Retrospective: Adventure

Like a lot of kids who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, I was simultaneously obsessed with and frustrated by the emerging technology of videogames – obsessed because, even in those benighted days, their potential was obvious; frustrated precisely because they were still a very long way from fulfilling that potential. Nevertheless, many of the videogames of my youth were truly amazing things, primitive though they must look to 21st century eyes. The best of them were paradigms of one's reach exceeding one's grasp, since technical limitations often prevented even the most talented designers from truly achieving what they set out to do. 

Neophilia is nevertheless a powerful thing. My friends and I enjoyed playing whatever video or computer games we could get our hands on, especially those with fantasy or science fiction themes. One of the earliest of the former that I remember playing was Adventure, released in 1980 for the Atari Video Computer System (rebranded as the Atari 2600 in 1982). The brainchild of Warren Robinett, who'd previously designed Slot Racers for Atari, Adventure is generally considered the world's first graphical fantasy game and it's precisely for that reason that I so loved it in my youth.

Behold! The ChaliceThe premise of the game is quite simple: an unnamed Evil Magician has stolen the Enchanted Chalice and hidden it somewhere in the Kingdom. The player, whose "character" is represented by a square, must find the Chalice and return it to the Golden Castle where it belongs. Naturally, this is not as easy as it sounds. The Magician has created three dragons to hinder the player in his quest. These are Yorgle the Yellow Dragon, Grundle the Green Dragon, and Rhindle the Red Dragon. At higher levels of difficulty – there are three levels in all – there is also a Black Bat that carries objects throughout the Kingdom. This makes the player's quest more difficult, because the Bat not only moves important items around, it can also swap an item it's carrying with one you're carrying. This is especially annoying when you're carrying something like the Sword that's needed to slay the dragons – or even the Enchanted Chalice, as you're hurrying toward the Golden Castle to win the game.

Beware! RhindleObjectively, Adventure is not a particularly complex game or, at its lowest level of difficulty, a very hard one. Like many early videogames, much of its apparent difficulty comes from the limitations of the software and hardware of those bygone days. However, difficulty levels 2 and 3 genuinely up the ante, by introducing a number of random elements, mostly involving the placement of important items, that change gameplay in significant ways. They also include some features, like invisible mazes, that I absolutely dreaded as a child, because they were pretty much a death trap if a dragon were pursuing you. At the higher levels of difficulty, Adventure was thus more of a challenge.
Of course, it was precisely the challenging nature of the higher difficulty levels that made one feel as if one had accomplished something by succeeding in bringing the Enchanted Chalice back to the Golden Castle. That this often took many, many attempts only reinforced in our imaginations the immensity of what he'd done. That it all took place against the pixelated backdrop of a fantasy setting added further to its appeal. Outside of playing Dungeons & Dragons, which we'd only just discovered in the months prior to Adventure's release, there was no other game like it available at the time. In 1980, simply being the first was enough to hold our attention.
Ultimately, that connection to D&D, however tenuous, is probably what elevates Adventure to the lofty heights of the games most influential over my imagination. Like D&D itself, Adventure was released at just the right time in my own life, when I was at the start of my lifelong love affair with fantasy adventure games and when I'd not yet become a fault-finding snob who hates everything. Back then, I could still find wonder and excitement and even a little fear in a game where your in-game avatar is nothing more than a colored square and fearsome dragons look like ducks. I miss those days sometimes ... The glory of the Golden Castle!