First person reading.

TenLeftFingers

Does anyone remember the first person novels? I had two when I was younger. You were presented with a choice, like 'You may: take the left path, or go right over a bridge'. If you wanted to take the first choice, you might turn to page 65, whereas choice two might be on page 125.

These were excellent books. They were very well worked out, and you could sometimes go full circle, or return to a place you were earlier at, therefore reading the same paragraph again, but you have the option to make a different choice this time.

Dice were often used to determine the outcomes of a battle, and it was up to the reader to keep an honest record of health, and finances etc. You could be killed very early on in the book.

Anyway, I don't even know what category they fall into. The book itself could be a science fiction or a western. I even had a spiderman one once. If anyone knows where I can find something like this again, please let me know. And if anyone has encountered anything similar, let us know about it!

Regards,
merlin.

Shinji

I've always heard them described as "Choose your own adventure" books - the best known author of them is Ian Livingstone, who is now chairman of game publisher Eidos.

There are tons of them out there, although I believe they aren't as popular as they used to be - I guess to a large degree they've been replaced with videogames, although oddly western videogames have no equivalent of Japanese "interactive novels", which are an almost direct translation of this concept to digital form....

Dont be at yourself

Yep, they're generally referred to Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I remember them being very unforgiving, with a seemingly harmless choice often leading to instant death. I'd always keep my thumb on the page before I turned

I do have fond memories of a Transformers one in particular, I must have read (or is it played?) that one countless times over.

echomadman

Joe Dever did a lot of them too,
notably the Lone wolf series, and Freeway warrior, a mad max-esque series of four books set in post apocalyptic america.

also rans were Steve Jackson, who co authored a lot of books with Ian Livingstone.

I also had a 2000AD special edition comic, with three choose your own adventure type stories in it, one each for Judge Dredd, Slaine, and Nemesis.

niallb

Originally posted by echomadman
also rans were Steve Jackson, who co authored a lot of books with Ian Livingstone.

Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone did the very first one - The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
This was in 1983 or maybe '82.
The second was "The Citadel of Chaos" and the third "The Forest of Doom".
At that point I think they computerised the author, and there were about 40 of them before you knew where to look.
The one I remember best was "City of Thieves".

These were called FIghting Fantasy books and were the first (AFAIK) to introduce dice.
Earlier than that there were some American ones branded as AD&D novels 'by' Gary Gygax.
These only had about 5 places throughout the book you could make a choice.

Gary Chalk and Joe Dever arrived on the scene a few years later, with a much better combat system and some follow through on the plots.

I'll shut up now as I've just found a site called appropriately enough fightingfantasy.com which goes through it in as much detail as anyone needs!

NiallB

sceptre

I don't remember the ones with the dice at all. I had quite a few of the original Choose Your Own Adventure books and a few from some other series as well (I first came across the CYOA books when some were free with tokens from Weetabix:D)

This topic might be more suited to the Retro board tbh (even though it's Literature) - there would probably be far more responses over there from people getting nostalgic for their childhood.

Manach

I remember the above, as well there was a series of books based on novels in a similar vane. I believe there were set in Xanth (Piers Anthony) & CoDominium (Jerry Pournelle) and a few other locales.

Dr. Loon

Yeah... I was big into these. Mainly Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I had pretty much every single book, up until the advanced fighting fantasy books - which is when I stopped for some reason. Possibly the discovery of alcohol!

I also remember a ninja series. Can't remember the author but I think it was a female author, and I also can't think of any names of books, but they too, were excellent.

bikini widow

The Ninja books took place on ’the word of Orb’ and you were a skilled ninja who was trained in the way of the tiger. I remember there was a picture guide at the start of each book that showed off your moves, I think I remember the “the teeth of the tiger throw”. These were a series of books which all interlinked. They where called in order..

Avenger
Assassin
Usurper
Overlord
Warbringer
Inferno

I remember you had many arch villains to defeat Scorpion Monks, followers of Nemesis and Honoric and his Legion of Doom!! At some stage there was also a scepter and an Orb that you had to put into your eye. Also the boss fights I remember as being brilliant as you had to choose between each move.

Actually I wouldn’t mind finding them and doing them again.

Thanx 4 The Fish

Had many of these books, favourite of them was an Indiana Jones one. Read it so many times that when it said if you choose left go to 165, I would not go left because page 165 said "You have just fallen through a trapdoor in the floor and been impaled on a spike trap".

I still have all of mine at home somewhere, think I will dig them out for my son when he is old enough to read.

smiles

i loved those books

<< Fio >>

Illkillya

there were advanced choose your own adventure books too... i remember having one of frankenstein in the arctic which was very good.. you used dice and had an inventory and stuff, and one called the House of Usher or something which was also very good, and a third one about sonic the hedgehog which was ****e.

Clintons Cat

The best CYOA series was the Sorcery Quartet by yer man Steve Jackson And Ian Livingstone.

Their Fighting Fantasy series was of varying quality though,I particually liked Island of the Lizard King (free the slaves),Appointment with F.e.a.r (superhero shinanegans),City of Thieves,Starship Travellar (slight trademark infringement of famous RPG) and deathtrap dungeon (yes i know),and freeway fighter (a steal from that Other Steve Jacksons Car Wars)never liked warlock of firetop mountain cause that maze was a complete dog

Also loked the Lone Wolf Series and the ill fated 2000 ad Diceman Comics.

The actual Chose your own adventure series were more basic fare,no dice or inventories just a simple narritive fork.They were more based in the real world/history as were the underated Time Travel series.

magnus500

If you have any of the lone wolf books 21 - 30 im hoping to finish my collection which only goes up to 20 at the moment. I love these when i was around 10 years old (a long time ago now!)

paleoperson

I'd describe a "first person" book as one where the narrator is speaking in the first person. These books are commonly called CYOA, I think CYOA is some sort of trademarked book series though. I remember reading the Endless Quest books in primary school and they seemed so amazing back then, then I bought a bunch of them as an adult and they were still good but somehow seemed a little bit.... childish in places. But they're okay, I need to finish them all some day.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the format though. One thing I liked about those books is there wasn't always a happy ending, one wrong move and it'd start describing how you were for example painfully freezing to death on a plane, slowly coming under the realization that you were never going to see your family or anyone ever again, wouldn't find that in a children's book these days.

Mr.Nice Guy

I remember loving these as a kid. Aside from the usual ones about orcs and magic I can recall a Goosebumps version where you were a kid who moves into a new neighbourhood and have to explore a haunted house with other kids. I can also remember one that came out around the time of Jurassic Park: The Lost World where you had to try to survive the various dinosaurs.

I wonder are these still popular nowadays or have they been surpassed by the various computer game versions, i.e. Telltale Games?

niallb

Hmm. Interesting to see that the last time I commented on this thread was 15 years ago...

Does anyone else from the generation who enjoyed these first time round also remember enjoying adventure games on computer?
Aside from the older Zork style, there were good ones available on Spectrum and Vic20/CBM64 such as the Artic series?

A: Planet of Death
B: Inca Curse
C: Ship of Doom (My own favourite :-) )
Espionage Island

These were actually very close in form to the best of those books, and as computers were scarce the books were a good alternative!
Can't see Netflix being replaced these days by animated flip books, but maybe imagination was a less consumer activity in those days!

TenLeftFingers

The first adventure game I played on a computer was Leisure Suit Larry on the Commodore 64, and then Monkey Island / Flight of the Amazon Queen on the Amiga years later.

They're great, but the books are special. I also found some great comics available for free as PDFs online but haven't tracked down what laptop I saved them to yet.

Ipso

I remember that Weetabix had a promo with these back in the day. Send in tokens and get the free.
I can only remember two of them; one was set in Italy (I think) and aas about a man who was basically a weapon and the other in Brazil and had to do with a lost city.

LionelNashe

The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' ones were good. The similar book that I had, that had dice, inventory, health, combat, etc. was a Robin Hood story with magical elements, kind of like the TV series from the 80s.