As far as I was concerned, the REAL mystery of Mystery of the Maya was why the spine didn’t look like the spine of any of the other books. It was plain instead of colored; it really stood out on my bookshelf.
MAx Torque, that’s the one, thanks.
I’m with Mirasol , unfortunately - I plowed through the things so fast that I can’t remember any specific one particularly well. I’m the same way with the other mainstay of my youth, those inquisitive Hardy brethren.
Being six or eight years old is underrated.
My favorite CYOA was about a kid who traveled through time. Looking at the list, it might be The Cave of Time, but I’m not sure. Was that the one whereyou traveled a few million years into the future and there were giant praying mantises all over the earth and the sun was red because so much of it had burnt out, and then you were killed by a mantis?That book totally freaked me out. I didn’t have many of these books, though, only about ten of them, and I didn’t like any of my other ones as much as this one (two of them were about ninjas in medieval times, and one was about the yakuza… I guess my parents thought I was into martial arts). I also “cheated” all the time, keeping my finger on the page so I could flip back and forth and read all the possibilities. When I found a path I really liked I would mark it with paper clips so I would be able to find it easily. I wouldn’t mind reading The Cave of Time (if, indeed, that’s the one I read) again because it was one of the first SF books I got my hands on and I thought it was extremely cool.
I don’t remember any specific titles either. The one I remember very clearly was the one in which you are trying to stop aliens from taking over the world, or abducting people or something and in one particular ending, you end up tied up on a conveyor belt with “GRADE A PRIME HUMAN BEEF” stamped across your forehead. That book gave me nightmares. It was great!
I remember reading The Cave of Time. It really freaked me out. Made me stop reading those CYOA books. In one ending you die millions of years in the past, and a modern scientist finds your homo sapiens skull with ancient fossils… For some reason it gave me the willies.
I specifically remember deciding that The Third Planet from Altair was the best CYOA book, but I hardly remember anything about it now.
Man, I hadn’t thought about these books for years! Am struggling to remember the details of any of them but some of the titles mentioned are ringing some bells. Like some other posters, I was also freaked out by a few of the bad endings.
The silver covers were the Time Machine series. Loved them! Looking at the list the OP linked, I thought I had all the CYOA books because I have the first sixty. Didn’t know they went on to write another 110 more!
Anyone ever read the You are an Intergalactic Spy series? Same concept as CYOA except you’re a spy fighting evil aliens.
Mystery of Chimney Rock was one of my favorites. Another one I really liked was, Supercomputer where you get a computer that suddenly becomes much smarter than it was intended.
Here is a great page that covers all of the CYOA books:
http://www.gamebooks.org/cyoalist.htm
Basically that one and the one with the cowboy chick are the only ones I remember from that series.
IIR, there were some D&D ones that were actually not too bad.
Listen all y’all it’s a SABOTAGE!
Too funny
What was so great about them was the power of the second-person narrative.
It’s amazing how they could just say, matter-of-factly, “You are the world’s youngest secret agent. One day, the government calls to tell you that the evil Dr. Nefarious has stolen a ruby called The Scarlet Heart and is using it to build a giant death-laser! It’s your job to stop him!”
And no matter how bizaare or silly the premise, you’re just like, “Right on!” and you’re instantly immersed in that world. Something about making me the main character made my imaginings much more crisp and vivid than even my favorite conventional novels.
My favorite was the Easter-Island-UFO one, Inside UFO 54-40, too.
continuity eror, mine too! I LOVED *The Cave of Time (and yes, that’s the one where you might wind up in the future with insects the size of sheep). That was definitely my favorite. Here it is on Amazon.
Most of the somethingawful.com ones are funny, but I totally don’t get what the joke is supposed to be for the second (Harry Potter) and third (Space and Beyond) ones.
I mean, is the joke in # 2 just the fact that Harry Potter is an existing book, so you’re not really choosing your path? I could theoretically see a good CYOA book set in Hogwarts.
And on # 3, I must really be missing something.
The picture on the Space and Beyond cover is of the main character in the computer game Halflife 2. In the game, you have to fight evil aliens.
The joke is that many people see the Harry Potter series as “low” literature. By imagining a scenario where it was released not as a series, but as one of a series of unrelated books, it would not take the world by storm as it has, a the creator of the parody wouldn’t have to hear about Harry Potter everywhere he went. Off course, it could also be that the parodist was trying to make an imaginary tie-in, but if so, you would think they would make a newer cover. At seconfd thought, maybe the same answer as numbger three applies.
The man on number three is Gordon Freeman, scientist/hero of the excellent game Half-Life. Meanwhile, the phrase “Space and Beyond" seems to be meaningless. It seems just to be a collection of disparate elements.
Another vote for Your Code Name Is Jonah.
I remember being alternately infuriated and amused by the tastefully reticent ways in which “you” would always die in these books: “The rest of your story is much too sad to tell …”. As a boy I wanted details — preferably really gory ones — but the sad, head-shaking tone is kind of funny in its own right.
I have been gripped with an almost irresistible urge to go down to B&N at lunch and buy a handful of them. I seriously doubt they’ll be as satisfying as I’m imagining, though.
I remember reading many of them, although I don’t remember anything specifically except that Utopia page from UFO 54-40.
I also liked the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, which were largely impossible to find. I remember I had a complete set of 1-10 once which I left in a hotel room. A few years ago I picked up a handful on eBay but haven’t gotten around to playing them yet.
–Cliffy
A thrift store would be a lot cheaper.
I would always read them with my finger marking wherever I made a decision, I would follow one decision tree to the end, then backtrack and make a different decision and follow THAT one to the end, etc…
Sadly, this concept of life as an orderly process has not translated to my adult life.