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Warren Robinett and Adventure: How One Man Invented The Console Adventure Game


The Professor

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http://www.wired.com/2015/03/warren-robinett-adventure/

 

Interesting article from Wired Magazine about Warren Robinett and Adventure as the first console adventure game. Of Adventure and Robinett, Wired says:

 

 

It also was incredibly influential. Robinett essentially created the console adventure game, and pioneered several videogame conventions that are now so common that we take them for granted. Robinett is not unlike the early filmmakers who hit upon techniques like the cut and close-up that would become the fundamental grammar of cinema. Adventure was made in the era of Space Invaders, when game worlds existed within a single screen. Robinett created the idea that a game could take place on a series of screens, each representing a discrete location. If you steered your avatar off the left side of the screen, it would reappear in the next room on the right side of the screen. “I didn’t set out to make the videogame world bigger than a screen, but I had to,” he tells me. It was part of the challenge he had set for himself, and he took great satisfaction in solving it.

 

Robinett explained how he made Adventure in a session at the Game Developers Conference. The game, he says, was inspired by a visit to Stanford Artificial Intelligence lab, where he spent several hours on a mainframe playing Colossal Cave Adventure by Willie Crowther and Don Woods. It was a pure text game (“YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.”) built around exploration and inventory management. Robinett resolved to adapt it to a console.

 

 

Special thanks to Brett Weiss for posting this to our Facebook.

 

 

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Adventure was my first! ...........Atari video game experience, that is!!!

Brian Matherne - owner/curator of "The MOST comprehensive list of Atari VCS/2600 homebrews ever compiled." http://tiny.cc/Atari2600Homebrew

author of "The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion" book series available on Amazon! www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

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Adventure is still my favorite 2600 game.

Mine too. 

 

I loved it as a kid.  It was the first game that was "deep".  Not just shooting aliens over and over, but exploring a world.  It was a game I spent hours with.  35 years later, and I still know the paths through those mazes like the back of my hand.  Don't even have to think about it.  And I absolutely love the cover art.  One of these days, I'm gonna find an original box.

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Mine too. 

 

I loved it as a kid.  It was the first game that was "deep".  Not just shooting aliens over and over, but exploring a world.  It was a game I spent hours with.  35 years later, and I still know the paths through those mazes like the back of my hand.  Don't even have to think about it.  And I absolutely love the cover art.  One of these days, I'm gonna find an original box.

Ditto!

Brian Matherne - owner/curator of "The MOST comprehensive list of Atari VCS/2600 homebrews ever compiled." http://tiny.cc/Atari2600Homebrew

author of "The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion" book series available on Amazon! www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

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He mentions in the article that he got no royalties or even fan mail, just a base salary.  Isn't it crazy how many talented people Atari ran off with that stupid policy?  Could they have prevented the whole "third party" company thing (Activision, Imagic, etc) if they'd have just given credit and royalties to the talent?  It happens so often in business and life --  that we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. 

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Really enjoyed this article thanks for sharing. I love to think of all the creative minds at Atari all at one time, that Warren Robinett and Howard Scott Warshaw and all those talented guys were all in one building at the same time.

 

He mentions in the article that he got no royalties or even fan mail, just a base salary.  Isn't it crazy how many talented people Atari ran off with that stupid policy?  Could they have prevented the whole "third party" company thing (Activision, Imagic, etc) if they'd have just given credit and royalties to the talent?  It happens so often in business and life --  that we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. 

 

That's a profound point you just made, so true. I think that more than anything is what brought down Atari.

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Daddy!

I mean...er...yeah...truly great article about a very cool game designer.

 

Indeed, I wish the programmers of those early games had had the recognition and money they deserved for their fine work.

Activision was the next logical step in this regard, and showed us how valorized work gives better-than-average results.

 

I can't think of a single 'ordinary' Activision title, as they all had that extra layer of oversight bringing things up a notch.

 

All this to say that Adventure felt leagues ahead of any Atari 2600 game or Activision titles (when these started to come out).

 

First saw iit in the Catalog furnished with most Atari carts, I think from Space Invaders which was part of that special Christmas when the VCS landed in our living room.

Went nuts from that brief descriptoion and the image of the Yellow Castle and red dragon.

Asked for it and got it for my birthday,

 

Usually, VCS games were single screen affairs. The moment you plunged downwards onto the next screen, all bets were off, a new day had come, the future of gaming was now.

 

Granted, home computers were already crossing thresholds of possibilities.

But Adventure brought home that gaming reality in a unique way.

I think the random #3 game was what made the whole experience remarkable and rewarding (and often infuriating, when keys wre locked inside their own castle).

 

Yeah, it became essential.

Few games ever did that since.

 

As a sidenote, my avatar has a Twitter to let loose the inner ramblings of being a square in a land he never made (or something to that effect).

This tweety hasn't been fed in a while, but you can gander the musings here: @Adventuresque

 

Long live the spirit of Adventure!

Long live King Robinett!

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I need a copy of this game still. Everyone only has praise for it!

Its just that DAMN good!

Brian Matherne - owner/curator of "The MOST comprehensive list of Atari VCS/2600 homebrews ever compiled." http://tiny.cc/Atari2600Homebrew

author of "The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion" book series available on Amazon! www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

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He mentions in the article that he got no royalties or even fan mail, just a base salary.  Isn't it crazy how many talented people Atari ran off with that stupid policy?  Could they have prevented the whole "third party" company thing (Activision, Imagic, etc) if they'd have just given credit and royalties to the talent?  It happens so often in business and life --  that we don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. 

And thus Activision was born.

"For you - Rowsdower from the 70 - have been appointed Omnivisioner of the Game Grid."  ~ Atari Adventure Square

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