Comments on: Your adventure ends here

By: f3mbot

f3mbot — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Weird. This was the exact same thing they told me at a Tea Party Rally I went to one time as a dare.

By: Ian Wood

Ian Wood — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:11:00 +0000

You have been eaten by a concept.

By: Daneel

Daneel — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:14:00 +0000

Somewhere at my parent’s house there is a copy of Endless Quest #1, Dungeon of Dread. Loved that book.

I remember trying the Jackson/Livingstone ones a few times from the library, but never really getting into the whole dice rolling thing so much.

I also had a copy of Legends of Skyfall: The Black Pyramid – I think that one used coin tosses instead. I also remember hating it and dying repeatedly crossing the sodding desert right at the start.

By: ifriit

ifriit — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:52:00 +0000

Hah, that’s bizarre. While I’m totally unsurprised they knew each other, I did not know the American Steve was involved at all.

By: marukosu

marukosu — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:41:00 +0000

There’s definitely a resurgence of gamebooks these days. The original Choose Your Own Adventure was relaunched in 2005 by Chooseco, available at cyoa.com.

Also with full disclosure, I’m the series editor for a new ‘easy reader’ version of the original CYOA. Our series is adapted for English language learners, out from McGraw-Hill Asia. Learn English while meeting a gruesome fate! :-P

By: Matthew Petty

Matthew Petty — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:20:00 +0000

The screenshot here is from Lone Wolf, my own personal favourite series. They are all now available at this link, thanks to the generosity of the author, Joe Dever:
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home
It includes maps the paths through the books, and tools for playing the books online.

By: Jonathan Badger

Jonathan Badger — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:08:00 +0000

It’s actually more confusing than that. While the UK Steve Jackson wrote *most* of the Fighting Fantasy books listed as being by “Steve Jackson”, at least one of them (Scorpion Swamp) actually *is* by the US Steve Jackson — probably the only example of somebody ghostwriting under their *own* name — the two Steve Jacksons knew each other — the world of 1980s gaming wasn’t that large.

By: James Kimbell

James Kimbell — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 23:06:00 +0000

How could it not?

By: Mister44

Mister44 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:45:00 +0000

Remember the Dungeons and Dragons series? I had a ton of those too.

By: Comrade7

Comrade7 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:39:00 +0000

Loved these books as a kid. Also, RIP Donald Sobol, author of the Encyclopedia Brown books… another series that I loved in my youth (wistful sigh).

By: Ben Britten Smith

Ben Britten Smith — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:17:00 +0000

Actually, Ian Livingstone (of fighting Fantasy fame) just wrote a new one called Blood of the Zombies (out in like a month or so) and there are a few indie game devs who are creating all new CYOA style books. Google ‘Gamebook Adventures’ and ‘Choice of Games’.

The Gamebook Adventures guys are also doing the digital version of the new Fighting Fantasy book.

Disclosure: I am on of the guys who develop Gamebook Adventures. We are huge CYOA gamebook fans :-)

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:13:00 +0000

Cthulhu thrives on madness

By: humanresource

humanresource — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Best Fortune Cookie ever.

By: Danelda

Danelda — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Reminds me of the site screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com.

“You have no friends”

“This action is no longer possible”

“There is nothing here to do”

Chilling!

By: ifriit

ifriit — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:34:00 +0000

See my reply to Mister44, above. :P

By: ifriit

ifriit — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:33:00 +0000

OMG I’d completely forgotten about Interplanetary Spy. I know I had all those books as a kid along with a broad variety of CYOA books and gamebooks.

I still kind of miss Lone Wolf.

By: ifriit

ifriit — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:26:00 +0000

A minor aside–the Steve Jackson who wrote the Fighting Fantasy series of books is not the same man as the Steve Jackson who founded Steve Jackson Games. The FF author is one of the founders of Games Workshop and Lionhead Studios.

By: Lupus_Yonderboy

Lupus_Yonderboy — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:20:00 +0000

Can this be the new Boing Boing 404 Error page?

By: Marko Raos

Marko Raos — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:25:00 +0000

things man was not meant to know…

By: Gilbert Wham

Gilbert Wham — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:16:00 +0000

Fuck, yeah, Steve Jackson. And don’t forget Car wars…

By: Gilbert Wham

Gilbert Wham — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:15:00 +0000

Depends how much your mother drank…

By: clarkie604

clarkie604 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Yes they still make them. My 9-year-old son started bringing them home from school a few months ago. I have to admit that I read through a couple of them, and died several times.

By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:56:00 +0000

As a child 4 generations ago we always said,’see ya on the flip side’.

By: BookGuy

BookGuy — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I also loved the hell out of these. It does appear that the series was “relaunched” a few years back:

http://www.cyoa.com/

Edited to add: There are some eBook versions of some of them, available on iTunes. I just peed a little out of excitement.

By: evantune

evantune — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:43:00 +0000

I remember doing book reports in the fourth grade using Choose Your Own Adventure books. The teacher didn’t realize that I was only reading portions of the book but still getting to the end. I was even lazy as a kid.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:40:00 +0000

Even though it was a “happy” ending, one of my favorites from the choose-your-own-adventure book The Cave Of Time was coming out into an earlier time period and settling down. It concluded, “You die a few years before you are born.”

Before I became a Doctor Who addict that introduced me to the concept of a “time loop”, which fascinated and haunted me.

And then there were Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! books. I have a cousin to whom I’ll be eternally grateful for introducing me to those.

By: Mister44

Mister44 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:38:00 +0000

I LOVED those books. Even better where the ones you could roll dice to defeat the monsters. Space Assassin by Steve Jackson Games was one of my favorites.

Do they still make CYOA books anymore? If not – why?

By: Christopher

Christopher — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:37:00 +0000

And you can’t skip ahead a few pages and say, “That’s what happens to me if I make that decision? Screw that!”

By: evantune

evantune — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:36:00 +0000

Spoiler alert.

By: Eddie Perkins

Eddie Perkins — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:32:00 +0000

Ah, choose your own adventure books. I lost my best friend in 4th grade over one of those. I lent a Dungeons and Dragons-style one to him. His mother found it, decided it was satanic, and I was evil and a bad influence, and forbade him from ever even talking to me again.
Sadly in life you can’t just turn the pages back and pick a different choice.