Gamebooks / Choose Your Own Adventure / Fighting Fantasy

In our Lost Zelda Games article, we mentioned interviewing the gentleman behind the Nintendo Adventure Books. Reaching that point required an interesting detour - the books were credited to Clyde Bosco, Bill McCay, and Matt Wayne, all of whom seemed impossible to find online (the comic artist Matt Wayne is not the same person). However, we were able to find Russell Ginns, whose website mentions the books briefly. Unsure of what to expect, we made contact, hoping maybe he knew one of the authors or could point us in their direction. As it turns out, all the books were written under pseudonyms.

His reply was jovial. "I'm Russell Ginns, aka Clyde Bosco, aka R U Ginns, aka Matt Wayne. I'm glad you're having fun diving into ancient texts and primordial game design. And I'm happy to answer any questions I can. This is a great blast from the past. Give me a day or so to try to recall some more of the details or anecdotes for you. It was more than a few years ago! "

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The full list of Nintendo Adventure Books is follows:

1. Double Trouble - Clyde Bosco
2. Leaping Lizards - Clyde Bosco
3. Monster Mix-Up - Bill McCay
4. Koopa Capers - Bill McCay
5. Pipe Down! - Clyde Bosco
6. Doors to Doom - Bill McCay
7. Dinosaur Dilemma - Clyde Bosco
8. Flown the Koopa - Matt Wayne
9. The Crystal Trap - Matt Wayne
10. The Shadow Prince - Matt Wayne
11. Unjust Desserts - Matt Wayne
12. Brain Drain - Matt Wayne

First though, did he write all of them?

"I am confident I wrote books 1, 2, 5, 7 and 8," recalls Ginns, adding that "I might have written 10. And I'm pretty sure I did 6, but I could be mistaken. I'm trying to recall who wrote the other books. I developed the whole series concept, but now that I think about the Zelda titles, I think a guy named Ritchie Chevat was the author of those two. I worked with him way back. Lovely fun guy. I might have his info for you somewhere."

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If anyone is curious to read the Nintendo Adventure Books, they're available on eBay, but we were able to find the entire series on the Internet Archive, too.