Adventure (1979)

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Adventure
Studio Warren Robinett
Publisher Atari
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1979
platform Atari 2600
genre Action adventure
Game mode Single player
control joystick
medium Game module
language English
information First action adventure

Adventure for the game console Atari 2600 is a video game developed by Warren Robinett and published by Atari in 1979 . It was the first action adventure game and is also considered to be the first game to include an Easter egg . It is also one of the first games for this system and has sold over 1 million times.

Game description

The aim of the graphic game is to find an enchanted goblet that an evil wizard has hidden in a maze and bring it back to the golden palace. The labyrinth contains a number of rooms and two more palaces (black and white) with further mazes. The game takes place from above ; however, the characters are shown in profile, the game figure is only a large square pixel . The graphics consist of simple, typical Atari graphics. Labyrinth boundaries or walls are only colored bars with interruptions at certain points or sides of the screen edge.

There are three different dragons as opponents:

  • Yorgle, the yellow dragon: He is afraid of the golden key and flees from it. He guards the enchanted chalice.
  • Grundle, the green dragon: He is more aggressive than Yorgle and guards the magnet, the bridge, the black key and the goblet.
  • Rhindle, the red dragon: He is the fastest and the most aggressive of the three dragons. He guards the white key and the chalice.

The dragons can be "killed" by touching them with a sword, which has to be found first. If the difficulty switch on the console is set to “A”, the dragons will flee when they see the sword. The dragons chase the pawn and try to eat it. If they succeed, the avatar ends up in the dragon's belly and can no longer be moved. The game is actually over. Instead of restarting, however, the player has the option of continuing the game via "game reset", with the character reappearing in the golden palace, while all other objects maintain their position and dragons that have already been killed also come to life again.

The player has to find the keys that match the palaces in order to open their doors and advance further. In addition to the sword and the keys, there is a magic bridge that allows you to cross the walls of the labyrinth, and a magnet that attracts objects in the room (but only one object at a time). A planned element of the game is that the player can only carry one object at a time. If he wants to pick up another object, he puts the one he is currently wearing on the spot. In addition to the kite, there is a flying bat that can be in two states (excited and unexcited). In the excited state, the bat grabs objects (but occasionally also kites) and carries them away, while in the calm state it only flies around. If the bat is carrying an object that the player needs, he can catch the bat in order to indirectly carry the object of the bat.

There are three different levels of difficulty:

  1. contains a reduced game world with fewer rooms. In addition, the bat and the green dragon are missing.
  2. contains the complete game world, with fixed objects.
  3. also contains the complete game world, but the objects are randomly distributed.

Easter Egg

In the labyrinth of the black palace, the player can find and record a very small and therefore barely visible pixel at a point that can only be reached via the bridge . This pixel is not attracted by the magnet and is the same color as the corridors through which the player is moving. If the player brings this pixel to the eastern end of the corridor below the golden palace and there is another object in this room, the right wall of the room disappears and gives access to another room in which there is a vertical row of letters the name of the developer Warren Robinett is located ("Created by Warren Robinett"). In the adventure version on the Classics 10 In 1 TV Games console, which was released in 2003 by the American company Jakks Pacific, the name of the developer was replaced by "Text?" replaced.

The ROM size is four kilobytes , 5% of which was required for the graphics and game logic of the Easter Egg.

Ports and re-releases

Trivia

  • The magnet in the game is a bug fix for the problem that the bat places objects in places that the player cannot reach.
  • The Legend of Zelda adopted the gameplay and the idea of ​​the Easter egg.
  • In Ready Player One , the game and its Easter egg play a central role.

See also

literature

  • Adventure. In: Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost: Racing the Beam. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2009, ISBN 978-0-262-01257-7 , pp. 43-63.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adventure for the_Atari 2600 Video Game Console. Warren Robinett, accessed March 10, 2016 .
  2. ↑ INTERVIEW Warren Robinett. gooddealgames.com, 2003, accessed March 10, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Chris Kohler: Chapter 2. Playing Neo-Retro Games . In: Retro Gaming Hacks: Tips & Tools for Playing the Classics . O'Reilly Media , 2005, ISBN 9781449303907 .
  4. ↑ Interview with Warren Robinett:
    Interview 1: Warren Robinett. toadstool.net April 21, 1997, archived from the original January 21, 2013 ; accessed on March 10, 2016 (English). Interview 2: Warren Robinett. toadstool.net, April 21, 1997, archived from the original on June 25, 2012 ; accessed on March 10, 2016 (English). Interview 3: Warren Robinett. toadstool.net, April 21, 1997, archived from the original on February 14, 2005 ; accessed on March 10, 2016 (English). Interview 4: Warren Robinett. toadstool.net, April 21, 1997, archived from the original on January 5, 2014 ; accessed on March 10, 2016 (English).