A Day At The Beach

After long last, a short update to this CYOA blog; the following was a brief work submitted to the "KLIK HARDER PIRATE KART II", a compilation of deliberately lousy and primitive games -- in enormous quantities! Most of the titles were made using Clickteam's Klik 'n Play engine, but one of the authors found something even more basic -- a brief and vestigial choose-your-own-adventure designed to be manually navigated by the player in a text editor! The author thought it was awesome that I ran with the concept to the point of actually linking it up, and to this day KittyLambda is one of my top referrers to this blog.

A Day at the Beach
Game by PsySal (psysal@gmail.com) - www.kittylambda.com
Made on Feb 28, 2010 for the KLIK HARDER PIRATE KART II
Converted to HTML by A_Gamebook_Fan in July, 2010.

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You play this game in NOTEPAD.EXE or similar text editor. It's like a choose-your-own adventure story.
Sometimes, you'll be told to "[N]" where N is a number. You can get there by hitting CTRL+F (for find) and entering in [N]. Easy! [Please disregard; you can now just click on the links to take you to the narrative thread that interests you.]

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[0] Let's Begin

Please choose up to FIVE things you will take to the beach. Type them in here.

1:
2:
3:
4:
5:

Now, we shall begin:

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[1]

It's a lovely, sunny day. You run downstairs and ask your roommate, Paly, if he wants to go to the beach.

"The beach? What a FABULOUS idea! Let's go." he says.

"I've already got some things."

"Oh, excellent. Did you bring sunblock?"

• If you brought sunblock, [3]
• If not, [2]

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[2]

"I didn't bring any, sorry."

"That's ok, I have some" Paly holds up his sunblock and smiles.

Continue at [4]

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[3]

"I've got it right here!" You show him your sunblock.

"Ah... that sunblock isn't good enough for me. I'm going to bring mine anyhow.

Continue at [4]

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[4]

You head out to the car. Paly brings his surfboard along with his sunscreen, and apackage of cookies.

The drive to the beach is relaxing. You both have Tuesdays off, which isn't the usual day to head to the beach. So there's not too much traffic. You joke in the car and listen to Aaliya.

Finally, you arrive.

• If you need to use the change room, [6]
• If you want to head for the concession stand, [5]

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[5]

"I'm going to concession stand," you tell Paly.

"Sure, no problem, bro. I'll scope us a spot on the beach." Paly put this swimming suit on before he came, so he doesn't need to change.

"Sounds good, just stick your board in the sand so I can see where you're at."

"Yep!" He fistpumps.

You head to the concession stand, and scope out some things.

• If you want to buy chips, [7]
• For a coke, [8]

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[6]

"I'm going to the change room," you tell Paly.

"Yeah, this water looks awesome. I'm going to grab us a spot in the sun." Paly is wearing his bathing suit already so he's ready to get into the water.

"Oh, okay I hope I'll be able to find you."

"I'll put my board in the sand, so you can see it."

You smack your forehead. "Ah yeah, of course!"

The changeroom smells slightly sweaty. You strip naked.

• If you brought your swimsuit, [13]
• If you forgot it, [14]

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[7]

"I'll take these chips, mac."

"Sure, that'll be seven dollars."

• If you brought $7 or more with you, [10]
• Otherwise, [9]

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[8]

"I think I'll just get a coke."

"Sure, that'll be four dollars."

• If you brought $4 or more with you, [11]
• Otherwise, [9]

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[9]

"You don't have enough money! Get outta my concession stand!"

The owner takes it from you and glares. You shoulda brought money to the beach!

Dejected, you decide to go look for Paly.

• Continue at [12]

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[10]

You pay him the $7 and take your chips. What a rip off! You start to snarfle them down and then head to look for Paly.

• Continue at [12]

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[11]

You buy a coke for $4. You decide not to open it yet.

• Continue at [12]

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[12]

You head over to where you can see Paly's surfboard sticking up in the sand.

When you arrive, he's nowhere to be seen. You're about to set your things on the ground when you hear something:

"Help! Help!"

You look out and you can see Paly, waving his hands in the air. It's a shark attack!

You run into the water as fast as your legs will carry you. Soon you can see the shark; and it is a mean one, too!

• If you brought a gun with you, [15]
• If you have something heavy with you like an unopened coke or a rock, [16]
• Otherwise, [17]

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[13]

You put on your swimsuit, and put your clothes in your bag.

Heading out of the changeroom, you decide to go find Paly.

• Continue at [12]

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[14]

You decide today is the day to swim NAKED. You put your clothes in your bag and head out of the changeroom.

Out on the beach, it feels great to be wild and free. You spot Paly's surfboard but decide you want to head for the waves.

Along the way, somebody yells at you:

"Hey buddy, this isn't France you know. It's FLORIDA!"

You don't care, this feels way too good. You just smile at the man and shout "Yeah, well peace out man!"

Soon you're at the water and, dropping your bag of clothes you dive in.

The water envelops you and you feel a primordial longing for the sea. It's amazing.

...

Something has your leg.

THEFUCK?!!

NO!! It's a shark.

You thrash.

You kick at it.

It drags you under, and rolls you like a crocodile would. Wait, maybe it's a crocodile that has you?

You'll never know, because everything goes black.

- THE END. Thanks for playing!

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[15]

You pull the BUSHMASTER assault rifle out of your bag. Always pays to be prepared.

Leveling the sights on the shark, you pull the trigger.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.

The shark is toast.

You set the gun down and head towards the water, to meet Paly who is coming out.

"Thanks, man. He really had me there!"

"Let me look at your leg." You bend down and examine Paly's leg.

"Aww, aint' so bad." He's limping a bit, not wanting to put any weight on it. "It's a bit sore though."

"Yeah, actually somehow he didn't break the skin. Musta just had his gums on ya."

"Whew."

You head over to the first aid station and the life guard looks over Paly's leg.

"Good thing your friend here had a BUSHMASTER with him. That could have been game over for you."

"You're telling me."

You just smile.

"Well, it's been a good day. That shark is out of commission, let's get some waves."

Paly and you head to the ocean, friends again.

- THE END. Thanks for playing!

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[16]

You've got one chance only. You'll have to throw the coke can (or other heavy item that you brought with you) at the shark, and knock him unconcious.

You wind up. Those hours spent in little league will finally pay off.

Whup! The can (or other heavy item) lobs through the air. Whoosh!

SMACK!

You hit the bastard. The shark writhes in annoyance, and swims away.

You cross your arms and wait for Paly to head back.

"Thanks, man. He really had me there!"

"Yeah, I'm a good throw." You smile smugly.

"My leg hurts like a bitch." He's limping a bit, not wanting to put any weight on it.

"Yeah whatever."

"Whew."

You head over to the first aid station and the life guard looks over Paly's leg.

"Good thing your friend here had a coke can or other heavy item with him. That could have been game over for you."

"You're telling me."

You just smile.

"Well, it's been a good day. That shark is out of commission, let's get some waves."

Paly and you head to the ocean, friends again.

- THE END. Thanks for playing!

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[17]

You stand helpless as Paly is devoured by a shark.

...

It's quite a hideous sight, but you can't help but remember the more expensive sunscreen and the fact that his surfboard is right here.

You take his sunscreen and his surfboard, and leave the grisly scene. The water is turning red.

Better not try the waves today, because of that shark. But at least you've got a nice new surfboard and some thirty-some dollar sunscreen.

You load up the car and head back home, excited to go through the things in his room.

- THE END

Fight Or Flight?

Thanks for your patience -- a broken graphics card invisibly locked away my gamebook conversions-in-progress for a month, but here we are with restored access to them.

I've been looking forward to introducing this bit with a small accounting of gamebooks written by people better known for their non-gamebook endeavors. In 1985 noted science fiction author Harry Harrison took the unusual step of penning his own gamebook tie-in, You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat. Slowly crawling his way up the gaming totem pole, Warren Spector of later video game fame (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex) paid the bills scribing a licensed Marvel Comics gamebook for TSR, 1987's One Thing After Another. Another former TSR bright light, no less than Gary Gygax, wrote a line of Sagard the Barbarian gamebooks starting in 1985 with Flint Dille. Infamous kid-lit one-man-industry R.L. Stine (or "Jovial Bob Stine" as he was known in the earlier days) has the dubious distinction of writing gamebooks both as they first began appearing in bookstores for the first time (1982's Twistaplot line, among many others) and as the last huzzah of the declining phenomenon, with gamebook tie-ins to his own child-chilling Goosebumps franchise through 2000.

Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, best known as the game reviewer from Zero Punctuation, has tried to engage Lester Bangs' concern that all music critics were failed rock stars -- and has tried his hand at numerous genres of games, including but not limited to text adventures, graphical point'n'click adventure games, and even a little choose-your-own-adventure in 2002, which you can see in its original form over here. I've taken the liberty of throwing in some hypertext anchors and internal links so it can be played with the mere click of the mouse without having to onerously find the appropriate section yourself.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT?

How would YOU do in the great battle of evolution?
Find out in this nifty choose-your-own-adventure experience! Start at 1, and go to the appropriate passage when you're told. See how many ways you can die!

1

This is you:

A protozoan. Single-celled animal, the very bottom of the evolutionary ladder. On the bright side, the only way is up.

You will be faced with numerous possible predators or prey. All you have to decide is whether you want to FIGHT ... or FLIGHT? I mean, fly.

Here's the first scenario. You are floating around in the primordial soup when suddenly you come across:

A COLD VIRUS!

Poor, maligned, misunderstood cold virus, ex-convict, petty criminal and bringer of blocked noses everywhere. Who could have a defence against such a formidable enemy?

What's it going to be? FIGHT (turn to 19) ... or FLIGHT? (turn to 7)

2

You have chosen to FIGHT the Larch!

Intimidated though you are by the sheer size of the Larch, let's not forget that the thing can't actually move. You enjoy a few minutes of wearing your teeth down before the whole thing topples. But now your huge choppers are smaller than you'd like, and you're starting to develop thumbs on your feet. You have evolved into an APE! Go to 18!

3

Living in a small village community with the other neanderthal men, you are truly a force to be reckoned with. But wait, who's this coming up to pay his respects?

It's NEANDERTHAL TED!

Whoops! You've just remembered Neanderthal Ted lent you his lawn edger and you've forgotten to give it back! He's really out for your blood! What's a hairy man to do?

FIGHT (go to 8) ... or FLIGHT? (go to 15)

4

You're swimming around in the Indian Ocean, enjoying the warmth, but what's this coming towards you on spindly little legs?

A LOBSTER!

Nicknamed 'the Asian Crustacean' on the pro-wrestling circuit, Lobster's vice-like grip has ended the career of many a hopeful.

The question is ... are you FISH ENOUGH to take him on?

FIGHT (go to 12) ... or FLIGHT? (go to 16)

5

You have chosen to FLEE the mystery foe!

You run for your life, running pell-mell through the streets of the human settlement, making frightened gibbering noises. When you judge yourself to be far enough away, you turn around to look at what you fled from.

It's a KITTEN!

Well, don't you feel stupid! (Back to start.)

6

Little furry big-toothed mammal, scurrying happily through the trees with your new coat of fur, until - gasp! - something is in your path! What could it be?

A LARCH!

Tall and forbidding, the Larch is the strongest of all the deciduous plantlife. You'd better make a decision fast!

FIGHT (go to 2) ... or FLIGHT? (go to 9)

7

You have chosen to FLEE the cold virus!

What the hell kind of wussy protozoan are you? You haven't even got a throat to make sore, you little piddly creature. Get to the back of the evolutionary queue! No backbone for you today! (Back to start.)

8

You have chosen to FIGHT Neanderthal Ted!

Good decision! You of course took in the most important aspect of this fight - that Ted, for all his strengths, is not armed, and you still have his lawn edger. Within minutes you have 'edged' the poor sucker to death, and the Neanderthal babes are falling all over you! Perfect opportunity, then, to take that important last step. You are now a MAN! Go to 17!

9

You have chosen to FLEE the Larch!

Once you're a good fifty feet away from the Larch, you suddenly become aware of all the other woodland
creatures laughing at you. For years you will be the subject of utter humiliation, and will never be able to get a job because of what comes to be known as 'the Larch incident'. Eventually you die hungry and alone, spurned by all, all because you ran away from a tree. (Back to start.)

10

Flopping around your pond seems like a happy time for all, or is it? One day you notice all your little
amphibian friends have started to disappear one by one. What could be causing this epidemic? As the sun is blotted out by a formidable shadow, you realise the horror of ...

A FRENCHMAN!

Connoisseur of all the most revolting foods in the world, the spindly French chef is only too happy to put you on a skewer and serve you to the tourists! What's it gonna be?

FIGHT (Go to 20) ... or FLIGHT? (turn to 14)

11

You have chosen to FIGHT the mystery foe!

It's ...

It's ...

HOLY GOLLY WOW FUCK!

It's JASON!

What, you think you can succeed where ten generations of camp counsellors, a grizzled bounty hunter and the entire population of Crystal Lake have failed? Dream on, pencil neck! You're just another evaporating stain on Jason's sweater in two seconds flat. (The End.)

12

You have chosen to FIGHT the Lobster!

At first the fight seems to be going well for you. With a few sturdy tail-whip attacks, you've certainly given him something to think about. Unfortunately that will be whether he will have you en croute or battered, as he grabs you with his incredible claws and squeezes the life out of you! Boo! (Back to start.)

13

You have chosen to FLEE the zebra!

Your lumbering carcass is by no means fast enough to escape the horse-like powers of the zebra, but you have the advantage of being able to climb trees. From your vantage point in the branches you bare your broad buttocks to the thing in celebration of your imagined victory. No matter - you're free to evolve to the next stage. You are now NEANDERTHAL MAN! Go to 3!

14

You have chosen to FLEE the Frenchman!

You take to your little green heels and hop away with all your might! There are a few close calls as his French feet chase you through the forest, but this is familiar territory to you, so you lose him easily. But now you aren't really suited to life in the deep forest, so you'd better hurry up and evolve into a MAMMAL! Go to 6!

15

You have chosen to FLEE Neanderthal Ted!

You can't get away from your responsibilities that easily! Before you're able to get ten yards Neanderthal Ted hurls a viciously sharpened slice of guava and it takes your head clean off! Stand your ground next time! (Back to start.)

16

You have chosen to FLEE the Lobster!

Who'd be stupid enough to take on armour and claws with scales and fins? Sure some people will wonder if you're really 'all that', but the point is you've lived to fight another day. The sea you find is starting to cramp your style; it's time to hit the beach! You are now an AMPHIBIAN! Go to 10!

17

The pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder, you are a perfect example of genetics in action. But even though you're as evolved as you can be there are still battles to be fought. Who could take you on now, you wonder?

It's MYSTERY FOE!

Who could the mystery foe be? You'll have to make your decision to find out!

FIGHT (go to 11) ... or FLIGHT? (go to 5)

18

Swinging through the trees like something out of a Fatboy Slim video, surely you can have no predators in the natural world? Think again, hairy! Look who's come to say hello!

A ZEBRA!

Perfectly coloured to be camouflaged totally in a 60's living room, the zebra has powerful legs and a thirst for blood! Whatcha gonna do?

FIGHT (go to 21) ... or FLIGHT? (go to 13)

19

You have chosen to FIGHT the cold virus!

And good for you! So maybe you'll be sniffling for a couple of days, is that really worse than immediate loss of face? You have made yourself a reputation as a cell whom it is not wise to cross. Pat yourself on the back and move up a step; you are now a FISH! Go to 4!

20

You have chosen to FIGHT the Frenchman!

Well, no-one could fault your determination, but let's not forget that, even though the Frenchman is a spindly little git who'd no doubt surrender the second the fight began, you are only a little slimy frog. By tomorrow you're boiling merrily away in the pan, and will cause two bouts of food poisoning. I hope you're proud of yourself. (Back to start.)

21

You have chosen to FIGHT the zebra!

The first few minutes of the fight go badly, you receiving some very harsh kicks to the head. But then you're able to get a hold on the creature with your huge grappling arms, and tear the sucker to bits. Unfortunately you forgot that zebras traditionally work in herds. Within minutes you are nothing but a furry, greasy stain on the floor. (Back to start.)

All material not otherwise credited by Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw

Copyright 2002-2004 All Rights Reserved so HANDS OFF, PIKEY
Options linked by A_Gamebook_Fan in 2009.

Completing the history of game books

The true claimant to the title of first "video game" or "computer game" keeps getting revised every few years: people thinking of games they've actually played in the arcades (the sun source of all video gaming, right?) will name Pong ('72), not realising Nolan Bushnell (Mr. Atari) released Computer Space a year earlier ('71) (two months behind Galaxy Game, the first coin-op) nor realising that it was itself a conversion of MIT's Spacewar! created a decade earlier ('61) over in a university mainframe / minicomputer setting (the sun source of all computer gaming, right?)

Then someone points out Higinbotham's pre-Pong Oscilloscope Tennis for Two ('58), which is challenged by the tic-tac-toe-playing OXO ('52), which is in turn dethroned by NIM (May '51, six months prior to Dietrich Prinz's first chess-playing implementation.)

It's looking like the book is finally being closed with Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann's 1947 "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device", as anyone else who knows any different is probably long since dead and forgotten.

...

The history of gamebooks is similarly twisty.  (One might arrive at a more universal truth by omitting some extraneous words and just asserting that "history... is... twisty.")  Joe Devers' first Lone Wolf book was printed in 1984, while Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone collaborated on the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in 1982... but by this time gamebooks (and their pen-and-paper RPG analogues, the so-called "solitaire adventures" Flying Buffalo promoted for Tunnels & Trolls) were already big business, following the model set by the Choose Your Own Adventure series since its launch in 1979.  And yet CYOA was not sui generis -- gamebook 62, Sugarcane Island, rather than being the sixty-somethingth such book written in the vicinity of its print date in 1986, actually had been sitting in a drawer awaiting republication since its earlier printing a decade earlier in The Adventures of You series, though it was written seven years still prior back in '69!  Even Sweden had enjoyed its Den mystiska påsen in 1970, while Dennis Guerrier had published no fewer than four gamebooks in '69.  The illustrated Lucky Les first had his adventures printed in 1967, the same year in which Oulipo author Raymond Queneau shared his Un conte à votre façon (A Story As You Like It), generally accepted to be The First Work Of Hyperfiction... but only to those unaware of Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, written in Spanish in '63 and translated into English in '66.

We'll lightly tiptoe past Vladimir Nabokov's work on Pale Fire in 1962 (Wikipedia reports "In 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University") and ignore the eerily similar educational materials cranked out by TutorText since 1958, but that's a point we won't hammer on since the time machine remains pointed firmly back as we continue to regress all the way to 1941 when Jorge Luis Borges didn't only describe hyperfiction in his Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain (1941, translated by Anthony Kerrigan to English in 1962 as An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain) but demonstrated it in El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths).

If there are any earlier claimants to the legacy, they're keeping mum, perhaps not wanting to be sucked down into our mire.  Who knows -- perhaps some academic will find an interactive option in the margin of the Bayeux Tapestry or will decipher Linear A or Mayan glyphs to be references to paragraph numbers.  Do we know where we're going?  Heck no, but perhaps at least we enjoy a slightly better idea of where we've been, a wild, bumpy and altogether improbable ride from the bold and exciting literary avant-garde to dry and mundane pedagogical tools to a medium considered only suitable for children's escapist power fantasies (and on to hyperfiction, an uncanny synthesis of two earlier steps: dry and mundane avant-garde literature.  Go figure!)

Hello, world!

I'm a(n anonymous) child of the '80s ('79 to be precise) and like many of my cohort whiled away many a bemused hour in my childhood with whole hands of fingers jammed into Bantam's "Choose Your Own Adventure" interactive novellas as impromptu bookmarks so as to better keep track of plot forks and branches to return to sometime later.  As I grew and "matured" (nominally) I took up where my babysitter left off and plunged into the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series (after mistaking City of Thieves for the recommended-by-a-friend Thieves' World collection).  The advanced game mechanics were appreciated if typically ignored.

During this period, I was hopelessly devoted to a series of gutless home (micro)computers, though I was always thrilled to scope out the Tower of Babel computing profusion of the mid'80s and investigate how my friend's mom's Mac Classic sized up against my TRS-80 CoCo and the Commodore 64s in the school computer lab - all different machines doing what amounted to the same job in different (and mutually unintelligible) ways.  And as with the books I sandwiched my fingers in, selecting options from menus was a perfectly acceptable convention in this entertaining context also, a streamlining convenience keeping one from having to painstakingly peruse BASIC code listings or memorize byzantine directory structures in order to figure out how to run this week's hot new game.  As a normalized interface convention, it was also perfectly kosher as a game interface mechanism, and during the shareware revolution many programming-poor but narrative-rich would-be auteurs took advantage of various commercial and homebrew systems to share their stories with the world, or at least the sneakernet and their local BBS file areas.

The GUI revolution (let's face it, they were revolting times) made simple menus the order of the day, but along the way eschewed confusing words in favor of simplified icons.  The advent of the internet, a new and exciting medium, heralded the advent of the literary genre for the new millennium: hyperfiction! ... but those of us with paper cut callouses knew better, and watched with dismay as it collapsed at launch into a flaming wreck of academic obscurity.  (In Japan the visual novel arrived as a medium held in similar esteem for entirely different reasons.) Now that hypertext was the order of the day, something used by people who had never waited for a program to load off of cassette tape or stuck their fingers into any kind of publication, we must have assumed that the counterpoint to the rapidly dwindling gamebook publishing industry would be an explosion of the material casually strewn throughout the information superhighway.

But instead we got banner ads.  While gamebook-style interactive reads weren't unknown in this strange new world, amateur hour meant the death of the system that had professional writers and illustrators working beneath trained editors to publish tested material... all of which presupposes a certain profit motive largely absent in this Wild West bordertown.  Instead, people who arranged paragraphs for the love of the game and got their dog-walker to look over it once released their cocktail-napkin gamebooks in whatever medium they had available -- often Microsoft Word DOCs -- and watched them sink out of sight.

Sometimes this was a loss that no one, not even the dog-walker, would mourn, while othertimes -- who knows? -- hitherto unknown and underappreciated gems of the fin-de-siecle never reached their audience because the free webhost went under, or the work was saved in a file format Google didn't at that time index, or the author didn't bother to (or know how to) actually embed links and targets within their document to make it convenient to navigate... or the technological tides shifted and epic works gathered dust in Hypercard vaults or bitrotting on 5¼-inch floppy diskettes nobody had the equipment or knowhow to liberate them from.  Maybe they were languishing in a proprietary data file no one had thought or known to hexedit.  And maybe the publisher went under, leaving the books forevermore out-of-print, consigning the works (often interrupted mid-series) to a kind of limbo existing only in the memories of their onetime players and occasional used bookstore inventory-takers.

I aim to use this blog to give a few of these dusty no hope cases a few more hours in the sun after all these years, presenting the full text (with original illustrations, where possible) of these forgotten interactive stories in a hypertext-navigable Web-browser-playable form in many cases for the first time, ever, with a spot of context besides!  They may not all be winners, but the web is big enough to sustain a bit more nostalgia-bloat, and if people are playing the Atari 2600 E.T. game through emulation today it certainly has nothing in terms of compelling plot and gameplay that even the weakest of these lack.