At the time, Atari programmers were generally given full control on the creative direction and development cycle for their games, and this required them to plan for their next game as they neared completion of their current one to stay productive. Development Warren Robinett presenting a postmortem of Adventure 's development at GDC 2015Īdventure was designed and programmed by Atari employee Warren Robinett, and published by Atari, Inc. The player can use the difficulty switches on the Atari 2600 to further control the game's difficulty one switch controls the dragons' bite speed, and one causes them to flee when the player carries the sword. Level 3 is similar to Level 2, but the location of the objects is randomized for a greater challenge. Level 2 is the full version of the game, with the various objects appearing in set positions at the start. Level 1 is the easiest, as it uses a simplified room layout and doesn't include the White Castle, bat, Rhindle, nor invisible mazes. The game offers three different skill levels. The ability to resurrect the avatar without resetting the entire game is considered one of the earliest examples of a "continue game" option in video games. The avatar reappears at the Golden Castle and all objects remain at their latest location, but all slain dragons are resurrected. If eaten by a dragon, the player can then opt to resurrect the dead avatar instead of completely restarting the game. The player may only carry one object at a time. Helpful objects include keys that open the castles, a magnet that pulls items towards the player, a magic bridge that the player can use to cross certain obstacles, and a sword which can be used to defeat the dragons. The player's avatar is a simple square shape that can move within and between rooms, each represented by a single screen. The bat continues to fly around even offscreen, swapping objects. When in the agitated state, the bat will either pick up or swap what it currently carries with an object in the present room, eventually returning to the non-agitated state where it will not pick up an object. The bat's two states are agitation and non-agitation. An enemy bat can roam the kingdom freely, carrying an item or a dragon around the bat was to be named Knubberrub but the name is not in the manual. The kingdom is guarded by three dragons-the yellow Yorgle, the green Grundle, and the red Rhindle-that protect or flee from various items and attack the player's avatar. The kingdom is made of a total of thirty rooms, with various obstacles, enemies, and mazes located in and around the Golden, White, and Black Castles. In Adventure, the player's goal is to recover the Enchanted Chalice that an evil magician has stolen and hidden in the kingdom and return it to the Golden Castle. Gameplay The player with the White Key in the White Castle's catacombs, pursued by the green dragon, Grundle The game's prototype code was used as the basis for the 1979 Superman game, and a planned sequel eventually formed the basis for the Swordquest games. More than one million cartridges of Adventure were sold, and the game has been included in numerous Atari 2600 game collections for modern computer hardware. It is considered the first action-adventure and console fantasy game, and inspired other games in the genres. While not the first such Easter egg, Robinett's secret room pioneered this idea within video games and other forms of media, and since has transcended into popular culture, such as the climax of Ernest Cline's book and film adaption Ready Player One.Īdventure received mostly positive reviews at the time of its release and in the decades since, often named as one of the industry's most influential games and among the greatest video games of all time. As a result of conflicts with Atari's management which denied giving public credit for programmers, Robinett programmed a secret room that contained his name within the game, only found by players after the game shipped and Robinett had left Atari. Warren Robinett spent approximately one year designing and coding the game, while overcoming a variety of technical limitations in the Atari 2600 console hardware, as well as difficulties with management within Atari. The game was conceived as a graphical version of the 1977 text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure. Adventure introduced new elements to console games, including enemies that continue to move when offscreen. The game world is populated by roaming enemies: three dragons that can eat the avatar and a bat that randomly steals and hides items around the game world. The player controls a square avatar whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find a magical chalice and return it to the golden castle. Adventure is a video game developed by Warren Robinett for the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) and released in 1980 by Atari, Inc.
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