Not really a Game Review… more of a Flashback

So dear readers, I know not how many of you may remember back in the day, but in 1979 Bantam Books started publishing Choose Your Own Adventure books (CYOA). Similar to an RPG but without the dice or other random resolution features. You reached a point in the story and made a choice to go in one of possibly several different ways.

They were really popular and it surprisingly took a couple of years but in 1982 TSR started publishing their own CYOA books under the Endless Quest moniker.

While the first few books were based directly off of their classic Dungeons and Dragons line of role playing games. It did not take long before they decided to make a few that were in support of their other wholly original games like Top Secret, Star Frontiers, and Gamma World.

Then in 1984 CYOA books got a bit of an upgrade when the Lone Wolf adventure books started getting published where you added an actual character sheet, and a few random elements into the CYOA method and made them even more like an RPG.

Well TSR was not to be outdone and so they started publishing their own adventure game books under the Super Endless Quest blazon.

When they started doing the Super Endless Quest… later just called the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Gamebooks… they also got the ok to do one of their biggest licensed products Marvel Super Heroes. They had been doing licensed books already with Conan. But the big surprise came when they teamed up with Steve Jackson Games and published adventure books for Car Wars.

Now then being a bit of a collector when it comes to these things, and being a bit of a nostalgia freak I was thrilled a few years ago to see that the original CYOA books were coming back into publication. So I was wondering what would happen with the Endless Quest series. So far what has come out in 2018 and 2019 has been a total of six books that I know of that are similar to the originals, but in my opinion since they are trying to make things 5th edition specific and supportive, it makes it a little more challenging to have fun with. On another note the original creators of the  Lone Wolf series have released an app for your smart devices that you can play out the original ten books of that series. It actually has a character tracker, random roller and everything.

Now then these books, and I know I am focusing on TSR products here, were all over the place. And I did not even touch on the Adventure Hearts materials that TSR published, or the fact that there were books published in the UK and Europe that never made it into the states, for an assortment of reasons. And to be quite honest I don’t have the time or the resources to go into every variation of CYOA or Adventure Game Book that is out there. But I dont have to.

If you are interested in checking out more titles or if you have some of the old Adventure Books but do not have the character sheets then I want to suggest you check out Demain’s Gamebooks page. The owner of that page has put a ton of resources together to set up a pretty much global database regarding these books and you really should take advantage of it.

In thinking about doing a review for these books I found out that I really could only rate them in some of my usual categories, and since there are variations on how they are made and how they play out, with or without character sheets, and other concerns, that the only rating that really maters in the end, is Fun…

So in rating this game medium I have to give it a 5/5 for fun. I know professional book reviewers back in the day gave them 3/10 to 6/10. But to be honest those folks were usually comparing CYOA books to fantasy and sci-fi novels by their most revered authors. So comparatively speaking yeah they may suck as a literary masterpiece. But that was never what they were meant to be. They were meant to be fun. They were meant to take you on a little adventure. They were meant for the little ones. In the flesh and inside us. And to be honest they were meant to help folks learn to take the consequences of their choices… unless they cheat… ahem… hummrmmm… yeah… yeah don’t cheat…

Anyway I am really hoping that in whatever format publishers choose, be it digital or print, or even both, that these ideas make a comeback. CYOA books are fun, and really can be a great way to help little ones learn about choices. They can also be a great way to introduce them into the idea of gaming.

Ok then. We end up here with a high score, something fun, and a bit of a prayer that they come back in force.

Hope you all have a great week. Keep gaming, and keep making up your own mind. Don’t take my word for it, figure out what you think is fun and run with it.

Now gimme the dice, I need to see if I need to go to page 33 or 97 next.