Adventure is a video game for the Atari 2600 video game console, released at Christmas time in 1979. In the game, the player controls a square avatar whose quest is to hunt an open world environment for a magical chalice, returning it to the golden castle. The game world is populated by roaming enemies: dragons, which can eat the avatar; and a bat, which randomly steals and hides items around the game world.
According to the game's instructions, an evil magician has stolen the Enchanted Chalice and hidden it somewhere in the kingdom. The player's goal is to find the Chalice and return it to the Golden Castle. The player character, represented by a square avatar, explores a multi-screen landscape containing castles, mazes, and various rooms, with thirty rooms in all. Hidden throughout the world are a sword, keys that unlock each of the three castles (golden, black, and white), a magic bridge that allows the avatar to travel through barriers, and a magnet that attracts the other items toward it.
Roaming the world are three dragons. Yorgle, the yellow dragon, is afraid of the gold key and will run from it. He roams the game freely, but can guard the Chalice or help the other dragons guard items. Grundle, the green dragon, guards the magnet, the bridge, the black key, and the chalice. Rhindle, the red dragon, is the fastest and most aggressive. He guards the white key and chalice.
The dragons have four possible states, all indicated with different sprites: chasing the player, biting, having swallowed the player's avatar, and death. When initially encountered, a dragon is in the chase state. When a dragon collides with the avatar, it will enter the bite state, freezing in place. After a fraction of the second, the dragon completes the bite. If the dragon has a second collision with the avatar at that moment, it swallows the avatar, who becomes trapped in the dragon's belly.
| Game Analysis | Adventure was the first action-adventure game on a video console,[16] the first to contain a widely-known Easter egg, and the first to allow a player to have a stash of items, which required the player to select which one to use at any given moment, usually through keyboard or joystick input. | |
| High FPS | 0 FPS ( GTX 1060 ) | |
| Optimization Score | 10 | |
A huge impact on games that followed
Hard to get a grip of
Personally I would rate Adventure even lower, but I know the game had a huge impact on RPG:s and adventure in gaming as growing culture. However, the game is almost impossible to get a hang of today. What’s up with the dragon-ducks?
A graphic dungeon quest inspired by the old mainframe game of the same name, Adventure is a graphic action-adventure game where you use your joystick to wander around, collecting keys to explore castles, labyrinths and everything in between, whilst slaying anything that moves (i.e. Dragons & Co.) to get treasures.
Adventure is an absolute classic and doubtlessly a milestone in video gaming history. However, not being a fan of the genre, I think that Adventure is not as enjoyable as other Atari 2600 games. Yet, I would recommend to try it out because if you’re into the genre you might like this one.