Choose Your Own Adventure
November 24th 2006 03:49
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Way back in the 80s, when the height of computer gaming was all about waiting fifteen minutes for a cassette to rewind in your commodore 64, there was a whole other level of interactive fiction for kids with short attention spans. This phenomenon was known as 'Choose Your Own Adventure'.
I used to love 'Choose Your Own Adventure'. It ran from 1979 all the way up to 1998, and nearly 200 seperate adventures have been published in that time. Recently, they began re-releasing some of the best adventures for a whole new generation, complete with hip new covers.
Basically, the premise is this... the book is a fictional story written in second person, EG. "You wake up in a dark room. You don't know where you are. Sucks to be you". The story is broken into shortish chapters, and at the end of each chapter you are presented with two or three options, you can choose what your character decides to do! You follow your choice to the page that corresponds with it and it may either eventually ead to 'winning' the adventure, or some sort of horrible and random failure. The randomness of these books is what made them so great. Sometimes you had no idea where you could end up, and there were so many different options. The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series explored all kinds of scenarios in it's years... underwater adventures, ninjas, dinosaurs, aztecs, spies, maoris and aliens, gang warfare, space stuff!, etc, etc.
The books were such a smash hit that a few other series popped up as well, some of them weren't bad, but generally they weren't as good as 'Choose Your Own Adventure'. There was a series called 'Time Machine' which dealt with travelling to various periods in time. There were some other ones I don't really remember all that well, and there were even Doctor Who 'Make Your Own Adventure' stories, but these were mostly fairly lame.
There was also an excellent series brought out by the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' creator called 'Escape'. These were four interlinked books that encompassed a larger overall story, I think the first series of four books was about an alien planet. The second series was an awesome fantasy quartet about the medieval kingdom of Frome. I still have one of these books, it's tops.
The best thing about 'Choose Your Own Adventure' is that it inadvertently led to the creation of another series of books, 'Fighting Fantasy'. These were more adult books, a lot more complex, and they involved dice and notekeeping more akin to Dungeons and Dragons. Incredibly nerdy, I know, but also incredibly fun. More on these in the near future!
If you choose to keep on reading, look below the picture.
If you choose not to keep on reading, go elsewhere.
Way back in the 80s, when the height of computer gaming was all about waiting fifteen minutes for a cassette to rewind in your commodore 64, there was a whole other level of interactive fiction for kids with short attention spans. This phenomenon was known as 'Choose Your Own Adventure'.
I used to love 'Choose Your Own Adventure'. It ran from 1979 all the way up to 1998, and nearly 200 seperate adventures have been published in that time. Recently, they began re-releasing some of the best adventures for a whole new generation, complete with hip new covers.
Basically, the premise is this... the book is a fictional story written in second person, EG. "You wake up in a dark room. You don't know where you are. Sucks to be you". The story is broken into shortish chapters, and at the end of each chapter you are presented with two or three options, you can choose what your character decides to do! You follow your choice to the page that corresponds with it and it may either eventually ead to 'winning' the adventure, or some sort of horrible and random failure. The randomness of these books is what made them so great. Sometimes you had no idea where you could end up, and there were so many different options. The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series explored all kinds of scenarios in it's years... underwater adventures, ninjas, dinosaurs, aztecs, spies, maoris and aliens, gang warfare, space stuff!, etc, etc.
The books were such a smash hit that a few other series popped up as well, some of them weren't bad, but generally they weren't as good as 'Choose Your Own Adventure'. There was a series called 'Time Machine' which dealt with travelling to various periods in time. There were some other ones I don't really remember all that well, and there were even Doctor Who 'Make Your Own Adventure' stories, but these were mostly fairly lame.
There was also an excellent series brought out by the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' creator called 'Escape'. These were four interlinked books that encompassed a larger overall story, I think the first series of four books was about an alien planet. The second series was an awesome fantasy quartet about the medieval kingdom of Frome. I still have one of these books, it's tops.
The best thing about 'Choose Your Own Adventure' is that it inadvertently led to the creation of another series of books, 'Fighting Fantasy'. These were more adult books, a lot more complex, and they involved dice and notekeeping more akin to Dungeons and Dragons. Incredibly nerdy, I know, but also incredibly fun. More on these in the near future!
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