Amid the many pop culture phenomena Gen Xers were exposed to, one of the most pleasant for me were the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Appearing right at the end of the 70s and absolutely exploding in the 80s, not all the entries in the series were created equally, a fact that we young readers were well aware of as we recommended particular books over others. There were also certain endings that felt arbitrary or unsatisfying, so many of us were perfectly fine when many an imitation series popped up. Hey, Activision breathed new life into the Atari 2600 after all.
So there were the Endless Quest books from TSR, which led to moral panic tumult at my school’s book fair one year, as well as the Fighting Fantasy game books, which added some dice-rolling to your interactive fiction experience. The latter series became one of my favorites.
But there is something about the original trendsetter that hits right in the nostalgia neurons. So with that in mind, you might enjoy this 20-minute history of CYOA, which also answers the question “What happened to the series?”
Interestingly, Chooseco, the company currently publishing (and republishing) CYOA books has done custom stories… as I saw a cybersecurity one on a co-worker’s desk. They had picked it up as a marketing tie-in at a conference and, while the company that clearly wants you to choose them for your cybersecurity needs is weaved into the book, it is a properly entertaining CYOA book… though it obviously is crafted to be lightweight. That was something evident even when we raced through the books back in the day. I’m not saying we need a Choose-Your-Stream-of-Consciousness-Bloomsday-Adventure version of Ulysses by James Joyce, but perhaps something between that and the books clearly made for younger readers.
I’m going to be researching more CYOA type books for grownups, though if anyone has favorites, feel free to list them in comments.