Choose Your Own Adventure
4th June 2026
In 1999, after twenty years and many tens of millions of books sold,[1] Bantam Books announced that it would no longer be publishing its Choose Your Own Adventure line of children’s paperbacks. So, since these histories currently find themselves in 1999, this seems like a good time to look back on one of the formative influences upon the computer games I’ve been covering for so many years now, as well as upon the people who played them — not least, yours truly. Or maybe that’s just an excuse for me to finally write an article I should have written a long time ago. Either way, I hope you don’t mind if I step out of the chronology today and take you way, way back, to steal a phrase from Van Morrison.