, lots of depth and if you didn't beat the seven serpents in book three then the villain in book four knew you were coming! Ah, happiness!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
"the books let readers remix their own stories"
Can we please stop using unnecessary buzzwords and buzzimplementations-of-words in article descriptions?