'Adventure' 2600 game was action-adventure prototype

[MetalDog]

Adventure.  The first action adventure game for consoles was terrible to look at.  Your 'hero' was a square.  The bad dragons looked an awful lot like ducks.  It was almost impossible to find the grey dot that let you into the secret room.  Wait...what?!  There was a secret room?!!?!!!??!  There sure was.  I remember finding it after my best friend told me about it and how to do it.  I thought I was King S*IT when I finally found it!  Who knew something that primitive would one day lead to games like Skyrim?


https://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/duck-dragons-and-easter-eggs--how--adventure--changed-gaming-002808828.html

[SirAndrewD]

I can close my eyes and play this game with muscle memory.

[Nefaro]

I have some fond memories of Telengard as one of my earliest Adventure RPGs that actually had some 'RPG' mechanics in it.   Probably best categorized as a Roguelike, of course.

[Capn Darwin]

Earlier and better, Tunnels of Doom on the Ti-99/4A. Had levels, multiple characters, aim and shoot mechanics for spells and bows, sound. A game that was not eclipsed in my opinion until Ultimate 4. It was a lot of fun back in the day.

[BanzaiCat]

Adventure.  The first action adventure game for consoles was terrible to look at. 

Speak for yourself! I was quite taken by the bland, simple graphics. My imagination 'saw' a lot more than those blocks and ducks showed.

'Course today, I can do nothing but agree with you! But back then, that game was the stuff.

I remember the Easter Egg too...heard about it from a friend. The documentary on Netflix about the ET 2600 cartridge (Atari: Game Over) mentions it briefly. (Fantastic documentary, highly recommend it.)

[Jarhead0331]

Sorry to say, these archaic games never did anything for me. Even back in the day. I would say no dungeon crawler type game ever got me involved until Legend of Zelda.

[JasonPratt]

Tunnels of Doom never did anything for you, JH?? I find that very hard to believe.

We're talking about a procedurally generated 99 level dungeon (took five to seven minutes to save or load a game from cassette tape! -- so save games were super-important), with a four person-party walking around it in 3D, dropping to a turn-based tactical overhead map game with sprites and sounds during the fights -- it had pretty much everything the first Gold Box SSI D&D game had, except many years earlier (minus a complex story, and the relative graphical advances of course, but plus a procedurally generated dungeon).

[JasonPratt]

And yes I recall the Atari 2600 "Adventure". :D Which I never once thought of as an adventure, as it was simply missing too many things. I got to where I could beat the main game pretty reliably. Can't recall where I learned about the secret room -- from a magazine I'm pretty sure -- but I found it, too.

The first adventure I ever played with actual characters (beyond the parties) and stories (which ToD didn't really have, but the procedural dungeon went far in my brother and I making up stories), was I think the Phantasie trilogy. I never played Ultima (it didn't exist for the C64, or if it did it was nowhere I could get it) until years after I got my first DOS PC, and then I've only ever played (and beat) Ultima 8.

[Gusington]

Ti 994a...good Lord.

[Steelgrave]

Telengard. Good God, that's been awhile. I remember my excitement when I upgraded from my boxy Atari to a Commodore 64, then to a Commodore 128 years later.

Seems like a good thread to drop this in: Anyone here read "Ready Player One"? I just finished it and it was a really fun read. Turns out some cat named Spielberg is turning it into a movie as well. Not to be taken too seriously, the book is worth your time just for the pure enjoyment of nerd nostalgia overload.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9969571-ready-player-one
http://deadline.com/2015/03/ready-player-one-movie-steven-spielberg-ernest-cline-warner-bros-1201398299/

[FlickJax]

Ti 994a...good Lord.

I wanted one of them but mum and dad got me a vic20 instead :)

[Nefaro]

I never played Ultima (it didn't exist for the C64, or if it did it was nowhere I could get it) until years after I got my first DOS PC, and then I've only ever played (and beat) Ultima 8.

Not sure if the original Ultima was on C64, but the sequels definitely were.  I certainly recall playing some of the early Ultimas on there (III, IV?).  They had some pretty fancy booklets, cloth map, etc in the game box which really didn't give much info on the finer details.

[FarAway Sooner]

I know the original Ultima was played on the Atari 400, because my best friend had it, but I have no memories playing the original title on my C-64.  Ultima 2 and Ultima 3, however were most certainly on it.  The first PC game I owned was Temple of Ashai for the C-64, which just didn't seem quite as cool as the sequel, Hellfire Warrior, which I'd played on my best friend's TRS-80.  His dad was a math teacher, the lucky guy!

Temple of Apshai was OK, Hellfire Warrior was better, but Epyx really hit their stride with Crush, Crumble & Chomp.  Man I loved being a flying robot who spewed radioactive waste all over the city.  Or a Kraken darting around the waterfront, grabbing civilians and eating them before sneaking up on unsuspecting Army units too close to the water!

I think the first vaguely wargamish thing I played was Cosmic Balance.  You designed ships, had firing arcs for all your different weapon types, etc.  I recall the game being lacking in play-balance (all the weapons sucked but Siege Phazers and Proton Torpedoes), but it was cool!

[BanzaiCat]

I had a Vic-20 too...our first 'family' PC. Had a cartridge to add a whopping 4K of memory to it! And eventually, a cassette drive.

My first computer that was mine was a TRS-80 model III. It was a big day when on my next b-day my grandfather took it to get the memory upped to 64K and have a 5.25" floppy drive installed! Before that I could only play around and then had to lose everything when I turned it off. I ended up buying a LOT of BASIC programming books to enter the code and play the games. All that constant entering and typing made me a fast typist today.

I also had a Commodore PC back in the late 80s/very early 90s. Had VGA graphics but the monitor was B&W. A very weird computer (I had never heard of Commodore making PCs but it ultimately made sense considering the market at the time). I loved that computer even though I had to look at B&W graphics...my first Civ game was on it, as was Empire, the Buck Rogers games (like the Gold Box D&D games), and many other firsts.

[FarAway Sooner]

Cat, might that have been an Amiga?