Choose Your Own Adventure Books Return 199
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?"
Adventures Rule (Score:2, Interesting)
"Escape from Fire Island" (Score:3, Interesting)
Short books == long text (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Yeeeeep! (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe those books lead me into computers... Taught us loops and branching as kids, no wonder I used GOTOs for so long.
Bookmarks! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
The best way to read... (Score:3, Interesting)
About halfway through, though, it gets boring because you know all the storylines.
What made these unique... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Third Planet from Altair (Score:2, Interesting)
I am still haunted by that book. It was my introduction to the disillusionments of the universe.
Re:"Escape from Fire Island" (Score:3, Interesting)
You think that's crazy? Try Hamlet the Text Adventure [versificator.co.uk]. You may laugh, but can you beat it?
North.
North.
Commit Incest.
Re:INSIDE URL 13-37 (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you know, there is no page that directs you to that ending?
They are very serious when they say you did not get there by making a choice. You had to turn to the wrong page to get there!
What got me started looking is one day I found myself at that ending and was tearing my hair out trying to remember the previous page number. (when you read those books, you just don't remember the previous page, you're too focused on finding the next page to remember it - the "cheaters" would leave a finger in the previous page in case they made a "bad choice", though sometimes the "bad choice" would not turn ugly for a few more pages and then you were just going to have to start over)
Re:Short books == long text (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually remember being really frustrated every time I wound up at a crappy ending, and didn't want to have to start going all the way back to the beginning to start again, so I would wind up holding my fingers in between four or five different pages corresponding to the last several jumps I had made, so I could recursively backtrack when I wound up in a problem situation..