The 11th of October 1978 is an essential date in the history of personal computers and the gaming industry as on this day A voice boomed out “Welcome to Adventure”. The opening words of the text adventure game AdventureLand written by Scott Adams and released for the TRS-80 Model 1 personal computer and this week makes the 40th anniversary.
Adventureland
The 11th of October 1978 marks the beginning of so many things, some firsts, some not and some which might be disputed by some who have better memories or think they do. However, this day marks the beginnings of the commercial computer game industry, which from these humble beginnings is now worth over 25+ billion.
So from my understanding in the summer of 1977, a young programmer named Scott Adams started work on a micro version of a text adventure game that profoundly inspired his imagination with a week’s worth of early mornings and magical times had with Adventure on the corporate mainframe.
Scott at work on the TRS 80
Looking to write a meaningful game which employed the use of strings for his new TRS-80 computer Scott set about designing AdventureLand, a wonderfully magical place in which Dragon’s, a bear, and other critters roamed free and where you the adventurer could locate treasures, some easily and others after hours of puzzle solving.
AdventureLand contained many ways in which your time could come to an end, for example waking a sleeping Dragon (and we all know that’s not a good idea). The development of AdventureLand also had its dangers and at one point almost ended up having floppy discs containing the valuable source code baked in an oven.
OMG!!!But that I guess should have been the start of the first Adventure. Go Kitchen…All I see here is an oven a sink a counter . Look Oven A scream is heard as the oven opens. EEEk its Mr Adams Screaming oh no my disks Allllllllllllexis *
So what makes Adventureland so unique? First is a full working text adventure written for a tiny microcomputer, some say the first genuinely commercial game of its type to run on a 16k micro.
Adventureland map
Initially written in BASIC and later rewritten in machine language, Scott didn’t just set about writing a simple text game he set about designing an adventure language, a database and interpreter driven system which would enable him to create other adventures with ease.
Essentially, changing the database changed the adventure. This approach leads to a series of new titles over the next few years cementing Scott as the undisputed Master of Adventures.
The approach used by Scott seem to inspire others, with an article published in Byte Magazine titled Adventure II. Describing an approach to designing and building your very own adventure language (database and interpreter) which seemed to follow Scott’s system.
This article would end up being followed, or borrowed upon by Graeme Yeandle with his fantastic adventure system called The Quill which was published by Gilsoft and itself being responsible for the boom in text adventures throughout the 1980’s (especially in the UK and Austrailia).
If you have never played a Scott Adams adventure then you have missed out on something wonderful, and I’d strongly suggest that do a quick Google search and play one of the many version available, but if you’re interested in how he wrote these amazing games then follow the links below.
Adventureland (BASIC listing) p.241
Pirate Adventure (BASIC listing) p.192
Adventure International Tribute Site