R. A. Montgomery 1936 – 2014

cyoa.com

40 points·tomh··10 comments

The announcement is set in the same typeface that the texts Choose Your Own Adventure series were set: ITC Souvenir.

The title texts on the cover were ITC Korinna.

These seemed to be a popular choice in the late '70s/early '80s. I remember TSR Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks and modules, among other things, used the same faces.

Souvenir looks childish to my eye, and thus somewhat patronizing. I wonder if it looked childish back then too.

They were kid's books, dude.

My first forays into BASIC programming were laboriously copying the text from a choose your own adventure and making a simple online version using IFs an GOSUBs.

Yeah, me too, though I wrote my own story (such as it was). About all I remember is that you had to find the anti-tank gun to defeat the dragon.

IIRC, the final version left 38 bytes of free RAM on my Atari 400. :-)

It took me only a few seconds to recognize the name (the other would be Edward Packard).

"Choose your own adventure" were my introduction to "real" books as a kid, I loved them, I probably read each one of the several dozens I owned a dozen of times.

They definitely sparked my interest for both fiction and games.

I've noticed that R.A. Montgomery's CYOA books seem to get a bad rap for being too meandering/hippy/trippy. This is the exact reason why his entries in the series have always been my favorites.

Thank you, Ray.

I had forgotten...

Oh God, that font.

Oh God, it's an image!

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