Of the first 50 editions, which of these is (or was) your favorite CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE title?

(apologies for the delimitation (or lack of) formatting in poll options)

Classic Thanksgiving Eve thread.

I own these all. I reread a few of'em last July.

answer:

Deadwood City

haha I thought the title said "Which of these titles best describes you?"

I read The Mystery of the Highland Crest and Sabotage quite a bit, and the first in particular holds up as a good children's yarn. The Horror of High Ridge is one of the gorier kid's books I've read. he Mystery of Ura Senke taught me about the Yakuza and Japanese tea ceremonies.

Was Chimney Rock the one with the witch and people got turned into cats and such?
I wish I had still had my copies of these.

Inside UFO 54-40, for its hidden ending that works with the story. I think this is also the one where You can join a hivemind where everyone slowly dies as they fight a war together.

Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? sounds so intriguing to me right now.

I think I'll see if my library has any of these.

Was Chimney Rock the one with the witch and people got turned into cats and such?

Yep. The early ones were rather shoddily written and had too many possible endings.

abanana: it took me months to accept that the way I found the paradise planet was the way I was supposed to find it.

the only one I vaguely remember is Space Patrol, but I read a bunch of these

all I can remember is hazy dim blurry covers

From this list, it's only the earlier ones-around the first ten- that even ring a bell. I'm not sure why that would be, since it was at least a few years later that I would've been reading them. I would love to have a collection of these.

real cheap on Amazon (a penny for some of them). They're frequent guests at used bookstores too.

Thanks, I'll have to have a look around.

I think Harlow Thrombey is the one that has one page with like 15 different choices on it, that really seemed amazing to me as a kid.

two of which have the same outcome!

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I probably haven't read enough of these to vote really (thought I'd read more but I guess they were mostly post-50) but Inside UFO 54-40 was weird and mind-bending to me as a kid and I still think of scenes from it often, so voting for that.

Deadwood City also p. good but I got that later and didn't reread it quite as obsessively.

my fave unfortunately not in the top 50:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T4zf0220L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I was really creeped out by the 54-40 ending where you spend the rest of your life in some drug-induced alternative reality not caring that it isn't real! Like, I was maybe 7 and I couldn't even bear to look at the double-page it happened on it freaked me out so much. Welcome to speculative fiction, kid! Thank you Edward Packard.

I miss these

I reread The Dragon's Den last week: a wtf but entertaining LOTR-esque yarn with a time-traveling Nazi.

I keep an eye out for these at bookstores but they always seem to be later editions than the ones I want. voted UFO 54-40 for, as noted, making the most out of the format's potential for adolescent headfuckery.

I also liked when these books basically punished the reader for being a chickenshit - you choose the lazier of two options and got killed, or stayed home and nothing happened etc.

btw this title:

Return to the Cave of Time Edward Packard

has no happy endings. It's a mournful little book.

http://i.imgur.com/xM4UfJx.jpg

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Whoa cant believe i missed this, i do remember UfO 5440 kinda freaking me out a bit at the time.

hey check this out
http://sciencefictionmuseum.org/ChooseYourOwn.htm?Pg=000

Circus of Fear!!! I owned that D&D book.

http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/cyoa029.jpg

the weirdest one of all imo

heh, I love seeing that image bounce around the web.

I remember the Kingpin guy waving a stick.

RIP R.A.Montgomery: http://www.cyoa.com/pages/r-a-montgomery-1936-2014

27 The Horror of High Ridge Julius Goodman 1983

This one scared the absolute fuck out of me when I was about nine years old

64 used & new from £0.01

our own mortality in the pages of this book ought to be sending your insurance premiums inching higher. Here are some of the highlights:

You, Ricardo and Lisa get blown away by prospectors in a hail of rifle fire. (p. 44)
A prospector fatally cauterizes you with a red-hot iron. (Ouch!) (p. 47)
You get splattered with spectral blood from a knife murder that occurs right in front of you, and presumably burned to death. Complete with illustration! (p. 68)
“It looks as if your only choice is the way you will die.” (p. 75)
“Searchers don’t find your bodies for a month.” (p. 79)
“The sound of you hitting the road is loud in the quiet night.” (p. 93)

And, my absolute favorite, also with an illustration:

“Then the silence is broken by your screams as knives appear out of nowhere and bury themselves in your backs.” (p. 71)

Even this isn’t the worst of it. I think what really pushed this book over the top was page 51, where you see an Indian warrior carrying a decapitated head by its hair, with blood dripping down his back. The illustration on the facing page–yes, you see everything–is especially horrifying.

http://seanmunger.com/2013/09/10/retro-book-review-the-horror-of-high-ridge-choose-your-own-adventure/

Just staying in on a Friday night, googling books from when I was in primary school