Video games - Adventure game

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	Video games - Adventure game

Adventure is a genre of video game typified by exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges. The vast majority of adventure games are computer games, though console-based adventure games are not unheard of. Unlike many other game genres, the adventure genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based art forms, such as literature and film. Adventure games encompass a wide variety of literary genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, and comedy. Notable adventure games include Zork
, King's Quest, The Secret of Monkey Island
, and Myst
.

Adventure games are similar to computer role-playing games (CRPG's), except that the game play is more focused on problem-solving rather than combat and statistics. In general, games that involve the management of player attributes and statistics are considered to be CRPG's, while those that focus solely on puzzles and narrative are considered to be part of the Adventure category. It should be noted, however, that this distinction is an extremely loose one, and many games blur the line between the two categories. In particular, the status of what are sometimes called action-adventure games as members of the category is largely in doubt, with adventure gaming purists (And, to a lesser extent, action gaming purists) labeling action-adventure games as belonging to neither the action nor adventure genres rather than to both.

Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the heavy emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.

The adventure genre was quite popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres. Indeed, adventure companies like Sierra pursued technologies for their games (such as hand-drawn backgrounds, rotoscoped animation, and in-game video) that were more advanced than most other genres at the time. However, the release of the Sony PlayStation marked the end of the adventure era; as 3D became the dominant graphics format, the mostly 2D adventure market began to shrink. Though a few developers continue to produce adventure games, the genre is now almost entirely confined to sub-genres such as survival horror.

History

Colossal Cave Adventure

In the early 1970s, programmer, caver, and role-player William Crowther developed a program called Colossal Cave Adventure
. An employee at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BB&N), a Boston company involved with ARPANET router's, Crowther used BBN's PDP-10 to create the game. The game used a text interface to create an interactive adventure through a spectacular underground cave system. Crowther's work was later modified and expanded by programmer Don Woods, and Colossal Cave Adventure became wildly popular among early computer enthusiasts, spreading across the nascent ARPANET throughout the 1970s.

The unique combination of Crowther's realistic cave descriptions and Woods' addition of fantastical elements proved immensely appealing, and defined the adventure game genre for decades to come. Swords, magic words, puzzles involving objects, and vast underground realms would all become staples of the text adventure genre.

The "Armchair adventure" soon spread beyond college campuses as the microcomputing movement gained steam. Numerous home-brew knockoff's and variations on Colossal Cave Adventure (which eventually came to be known as simply Adventure) appeared throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Scott Adams

One of the many fans of the Colossal Cave was programmer Scott Adams. Upon his first introduction to Adventure, Adams spent almost ten days traversing the game before he achieved Grand Master status. Once he had completed the game, Adams began to wonder how a game like Colossal Cave Adventure could be developed on a home computer like his TRS-80. The main obstacle was that home computers such as the TRS-80 did not actually have sufficient memory to run a large game like Adventure. However, Adams hit on the idea that an adventure game executable could be divided into code written in a high-level language and an interpreter, much like the way BASIC is often implemented. Furthermore, once an interpreter was developed, Adams realized that it could be reused to develop other adventure games. (For more information: .)

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Video games - Adventure game

History

Colossal Cave Adventure

Scott Adams

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