Choose Your Own Adventure

If you want to learn about the re-release of the Choose Your Own Adventure books keep reading. If you want to read the local entertainment listings, turn to page 64.

Feature by Alec McLeod | 15 Jul 2006
Choose Your Own Adventure: It sounds like the kind of slogan you would hear from IBM or Microsoft to convince you of the limitless possibilities of looking at a screen, but back in 1979 that would have amounted to nothing more than kissing a calculator. In those days, portable interactive entertainment meant reading a book. Luckily for kids, Chooseco had just developed an entirely new way to read books, one where each reading would be completely different and the reader would be the protagonist. What was their secret? Sorcery? Drugs? Oompa-Loompas?

Chooseco gave each paragraph multiple-choice endings, with each choice leading to a new paragraph somewhere else in the book. So if you thought Chooseco's secret was 'Sorcery' you may have turned a page to find yourself confronting an evil Power Master (see 'War with the Evil Power Master', 1984), 'Drugs' could have developed into a psychedelic mind-odyssey (see 'Prisoner of the Ant People', 1983), and 'Oompa-Loompas' may have led to a legal writ by the estate of Roald Dahl. It seems so simple now, but back then the buzz-word of 'interactivity' had only just started to flap its wings and it was difficult to see where it was heading. Ultimately computers did take over, but the basic logic behind video games can be seen in the CYOA books. Concepts like 'free-roaming' environments and multiple endings are the bread and butter of games such as the 'Resident Evil' or the 'Grand Theft Auto' series.

The idea that freedom comes from being allowed to choose for yourself is one we take for granted, but it does not always stand up to philosophical enquiry and a quick read of one of these books illustrates this point. Ingenious though they may be, most of the CYOA books involved at some stage being faced with three doors or paths, one of which would invariably lead to instant destruction by some large monster. One of the oldest stories we have, that of the Minotaur, is an illustration of the fact that options don't make us free; the labyrinth, with all it's twists and turns, is still a prison, and freedom comes from thinking outside the box. On entering a library in the 80s, you would have seen kids doing just that with a CYOA book, each finger in a different page, hacking into every permutation until all the malign elements had been rooted out - not so much reading the book as kneading it.

The most famous aspect of CYOA is it's second-person narrative – the book was written to you, about you – something that is truly rare in literature. Chooseco stopped printing in 1998, but now they're back, having reprinted versions of some of their classics. They are also releasing a new animated CYOA DVD, 'The Abominable Snowman' starring 'Malcolm in the Middle' himself, Frankie Muniz. YOU HAVE DIED. TURN TO PAGE 1 AND START AGAIN.
The first Choose Your Own Adventure DVD, The Abominable Snowman is out July 25th. http://www.chooseco.com