>Well, there was another series of kids' books in print at around that
>same time, I don't remember what they were called, but they were like
>CYOA books, except that instead of decision gates, they had short
>BASIC programs at various points. The idea was that you would read to
>that point, key the program into your BASIC interpreter of choice, and
>based on the output you got, proceed to the next section of the
>narrative. There were even little tips about how you could optimize
>the programs for the idiosyncrasies of some of the most common/popular
>BASIC interpreters (I seem to recall the one for the Tandy Color
>Computer 3 usually required the most modification from the vanilla
>example in order for the programs to run properly).

I was just thinking about those the other day. I was deeply into that series as a young snapper of whips, although I wasn't always patient enough to wait for computer access before jumping ahead in the book.

Wikipedia says that they were called "Micro Adventure", and there were 10 of them.