Choose Your Own Pathway to Adventure
Author: Alex Gray
Illustrator: Uncredited
First Published: December, 2000
ISBN: 0-7821-2903-X
Length: 112 pages (plus introduction and room for personal notes)
Number of Endings: 9
Plot Summary: Jessie sets up a Pokémon match designed to
humiliate Ash, so he must set off in search of a rare new Pokémon
with which to defeat her and protect his reputation.
My Thoughts: Judging by the interview with the author posted on
Sybex's web site, he has a definite respect
for the gamebook genre and knows the essentials for putting together an
interactive book. Indeed, from an interactivity perspective, I can't really
fault this book -- it does what it sets out to do. Unfortunately, the
journey isn't as entertaining as it should be. I think the Pokémon
series lends itself well to a mechanics-oriented rather than a story-oriented
approach; thus, the total absence of game rules here is a problem. The only
thing that sounds like it might be mechanically interesting is the
"secret ending" mentioned in the introduction, but as it turns out,
there's nothing particularly secret about it once you stumble across it; it's
only unusual because it arrives earlier along than the others. The story
itself is bare-bones at best, and some of the characters, most notably
Jessie, seem to be portrayed a bit inaccurately. Really the best thing I can
say about the writing is that it displays a certain ironic humor here and
there, but overall, the book fails to be very involving, a fact which isn't
helped by the use of the always-awkward third-person, present tense writing
style. I was also jarred by frequent references to Pikachu as
"it." While I realize that the creature is genderless, the
frequent use of word "it" somehow kept causing me to misinterpret
sentences. Complaints aside, this isn't really a bad book; it's just not an
especially good one, and it doesn't take advantage of the game-friendliness
of the Pokémon format as extensively as it should have. If it manages
to sow the seeds of gamebook fandom in a few Pokémon addicts, though,
I'd consider it a success.