Adventure Recognized

For some time I have been trying to put together an article about one of my all time favorite games.   It was certainly the earliest game I played that had that magic “Wow!” factor that kept me playing it over and over long after I had “won” the game.

That game, released on the Atari 2600, was Adventure!

In some very fundamental way, Adventure had for me, at age 13, everything a game needed.  Playing it for the first time back in 1978 was every bit as enthralling as playing EverQuest for the first time was in 1999.  I was hooked.

At the black castle with the chalice

I am still going to write my entry on Adventure some day and recount the hours I spent playing and the different ways my brother and I invented to play the game.

But until that day, I will point you to an article over at Gamasutra titled “Game Design Essentials: 20 Open World Games.”  The first game mentioned is Adventure.  This is no less recognition than the game deserves, as for the time and hardware, it was something very special.

Beware the Green Dragon!

You can find some additional (and correct, relative to the Wikipedia article) detail here on the site of the man who wrote the game, Warren Robinett. (A name I have know for years, since it was in the game as part of the first in-game Easter Egg I ever saw.)