NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Graphic adventure

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. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... An example of a simple puzzle. ... In non-technical terms, no matter what the context (whether scientific, philosophical, legal, etc) a narrative is a story, an interpretation of some aspect of the world that is historically and culturally grounded and shaped by human personality (per Walter Fisher). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A console game is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment. ... Literature is literally acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning an individual written character (letter)). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction... This article is about motion pictures. ... For other meanings see Fantasy (disambiguation) Fantasy is a genre of art, literature, film, television, and music that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of either plot, theme, setting, or all three. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Look up Mystery in Wiktionary, the free dictionary In common usage, a mystery is a description for something which is unknown or yet unexplained. ... Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. ... Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... Kings Quest IV screenshot (low resolution 160x200 version. ... The Secret of Monkey Island (SMI) or simply Monkey Island, was a legendary adventure game that spawned a series of famous and classic comedy adventure games, known as the Monkey Island series. ... Myst franchise Games and their Ages Novels Book of Atrus Book of Tiana Book of Dni Book of Marrim Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Dni Ages The Art Timeline Items Kings Language Numerals People Wildlife Organizations BrÃ¸derbund Cyan Presto Ubisoft DRC Myst is a...

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. Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that uses traditional gameplay elements found in pen-and-paper role-playing games. ... Game play (or gameplay) includes all player experiences during the interaction with game systems, especially formal games. ... Problem solving forms part of thinking. ... Action-adventure games are video games that combine elements of the adventure game genre with various action elements. ...

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. Sterner hade fel! Elin har rÃ¤tt som vanligt ... The 1990s decade refers to the years from 1990 to 1999, inclusive. ... The most recent logo (Sierra Entertainment) Sierra Entertainment was a computer game developer and publisher active from 1980 to 2004. ... The original PlayStation was produced in a light grey colour; the more recent PSOne redesign sports a smaller more rounded case. ... Survival horror is a prominent video game genre in which the player has to survive an onslaught of opponents, often undead or otherwise supernatural, typically in claustrophobic environments in a third-person perspective. ...

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 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... A role-playing game (RPG) is a type of game in which players assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create narratives. ... William (Willie or Will) Crowther is a computer programmer and caver. ... Adventure (also known as ADVENT or Colossal Cave) (Crowther & Woods, 1976) was the first computer adventure game. ... BBN Technologies (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is a high technology company that provides research and development services. ... Boston is a town and small port c. ... ARPANET logical map, March 1977. ... A router is a computer networking device that forwards data packet across an internetwork toward their destinations, through a process known as routing. ... The PDP-10 was a computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from the late 1960s on; the name stands for Programmed Data Processor model 10. It was the machine that made time-sharing common; it looms large in hacker folklore because of its adoption in the 1970s by many... Don Woods is a perennial hacker and computer programmer. ...

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. Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software containing simulated environments in which players use text commands to control characters. ...

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. The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling home computer of all time. ...

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: Details of Adams's early work.) Scott Adams (born July 10, 1952) is the co-founder, with wife Alexis, of Adventure International, an early company producing computer games. ... TRS-80 Model I TRS-80 (also affectionately or derisively known as the Trash-80) was the designation for several lines of microcomputer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation and sold through its Radio Shack stores in the late-1970s and 1980s. ... A high-level programming language is a programming language that is easier to program in, to some extent platform-independent, and abstract from low-level computer processor operations such as memory accesses. ... An interpreter is a computer program that executes other programs. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ...

In 1978, Adams founded Adventure International and produced twelve adventure games before the company went bankrupt in 1985. His first games were text-based and written in BASIC, but during his third game (Mission Impossible), Adams began programming in assembly language to improve the speed of his software. Adventure International was a video game publishing company started in 1978 by Scott Adams and his wife Alexis. ... Assembly language commonly called assembly or asm, is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. ...

Graphical progress

The great advance which immediately followed was the introduction of images. With the use of machine language allowing shorter programs, and computer memory increasing, it became possible to use the graphical potential of a computer like the Apple II and some companies soon switched from producing pure text-based adventure games. A system of codes directly understandable by a computers CPU is termed this CPUs native or machine language. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ...

Soon the clumsy basic vector graphics gave way to more aesthetic imagery drawn by professional artists. Examples include: Steam Locomotive 7646 as a vector, originally Windows Metafile (converted to GIF for display here). ...

The introduction of such high-quality bitmap graphics required more substantial storage capacity with many adventure games requiring several diskettes for installation, which would be the case until the CD-ROM made its appearance. Stuart Smith is an American computer game designer best known for his Adventure games, and was a pioneer in the development of graphical adventures in the early 1980s. ... Greek mythology consists of a large collection of narratives detailing the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, which were first envisioned and disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition. ... Transylvania was the name of a trilogy of computer games released for several home computers of the 1980s. ... Screenshot from the Rivers of Light adventure in Adventure Construction Set Adventure Construction Set (ACS) is a program used to construct Ultima_type games, written by Stuart Smith and published in 1984 (or 1985) by Electronic Arts. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... According to the Sumerian king list, Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), the son of Lugalbanda. ... For the use of the term raster in radio regulation, see frequency raster. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that comprises a circular piece of thin, flexible (hence floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ...

Infocom

In 1977, two friends Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, who were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science, discovered Crowther and Woods's game Colossal Cave Adventure. After completing the adventure game, they were joined by Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels and began to develop a similar game. Their first production, Zork, also started on a PDP-10 minicomputer and spread quickly across the ARPANET. Its success was immediate, and the game, which would reach the size of a megabyte, enormous for the time, would be updated until 1981. Dave Lebling, ca 1985 Dave Lebling (born 1949) was an interactive fiction game designer, or implementor, at Infocom. ... Marc Blank is an American computer game designer and game programmer. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology, as well as in numerous other fields, including management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ... Tim Anderson helped create Zork; one of the first works of interactive fiction (a form of adventure game), was an early descendant of ADVENT (also known as Colossal Cave). ... Bruce Daniels is an African American, openly gay stand-up comedian. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... A megabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to approximately one million bytes. ...

On graduation, the students decided to stay together and to form a company. Tim Anderson, Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley, Dave Lebling, J. C. R. Licklider, Chris Reeve, and Albert Vezza created Infocom on 22 June 1979. The idea of distributing Zork came to mind very soon, but the game was too big to port to the microcomputers of the time: the Apple II and the TRS-80, the potential targets, each had only 16 kb of RAM. They wrote a special programming language called Z-machine, which could function on any computer by using an emulator as an intermediary. Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... June 22 is the 173rd day of the year (174th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 192 days remaining. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratory. ...

In November 1980 the new Zork I: The Great Underground Empire was made available for the PDP-11; One month later, it was released for the TRS-80, with more than 1,500 copies sold between that date and September 1981. That same year, Bruce Daniels finalized the Apple II version and more than 6,000 additional copies were sold. Zork I would go on to sell over a million copies. Look up November in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Zork I: The Great Underground Empire is an interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom in 1980. ... Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at a PDP-11 The PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corp. ... TRS-80 Model I TRS-80 (also affectionately or derisively known as the Trash-80) was the designation for several lines of microcomputer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation and sold through its Radio Shack stores in the late-1970s and 1980s. ... Look up September in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The company continued developing text adventure games even as it opened a department for the development of professional software, a department which would never be profitable. High-quality games, with massive, intelligent plots, unequaled syntax analyzers, and meticulous documentation as integral parts of the game, succeeded in all genres. However, with the power of microcomputers increasing and the demand for graphics (which it refused to include in its games), Infocom saw sales decline and in 1989, it had shrunk to a mere 10 employees, compared to 100 employees at its peak, and games developed after 1989 would have no link with the original team.

Sierra

At the end of the 1970s, Ken Williams sought to set up a company for enterprise software for the market-dominating Apple II computer. One day, he took a teletype terminal to his residence to work on the development of an accounting program. Rummaging through a catalogue, he found a program called Colossal Cave Adventure. He and his wife Roberta both played it all the way through and their encounter with Crowther's game would have a strong influence on video-gaming history. Description: scene from the game Mystery House Source: screenshot taken by Nataraja for the French Wikipedia (original) This is a screenshot of a copyrighted computer game or video game. ... Mystery House on the Apple II showcases the Apples weak graphic capabilities compared to modern PCs. ... The 1977 Apple II, complete with integrated keyboard, color high-resolution graphics, sound, a sleek plastic case, and eight expansion slots. ... TRS-80 Color Computer II The home computer is a consumer-friendly word for the second generation of microcomputers (the technical term that was previously used), entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. ... Teletype machines in World War II A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is a now largely obsolete electro-mechanical typewriter which can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point through a simple electrical communications channel, often just a pair of wires. ... Roberta Heuer Williams (born February 16, 1953) is one of the most accomplished and respected computer game designers, and arguably the most influential female gamer of her time. ...

Having finished Colossal Cave Adventure, they began to search for something similar, but found the market underdeveloped. Roberta Williams liked the concept of a textual adventure very much, but she thought that the player would have a more satisfying experience with images and began to think of her own game. She thus conceived Mystery House, the first graphical adventure game, a detective story inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Mystery House on the Apple II showcases the Apples weak graphic capabilities compared to modern PCs. ... Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (September 15, 1890 â€“ January 12, 1976), was a British crime fiction writer. ... The 1945 film version, showing (left to right) Barry Fitzgerald, June Duprez and Walter Huston Ten Little Niggers (also known as Ten Little Indians and And Then There Were None) is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in England in 1939. ...

Ken spent a few nights developing the game on his Apple II, and in the end they made packets with ziploc bags containing the game's 5¼-inch disk and a photocopied paper describing the game. They sold it via a local software shop and to their great surprise, Mystery House was an enormous success. Though Ken believed that the gaming market would be less of a growth market than the professional software market, he persevered with games. Thus, in 1980, the Williamses founded On-Line Systems which would become Sierra On-Line in 1982. The company would be a major actor in the video-gaming of the 1980s. Sierra Entertainment was a computer game developer and publisher. ...

Sierra soon took things further. Until this point adventure games were in the first person; images presented the décor as seen through the eyes of the player. Williams's company would introduce a new feature in the King's Quest series: a game in the third person. Taking advantage of the techniques developed in action games which had progressed in parallel, Ken introduced an animated character who represented the player in the game and whom the player controlled. With the 3D Animated Adventures, a new standard was born, and nearly all the industry latched onto it. The commands were still entered on the keyboard and analyzed by a syntax interpreter, as with text adventure games. Description: scene from the game Kings Quest I: Quest for the Crown Source: screenshot taken by Nataraja for the French Wikipedia (original) This is a screenshot of a copyrighted computer game or video game. ... Kings Quest IV screenshot (low resolution 160x200 version. ... Kings Quest IV screenshot (low resolution 160x200 version. ...

Sierra would develop new games and push the boundaries of adventure gaming until its purchase by Cendant in 1998. Then in 1998, Cendant sold off their entire interactive software branch for $1 billion to Havas Interactive, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal. Cendant Corporation (NYSE: CD) is a New York-based provider of business and consumer services, primarily within the real estate and travel sectors. ... Vivendi Universal (VU) is a French conglomerate active in media and communications with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications and the Internet. ...

LucasArts

In 1987, when nobody seemed able to overcome Sierra's power, a programmer named Ron Gilbert working for the company Lucasfilm Games — which has since become LucasArts — created the script-writing system SCUMM which used a point-and-click interface similar to ICOM Simulations' MacVenture games first introduced in 1985. Instead of having to type a command to the syntax analyzer, this system was controlled by means of text icons. To interact with his environment, the player clicked on an order, on an icon representing an object in her inventory, or on a part of the image. This approach was first used by LucasArts for the game Maniac Mansion to great effect. [[1]]Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. ... Lucasfilm Logo Lucasfilm Ltd. ... LucasArts Entertainment Company is a video game developer and publisher. ... Maniac Mansion on the Commodore 64. ... Point and click describes the simple action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen (point) and then clicking a mouse button, usually the left one (click), or other pointing device. ... ICOM Simulations was a software company best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate. ... The MacVenture games was a series of adventure games with a characteristic drag-and-drop interface originally developed for the Mac by ICOM Simulations: Deja Vu: a Nightmare Comes True (1985) The Uninvited (1986) Shadowgate (1987) Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas (1988) All these games were released on... Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). ...

LucasArts would come to differentiate itself from its main competitor, the giant Sierra, by rethinking certain adventure game concepts to improve playability. Gone was the possibility to die during the course of the game and everything was done to ensure that the player was never completely stuck. Finally, LucasArts abandoned the system of points indicating the player's progress in the adventure. These innovations were immediately taken into account by the competition, especially Sierra. Description: landscape from one of the scenes in The Secret of Monkey Island Source: taken from the games files by MagicTom for the French Wikipedia (original) This work is copyrighted. ... The Secret of Monkey Island, CD version. ...

Gilbert's attempts, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, however, remained in 16 colors, and the point-and-click engine wasn't completely integrated since the player would still have to construct sentences using clickable keywords combined with objects in the game. It was The Secret Of Monkey Island that was finally a complete work, with 256 colors, a complete point-and-click engine, a dialogue system with optional responses, puzzles solved with items, original graphics, atmosphere music, and a characteristic sense of humor. Above all, the script was written as for a film (which could be done in-house) and the dialogue and inventory served the needs of the script. The 1993 release of Day of the Tentacle, a remarkable success, began a line of cartoon-style games. Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). ... A screenshot of Zak McKracken, PC version. ... Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (DoTT) is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1993, and published by LucasArts. ... A cartoon is any of several forms of art, with varied meanings that evolved from one to another. ...

Steven Spielberg collaborated with LucasArts in the creation of The Dig — a science-fiction adventure game that the director had envisioned filming. It met with limited commercial success coming at a time when the gaming public was enticed by high-speed action games. The Dig is a graphical adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 1995. ... A collection of well-known science-fiction novels and magazines Science fiction is a genre of fiction in which advances in science, or contact with more scientifically advanced civilizations, create situations different from those of both the present day and the known past. ...

Taking advantage of advances in action games and integrating an engine similar to those of first-person shooters, the company took a new turn in 1998 with the game Grim Fandango, where it abandoned the cartoon style and its SCUMM scripting environment for a new 3D game system named GrimE. Doom, one of the games that defined the first-person shooter genre. ... Grim Fandango is a graphical adventure computer game released by LucasArts in 1998, the title derived from a line of a mournful poem read by one of the characters in the game. ... Grime is a genre of music which has been developing in Londons underground since 2002. ...

Myst

In 1991 when the world of adventure games seemed forever dominated by LucasArts, a small team of nine from the company Cyan, Inc., headed by the brothers Rand and Robyn Miller and run out of a garage in Spokane, Washington, began to push the limits of Apple's HyperCard software. By utilizing several Macintosh Quadra computers to generate the graphic images, they invented a new type of adventure game, transforming the genre. Their game Myst was a first-person game with few animations, but the images completely left behind the prevailing cartoon style in favour of ultra-realism. The game was intriguing and captivating, and allowed a level of immersion never previously attained. Description: scene from the game Myst Source: screenshot taken by Nataraja for the French Wikipedia (original) This is a screenshot of a copyrighted website, video game graphic, computer program graphic, television broadcast, or film. ... Myst franchise Games and their Ages Novels Book of Atrus Book of Tiana Book of Dni Book of Marrim Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Dni Ages The Art Timeline Items Kings Language Numerals People Wildlife Organizations BrÃ¸derbund Cyan Presto Ubisoft DRC Myst is a... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... The Sims is a strategic life simulation computer game and god game (a game that lets the player create and control the lives of virtual people), created by game designer Will Wright, published by Maxis. ... Photo of Cyan Worlds Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous... Photo of Rand Miller Rand Miller co-founded Cyan Productions (now Cyan Worlds) with brother Robyn Miller (the two Miller Brothers) and became famous from the unexpected success of their computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder of the 1990s. ... Robyn Charles Miller (born April 22, 1960, in Dallas, Texas) co-founded Cyan Worlds (originally Cyan) with brother Rand Miller. ... Spokane (pronounced spÅ-CAN ), originally incorporated as Spokan Falls (Spokan without an e at the end and means Children of the Sun), is the county seat of Spokane County in the State of Washington, USA. It is also known as the seat of the Inland Empire. ... Apple Computer, Inc. ... HyperCard HyperCard is an application program and a simple programming environment produced by Apple Computer which runs natively only in Mac OS versions 9 or earlier (it can still be used in Mac OS Xs Classic mode). ... Quadra 800 Quadra was the name used by Apple Computer for most of its Macintosh computers built around the Motorola 68040 CPU. The product manager for the Quadra family was Frank Casanova who was also the Product Manager for the Macintosh IIfx. ... Myst franchise Games and their Ages Novels Book of Atrus Book of Tiana Book of Dni Book of Marrim Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Dni Ages The Art Timeline Items Kings Language Numerals People Wildlife Organizations BrÃ¸derbund Cyan Presto Ubisoft DRC Myst is a...

The adventure began on an island; the player knew nothing. There was no inventory any more; the player could only carry one object at a time. The game's puzzles were rather classical in their conception. However, thanks to its detailed graphics where everything could be important, the game captivated the player.

Part of its success also seemed linked to the fact that, for the first time, a video game didn't appear to be aimed at an adolescent male audience, but a mainstream adult audience. Released in 1993, Myst for many years was the most profitable computer game ever; it sold over nine million copies on all platforms. It wasn't dethroned until the release of The Sims in 2000, currently the most successful computer game ever. The Sims is a strategic life simulation computer game and god game (a game that lets the player create and control the lives of virtual people), created by game designer Will Wright, published by Maxis. ...

Myst gave way to several sequels, Riven, Myst III: Exile, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst,Myst IV: Revelation, as well as Myst V: End of Ages.In Uru: Ages Beyond Myst the gameplay is more sophisticated than in previous Myst games, and the graphics are now in real-time 3D rather than being pre-rendered stills. Three derived novels found their origin in its world: Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana and Myst: The Book of D'ni. The game was also parodied by Parroty Interactive's Pyst. Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Myst V: End of Ages Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Myst V: End of Ages Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Marrim Comic Books #0... Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Ages The... Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Ages The... Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Ages The... Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Ages The... Parroty Interactive are a now defunct software developer company, who made a number of parody computer programs and games for the PC and Apple Mac. ... Pyst was a computer game published as a parody of the highly successful Myst franchise. ...

Types of adventure games

There are many types of adventure games, depending on the criteria. Adventure games vary in their subject, interface, setting or plot. A definite categorization can't be done since some of them may belong to 2 or more of the below mentioned 'types'.

Puzzle adventure

Adventure games that do not rely on obtaining items, their use, and character interaction belong to this genre. It emphasizes exploration, reading logs, and deciphering the proper use of complex mechanisms, often resembling Rube Goldberg machines. Rube Goldberg Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 â€“ December 7, 1970) was a cofounder and first president of the National Cartoonists Society. ...

These mechanisms are often deliberately labeled with confusing symbols for two reasons: as a form of "copy protection" in that the translation is in the booklet that came with the game, and hence copyrighted just like any book, such as in the Space Quest series; or to make the machines more difficult to figure out. Rhem, for example, has a machine labelled with three subtly different swirling patterns; Schizm has the numerals of its machine deliberately convoluted. Space Quest is a series of six computer games that follow the adventures of a hapless janitor named Roger Wilco, as he campaigns through the galaxy for truth, justice and really clean floors. Initially created for Sierra On-Line by Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy (who called themselves the Two... The word schism, from the Greek σχισμα, schisma (from σχιζω, schizo, to split), means a division or a split, usually in an organization. ...

The plot of these games is usually obscure, and relies on the player's interpretation of the setting and the scenery, and information from the logs in order for him to understand the background scenario. Almost all of these games are played from a first person perspective with the player "moving" between still pre-rendered 3D images, sometimes combined with short animations or video. Typical examples include Schizm, Mystery of Sphinx and Myst, which pioneered this game style. ... Schizm is an adventure-genre computer game created by LK Avalon and published by Dreamcatcher Games. ... Myst franchise Games and their Ages Novels Book of Atrus Book of Tiana Book of Dni Book of Marrim Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Dni Ages The Art Timeline Items Kings Language Numerals People Wildlife Organizations BrÃ¸derbund Cyan Presto Ubisoft DRC Myst is a...

Action-adventure

A popular and commercially successful genre of adventure gaming, action-adventure games typically emphasize combat or other reflex-based forms of gameplay as well as puzzle-solving and exploration. The most prominent example of action-adventure is the Prince of Persia series. The popular Resident Evil series and other similar survival horror games can also be considered action-adventure games. Action-adventure games are common on video game consoles, and have spawned subgenres like "survival horror" and "stealth action games". Action-adventure games are video games that combine elements of the adventure game genre with various action elements. ... A reflex action or reflex is a biological control system linking stimulus to response and mediated by a reflex arc. ... Puccinis opera Turandot (1926) opens as the Prince of Persia is led to the executioners block, having failed to guess the riddles. ... Resident Evil, known as Biohazard (ãƒã‚¤ã‚ªãƒã‚¶ãƒ¼ãƒ‰) in Japan, is a successful franchise of survival-horror video games developed by Capcom and created by Shinji Mikami. ... The survival horror game is a prominent video game subgenre of action-adventure games or first-person shooters in which the player has to survive an onslaught of undead or creepy opponents, usually in claustrophobic environments in a third-person perspective. ... A video game console is a dedicated electronic machine designed to play video games. ...

Text based

The first adventure games to appear were text adventures (later called interactive fiction), which typically use a verb-noun parser to interact with the user. These evolved from early mainframe titles like Hunt the Wumpus (Gregory Yob) and Adventure (Crowther and Woods) into commercial games which were playable on personal computers, such as Infocom's widely popular Zork series. In recent years, a vibrant and creative community of interactive fiction authors has thrived on the internet. Some companies that were important in bringing out text adventure games were Adventure International, Infocom, Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls and Melbourne House. Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software containing simulated environments in which players use text commands to control characters. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... A parser is a computer program or a component of a program that analyses the grammatical structure of an input, with respect to a given formal grammar, a process known as parsing. ... Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ... Hunt the Wumpus was an important early computer game. ... Gregory Yob is an American computer game designer. ... Adventure (also known as ADVENT or Colossal Cave) (Crowther & Woods, 1976) was the first computer adventure game. ... William (Willie or Will) Crowther is a computer programmer and caver. ... Don Woods is a perennial hacker and computer programmer. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software containing simulated environments in which players use text commands to control characters. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... This is a list of types of companies, i. ... Adventure International was a video game publishing company started in 1978 by Scott Adams and his wife Alexis. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... Level 9 was a British computer adventure game company who produced some of the most advanced games of the 1980s. ... Magnetic Scrolls was a British computer game developer during the mid 1980s and early 1990s. ... Melbourne House is a game development studio owned by Atari and based in Melbourne, Australia. ...

Graphical adventure

Graphical adventure games were introduced by a new company called On-Line Systems, which later changed its name to Sierra On-Line. After the rudimentary Mystery House (1980) they established themselves with the full adventure King's Quest (1984), appearing on various systems, and went on to further success with a variety of strong titles. The most recent logo (Sierra Entertainment) Sierra Entertainment was a computer game developer and publisher active from 1980 to 2004. ... Mystery House on the Apple II showcases the Apples weak graphic capabilities compared to modern PCs. ... Kings Quest IV screenshot (low resolution 160x200 version. ...

A number of games were released on 8-bit home computer formats in the 1980s that advanced on the text adventure style originated with games like Collosal Cave Adventure and, in a similar manner to Sierra, added moveable (often directly-controllable) characters to a parsar or input-system similar to traditional adventures. Examples of this are Gargoyle Games's Heavy on the Magick (1986) which has a text-input system with an animated display screen, and the later Magic Knight games such as Spellbound (1985) which uses a window-menu system to allow for text-adventure style input. 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. ... TRS-80 Color Computer II The home computer is a consumer-friendly word for the second generation of microcomputers (the technical term that was previously used), entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. ... Gargoyle Games was a software company specialising in games for the ZX Spectrum. ... Heavy on the Magick was a computer game for Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum published in 1986 by Gargoyle Games. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Magic Knight as he appeared in Knight Tyme Magic Knight was a computer game character created by freelance programmer David Jones in his 1985 game Finders Keepers for the Mastertronic budget label. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... This article is about the year. ...

In 1984 a new kind of adventure games emerged following the launch of the Apple Macintosh with its point-and-click interface. First out was the innovative but relatively unknown Enchanted Scepters the same year, then in 1985 ICOM Simulations released Deja Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. In 1987 the well-known second follow-up Shadowgate was released, and LucasArts also entered the field with Maniac Mansion – a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series. The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh, or Mac, line of personal computers is designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... Enchanted Scepters was an early, possibly the first point-and-click adventure game, released in 1984. ... ICOM Simulations was a software company best known for creating the MacVenture series of adventure games including Shadowgate. ... Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True is a point-and-click adventure game set in the world of 1940s hard-boiled detective novels and movies. ... Shadowgate is a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, originally released in 1987 for the PC/Mac. ... LucasArts Entertainment Company is a video game developer and publisher. ... Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). ... The Secret of Monkey Island, CD version. ...

RPG-like

Some adventure games rely equally on the common adventure elements, but also on the 'character building' of RPGs. The main character(s) usually has a certain "Hit point" meter and a chart of skills. Some puzzles and feats need a minimum amount of skills in order to be solved (like Climbing above 5 to climb a tree and obtain a lost ring) so the player may have to choose one character over another to solve it, or spend time building the skills of the first character. As in RPGs, the games involve battles, the result of which depends on his character's skills and health (and on the player's reflexes in the case of real-time combat). However, these kinds of games don't belong to the 'Action adventure' above. Typical examples include Quest for Glory, Fallout and Final Battle. This article is about traditional role-playing games. ... Hit points, also known as health points, damage points, life points and countless other synonyms, are points used to determine a characters health and show how much damage attacks deal in computer and video games, role-playing games (both table-top and computerized), and wargames. ... Quest for Glory is a series of hybrid role-playing/adventure computer games designed by Corey and Lori Ann Cole. ... Fallout is a computer role-playing game produced by Tim Cain and published by Interplay in 1997. ...

Other

A few adventure games have defined themselves as "original" because they distanced themselves from the main adventure genre and put focus on other elements. They are considered unique because they didn't develop into genres.

Tomb Raider is a video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. ... The Colonels Bequest title screen The Colonels Bequest - A Laura Bow Mystery is a computer game published by Sierra On-Line in 1989. ... A Turkish woman in Konya works at a traditional loom. ...

Modern adventure games

For much of the 1980s, adventure games were one of the most popular types of computer games produced. But in the mid-1990s their market share drastically declined, as action games took a greater share of the market, particularly first person shooters such as Doom and Half-Life that feature strong, story-structured solo games. This slump in popularity led many publishers and developers to see adventure games as financially unfeasible in comparison. Text adventures met the same fate much earlier, but their simplicity has allowed them to thrive as non-commercially developed interactive fiction. A first-person shooter (FPS) is a computer or video game where the players on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is some element of shooting involved. ... Doom (or DOOM) is a 1993 computer game by id Software that is among the landmark titles in the first-person shooter genre. ... Half-Life For a quantity subject to exponential decay, the half-life is the time required for the quantity to fall to half of its initial value. ... Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software containing simulated environments in which players use text commands to control characters. ...

Few recent commercial adventure games have been hits. It has been suggested that this is because the "average" gamer today was weaned on console video games and first person shooters rather than the "traditional" computer games cherished by the original crop of adventure gaming enthusiasts. Another explanation offered states that MMORPGs, which offer a persistent multiplayer world, have at least partially supplanted the genre. A video game console is a dedicated electronic machine designed to play video games. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... A first-person shooter (FPS) is a computer or video game where the players on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is some element of shooting involved. ... Players interacting in Ultima Online. ...

Adventure games have ceased to be the flagship titles they once were, and high profile publishers like Sierra Entertainment and LucasArts have either disappeared or shifted towards publishing titles developed by other companies. However, adventure games continue to be made in the 2000s. The games Syberia and Syberia II by Microids garnered high critical acclaim and were published for the Xbox gaming console as well as for the PC. The Myst series came to a close in September 2005 with the release of Myst V: End of Ages by its original developer, Cyan Worlds. Adventure games based on the Nancy Drew books are published by Her Interactive and comprise a series of over twelve titles published since 2000. The Nintendo DS and its unique features have sparked a renewed interest in pure adventure game content, with the release of Trace Memory and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in 2005. IGN has noted that the Nintendo Revolution controller would be well-suited for the genre, and could see some ground-breaking releases in that vein. The most recent logo (Sierra Entertainment) Sierra Entertainment was a computer game developer and publisher active from 1980 to 2004. ... LucasArts Entertainment Company is a video game developer and publisher. ... Syberia is a 2002 computer adventure game by MC2-MicroÃ¯ds and The Adventure Company. ... Syberia II is a 2004 adventure game by MC2-MicroÃ¯ds, and is a sequel to Syberia. ... MicroÃ¯ds (also known as MC2-MicroÃ¯ds because of their fusion with the group MC2 in 2003) is a French software company. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Photo of Cyan Worlds Myst franchise Games Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Myst V: End of Ages Ages of: Myst Riven Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Uru Myst V: End of Ages Novels Myst: The Book of Atrus Tiana Dni... The Secret of the Old Clock, the first Nancy Drew mystery Nancy Drew is a fictional character, the heroine detective of a popular mystery series for girls. ... Her Interactive is a video game developer located in Bellevue, Washington, specializing in computer games for girls. ... The Nintendo DS, (sometimes abbreviated NDS or DS), is a dual-screen handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo, released in 2004. ... Trace Memory (ã‚¢ãƒŠã‚¶ãƒ¼ã‚³ãƒ¼ãƒ‰ ï¼’ã¤ã®è¨˜æ†¶; AnazÄ KÅdo: Futatsu no Kioku), known by the Japanese titles literal translation, Another Code: Two Memories in Europe, is an adventure video game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS portable gaming system. ... IGNs Editors Choice Award is given to only the top games IGN.com is a multimedia news website. ... The Nintendo Revolution is the current codename for Nintendos fifth home video game console and the successor to the Nintendo GameCube. ...

Yet the genre is still easily found at retail and as a result many fans have taken on the challenge of developing their own adventure games. These "amateur adventure games" are in some cases remakes of old classics or sequels to established titles. Such games are either programmed from scratch or composed by using authoring tools. Examples for such graphical development environments for adventure games are Adventure Game Studio [1] and Visionaire [2]. Fans of Janet Jackson, at Music Music The word fan refers to someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking of a person, group of persons, work of art, idea, or trend. ... An amateur adventure game is a fangame or a freeware computer game belonging to the adventure genre. ... The AGS Logo and Mascot, the Blue Cup Adventure Game Studio is a freeware tool that can be used to create both free and commercial graphical adventure games. ... An art and fashion publication that has come out in limited, numbered editions 3 times a year since Spring of 1991. ...

Although traditional adventure games are rare today, action-adventure games that combine elements of adventure games with action games are quite common. There are also similarities between adventure and role-playing games, particularly those in a more modern, story- and character-based mold. Computer role-playing games in this vein have been published more frequently since the success of Baldur's Gate in 1998, and console role-playing games have generally been quite focused on plot and story, thanks in part to the success of the Final Fantasy series. In 2005, Indigo Prophecy (titled "Fahrenheit" outside of the US and Canada) was released by Quantic Dream. An action-adventure game with a highly-original interface, many believe that the game will help renew interest in the adventure game genre. Action-adventure games are video games that combine elements of the adventure game genre with various action elements. ... Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that uses traditional gameplay elements found in pen-and-paper role-playing games. ... Baldurs Gate is a popular series of computer role_playing games that take place along the Sword Coast, a location from Dungeons & Dragonss Forgotten Realms campaign setting. ... Final Fantasy (Japanese: Fainaru FantajÄ«) is a popular series of role playing games produced by Square Enix (originally Square Co. ... Fahrenheit (Known as Indigo Prophecy in the US) is a videogame due for release in October 2005. ... David Cage created Quantic Dream in 1997. ...

Many famous adventure games cannot be run on modern computers. Early adventure games were developed for computers such as the ZX Spectrum, the C64 and Amiga, which are not in much use today. There are now emulators available for personal computers that allow these old games to be played. One Open Source project called ScummVM provides a free engine for the LucasArts adventure games. Text adventure games have survived much more readily. There are only a small number of widespread standard formats, and nearly all the classics can be played on modern computers. Even some more modern text adventure games can be played on very old computer systems. Text adventure games are also suitable for PDAs, because they have very small computer system requirements. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research. ... Close_up of C64 Commodore 64 (C64, CBM 64) was a popular home computer of the 1980s. ... The original Amiga (1985) The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced game console. ... An emulator reproducing a console games playable atmosphere on a Windows computer. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... ScummVM is a multi-platform stack-based virtual machine which allows one to play LucasArts adventure games which use the SCUMM system on platforms other than those where versions were originally released. ... Palm IIIxe PDA Personal digital assistants (PDAs or palmtops) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. ...

There is something of a revival of the adventure game online - in both a fairly traditional style, such as MOTAS, and in 3-dimensional games, such as Crimson Room. // Mystery Of Time And Space The acronym MOTAS stands for Mystery Of Time And Space. MOTAS is a popular online graphic adventure game created by Jan Albartus (LOGAN). ... Crimson Room is a Macromedia Flash game by Toshimitsu Takagi originally made for the Fasco-CSC website. ...

Common features

Adventure games, like RPGs, often feature "fetch quests": in order to advance, the player has to help a character in order to gain information or an important item as a reward. In fantasy-themed games, this character is often a healer or magician, and the secondary quest is to find artifacts or items, not uncommonly ingredients for a potion. The fetch quest is a somewhat derogatory name for a common sort of quest seen in many video game role-playing games (RPGs). ... A potion (from Latin potio, potionis, meaning beverage, potion, poison) is a drinkable medicine or poison. ...

Adventure games have been criticized because some games adopt the attitude that 'the ends justify the means'. In such cases, the player must obtain an item from someone reluctant to cooperate, and the only way to progress is to distract him or her in order to steal the item. In contrast, however, many adventure games have quests or missions that urge the player help others; for instance, helping tormented spirits that seek deliverance, freeing a trapped animal, or otherwise performing benevolent, selfless acts. Often these characters will reward the player later in the game, often at a critical juncture. (Of course, this can be argued to deflate the "selflessness" of the good deeds.)

Early adventure games sometimes trapped the players in unwinnable, dead end situations. For example, if the player overlooked a key (or an important item early in the game), the game cannot be completed if he later finds himself trapped in a cell. Such games frequently did not end at this point since the player was not killed; with no indication that a vital object had been missed, the player was often reduced to trying increasingly outlandish actions until finally restoring to an earlier point or quitting the game altogether. A famous example of a dead end situation is the plant in "Return to Zork". Early in the game a plant can be obtained. Most players just take the plant, but will find out later (much later) in the game their plant has died. Without the plant the game can't be finished. What they should have done is carefully dig out the plant, instead of just grabbing it. Naturally, players rarely found this type of gameplay entertaining. Some companies, including LucasArts, deliberately and explicitly avoided dead-end situations in many of their games. Although some die-hard adventure purists scorned such practices as "dumbing down games for the masses", more games adopted the approach over time; even Sierra, who was infamous for a time for ruthlessly "punishing the player", eventually embraced the concept. Unwinnable is a state in many text adventures, graphical adventure games and computer role-playing games where it is impossible for the player to reach the end goal, and where the only other options are restarting the game, restoring a previously saved game, wandering indefinitely, or meeting death. ... For the musical group, see Cul de Sac (group). ... For the musical group, see Cul de Sac (group). ... For CD-ROMversion: 42MB hard disk space; 2X CD-ROM drive. ...

Some items are featured very often in various adventure games, and have many uses. Two examples are a rope and a crowbar. In some games, certain items are used as part of running gags; for example being used in many absurd situations far from their original intended purpose, or items which are seemingly useless for most of the game, such as the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle in The Secret of Monkey Island. Coils of rope used for long-line fishing A rope (IPA: ) is a length of fibers, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. ... A crowbar is a tool consisting of a metal bar with one curved end and flattened points, often with a small fissure on the curved end for removing nails. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... A prop comic holding a rubber chicken in sweat pants (as in the simile looser than a rubber chicken in sweat pants). A rubber chicken is a popular sight gag and slapstick comedy prop, sometimes used by comics to hit people with. ... Pulleys of a ship A pulley is a wheel with a groove along its edge, for holding a rope or cable. ...

Notable adventure games

Adventure (also known as ADVENT or Colossal Cave) (Crowther & Woods, 1976) was the first computer adventure game. ... This article is about a video game for the Atari 2600 video game console. ... The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an interactive fiction computer game based on the seminal comic science fiction series of the same name. ... Maniac Mansion is a graphical adventure game originally released in 1987 by Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts). ... Full Throttle is a graphical adventure game, originally developed in-house and released in May 1995 by LucasArts. ... The Dig is a graphical adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 1995. ... Grim Fandango is a graphical adventure computer game released by LucasArts in 1998, the title derived from a line of a mournful poem read by one of the characters in the game. ... Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (DoTT) is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1993, and published by LucasArts. ... A screenshot of Zak McKracken, PC version. ... Hugos House of Horrors is a computer game released in 1990. ... Shadowgate is a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, originally released in 1987 for the PC/Mac. ... The Longest Journey is a 1999 point-and-click adventure game by Norwegian studio Funcom. ... Bad Mojo is a computer game by Pulse Entertainment, released in 1996. ... The Neverhood is a 1996 PC CD-ROM claymation video game created by animator Doug TenNapel and released by Dreamworks Studios. ... Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1998 by ASC Games. ... Plot Amerzone is a first-person role-playing game much like Myst. ... Syberia is a 2002 computer adventure game by MC2-MicroÃ¯ds and The Adventure Company. ... Syberia II is a 2004 adventure game by MC2-MicroÃ¯ds, and is a sequel to Syberia. ...

Series

Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Beyond Zork Zork Zero Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters Kings Creatures Timeline Magic Calendar... Kings Quest IV screenshot (low resolution 160x200 version. ... Leisure Suit Larry is the title character of a series of adult adventure games written by Al Lowe and published by Sierra On-Line from the 1980s to the present. ... Space Quest is a series of six computer games that follow the adventures of a hapless janitor named Roger Wilco, as he campaigns through the galaxy for truth, justice and really clean floors. Initially created for Sierra On-Line by Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy (who called themselves the Two... Police Quest is a series of computer games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1993. ... Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones Professor Henry Indiana Jones, Junior is a fictional bullwhip-toting, fedora-wearing archaeologist with an ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). ... The Secret of Monkey Island, CD version. ... Quest for Glory is a series of hybrid role-playing/adventure computer games designed by Corey and Lori Ann Cole. ... Alone in the Dark is a series of survival horror computer games from Infogrames (now Atari). ... The Legend of Kyrandia is a fantasy point and click adventure game trilogy with comedy elements, created by Westwood Studios, and released for DOS, Amiga, FM Towns and Apple Macintosh. ... Gabriel Knight is the title character in a series of adventure games produced by the Sierra Corporation in the 1990s. ... The Journeyman Project is a series of award-winning first-person science-fiction adventure games, created by Presto Studios and released by various publishers, including Bandai, Sanctuary Woods, and Red Orb Entertainment. ... Myst franchise Games and their Ages Novels Book of Atrus Book of Tiana Book of Dni Book of Marrim Comic Books #0 #1 Miscellaneous Dni Dni Ages The Art Timeline Items Kings Language Numerals People Wildlife Organizations BrÃ¸derbund Cyan Presto Ubisoft DRC Myst is a... The Discworld is a series of thirty-four satirical fantasy novels and a number of shorter works by Terry Pratchett set on the Discworld. ... Tex Murphy was the main character of five adventure games from Access Software. ... A screenshot of Broken Sword on the GBA Broken Sword is an adventure game series created by Revolution Software. ... Simon the Sorcerer 2 screenshot Simon the Sorcerer is a series of point-and-click adventure games created by AdventureSoft. ...

References

Originally translated from the article on the French Wikipedia, which cites the following sources:

Contents

History

Colossal Cave Adventure

Scott Adams

Graphical progress

Infocom

Sierra

LucasArts

Myst

Types of adventure games

Puzzle adventure

Action-adventure

Text based

Graphical adventure

RPG-like

Other

Modern adventure games

Common features

Notable adventure games

Series

References

See also

External links

Contents

History GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Colossal Cave Adventure

Scott Adams

Graphical progress

Infocom

Sierra

LucasArts

Myst

Types of adventure games

Puzzle adventure

Action-adventure

Text based

Graphical adventure

RPG-like

Other

Modern adventure games

Common features

Notable adventure games

Series

References

See also

External links

History