As my unpacking continued, I found a box of books that was at my parents’ house until a few weeks ago. This one containted my full collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books. These things really brought back some memories.
As a kid, I really enjoyed these dynamic paperbacks — from the first page, the reader had the choice of where to go in the story. Not exactly a high-level Internet-based RPG, but it was some pretty interesting stuff during its time. Interestingly, they published CYOAs until 1998.
Some of the ones I remember I especially enjoyed were The Cave of Time (the first CYOA), The Mystery of Chimney Rock (surprisingly spooky), Deadwood City (a good Old West setting), and Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? (a murder mystery, of course). My favortie authors were Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery, who, incidentally, also wrote the majority of the CYOA series.
One of the most interesting things I found amongst my collection was a small booklet that I had picked up for free from a local bookstore titled How to Write Your Own Choose Your Own Adventure (or something similar). It was a brief how-to guide from Edward Packard and apparently I used it: I also found a full CYOA book that a friend and I wrote together. It was actually pretty darn good, too. 🙂
The only decent CYOA page I could find is at http://www.gamebooks.org/cyoalist.htm. -ram
Posted in Childhood Memories
Sian January 20, 2007, 9:51 am
I always loved Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? and its great to read how it is a favourite amongst everyone else.. I also liked Chimney Rock. I had a look at Wikipedia and was surprised to read that Edward Packard actually invented the whole choose your own adventure idea – what a cool guy!!?!
Nat May 4, 2007, 12:27 pm
haha those books are awesome. i remember using up all my fingers trying to keep a tab of the choices i made just incase i died!!
me December 21, 2007, 5:04 pm
which was the one about the vampire that was a teacher
Carlos March 31, 2009, 9:24 pm
Can some of you scan any of those books into pdf format and upload it on the net, please?
Thanks.
Ryan April 1, 2009, 6:07 pm
I’ll get right on that, person I don’t know!
NO July 26, 2009, 8:54 am
NO SCAN! THINK ABOUT THE AUTHORS!!!!!
Kaj February 19, 2010, 6:31 am
Another person you don’t know!
However, I do have a request also. I have never ever heard of that booklet about writing your own CYOA….any chance you’d share some info about that?