In the 1990s, we were all excited about the shiny future of hypertext novels. But for most people, this excitement was largely fueled by the 1980s fad for Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Just about every kid in the 89s loved these books. Even kids who didn't like to read enjoyed reading them, which sort of made them the Harry Potter of their time.

This series made books into something more like a game. What strikes me most about them now, thinking back, is that they were all written in the second person. ("You walk down the street. You see a large dog.") That's just not something you're going to find very often, and for good reason. But I guess it works when you're telling fantasy stories to kids.

 

The second-person narrative is one thing that firmly links these books to the tradition of tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons (which also became hugely popular in the 1980s). In a way, reading Choose Your Own Adventure books was like playing D&D, but you played it by yourself, and it wasn't as geeky. Well, not THAT kind of geeky, anyway.

 

Plus, if you made a bad decision, you could always flip back to the page you were on and start over. Not a feature in most D&D games.

 

CYOA books have largely been surpassed by video games. Video game technology has progressed pretty far since the 1980s, and its ability to tell stories and offer a branching narrative could never be surpassed by a paltry book. Particularly to the books' target audience of 10- to 14-year-olds. 

 

The line of books leaned heavily on the action adventure, fantasy, and science fiction genres. These weren't parlor tales or a novel of manners. They involved swashbuckling, monsters, travel to foreign locales, and intrigue. For the most part, the protagonist (you) was a relatable figure. 

 

You weren't going to find a lot of CYOA books where the protagonist was an elderly woman trying to work an unusually high power bill into her monthly Social Security budget, or a grub trying to decide where to pupate. Which is kind of too bad, if you think about it. The books took kids on adventures, but it was all the same sort of adventure. And that may be why most people eventually grew out of them. Not because of a frustration with the formatting, but with the sameness of the offerings at hand.