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?"

Comments

These books predicted the Web

[AEton]

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."

Short books == long text

[freeweed]

Choose Your Own Adventure books introduced me to the concept of memory limitations in early computers.

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 :) I ended up "porting" my attempts to the C64, but never bothered finishing after realizing how boring that much typing really was :)

Replaced by computer RPG

[johnnywheeze]

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.

EJECT!

[iGN97]

"Do you eject the vampire through the airlock?"

If yes is wrong, I don't want to be right.

My Favorite One

[wan-fu]

[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

Yeeeeep!

[CODiNE]

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.

Shamelessly stolen

[LaurenBC]

A Selection from the Recently Discovered Jack Kerouac Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, Bop Affirmation, c. 1955

You're trudging in the riverbottom sand when zoooom, there goes a flatbed truck and you're suddenly on the back of the truck with two Nebraska farm boys and you're weeping, "Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-s," yes to the blue swing swing of the Bird, yes to Charlie Parker, that shimmering saxophone, yes to the original mind, yes to this uncompromising romp through the heartland, you who labored on the railroad with crimson sun on your back, you who know the palabra, you who look right into the blowin' breeze and cry and moan and shout

AND...

a. Discover a rainbow.
b. Go off to pick oranges with the Mexican girl.
c. Sing in a rising crescendo, "Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-s."

from Mcsweeny's

What made these unique...

[Skevin]

...is it's the *only* genre of books I can think of told in Second Person.

Hated them

[caseih]

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.

Re:Fighting Fantasy

[raehl]

It was like D&D for people without friends!

What's the other kind of D&D?

Re:Adventures Rule

[h4rm0ny]

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!