Customer Reviews

Choose Your Own Adventure: Supercomputer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

--Characters--
Conrad is a well established character. Although I didn't like Hopstern that much, he was also well established. The rest of the characters are decently established.

--Artwork--
Could have used a little more artwork here and there, but this is common for "Choose your own adventure" books.

--Story--
As a gamebook, this was not very well written. For example, one of the 3 major choices the reader has to make involves discovering the secret of the universe. However, this choice leads to something completely unrelated. And yet, when you make a particular choice unrelated to the universe, you start a path that deals with space travel. The respective choice and path should have been put together.

Furthermore, of the 3 main choices, two of the choices are uninteresting. I had a difficult time finishing this book because I lost interest.

Aside from those problems, there is a good variety of paths that provides for okay entertainment. But the only reason I give this book 3 stars instead of 2 is because it has an ending that is so memorable that I still remembered it after 20 years. The book was worth reading for that memorable path. The rest of the paths are unremarkable.

A few scenarios are screwed up a bit as Packard missed keeping the continuity of flow when you choose to call Dr. Hopstern and wait for him. When you wait for Dr. Hopstern directly, then you call a friend Dr. Vivaldi who ends up offering for you to go with her and your computer, Conrad, to either a cryptological trip to France or a dolpin trip to Hawaii. When you choose to take either of these trips, there's no indication of your cancellation of the service call or any mentioning of Dr. Hopstern even looking for you. Maybe Packard figured this wasn't important, but it is important enough to mention because otherwise you lose some of the flow of the story and it sounds more contrived. This book will need to be changed if it were rereleased now like some of the other Choose Your Own Adventures recently because it mentions going to Russia as a possibility implying that we still have problems with Russia specifically when it would be better aimed for writing about Iraq, or possibly even North Korea or China. It is less likely that Packard may be interested in republishing his books as he seems to have sold his rights to R.A. Montgomery, who came out with a movie for this series, which was a great idea. I do not like how R.A. Montgomery started renumbering the books when they are the same stories he used in the old series. Like book #1 is by him now instead of the Cave of Time by Packard. Also, the books I've read by Montgomery just don't seem to be as flowing or creative as the Packard ones I've read.

Other possibilities in this book include becoming a millionaire or billionaire (makes you wonder if Jay Leibold of Choose Your Own Adventure #96 got his idea from this maybe even though it's pretty practical to come up with it on your own), travel to Butea or in a hot air balloon, fly with NASA to explore new worlds, capture some high time crooks, or even say goodbye to your supercomputer. It's interesting how they make you the reader, seem like only an average user when you had won a programming contest to get the computer as a prize. Maybe Packard could've said something like you won a brand new computer by winning at the game show, Wheel of Fortune, or something like that instead. As you read Packard's books, you may some notice some peculiar references here and there to something in Princeton specifically, or some specific department elsewhere, which probably indicates how much of a world traveler he is, and what interesting and creative ideas he can come up with for his books.