A dead dragon lies at my character's feet, having been impaled on my character's mighty sword (that arrow thing) in the classic low-res Atari game "Adventure." Yes, dragons actually are related to chickens.
Last week, Wil Wheaton tweeted about a great post at “Roll 3d6 Six Times for Stats” from a father introducing his ten-year-old daughter to Atari Adventure. “What a great idea,” I thought. “My favorite Atari game! And I have two five year old daughters – five plus five equals ten.”
Not exactly.
Atari Adventure was the very first action-adventure video game. Your character is a square icon. You wander around a low-res dungeon landscape of castles and mazes seeking a glowing chalice. You may carry only one item at a time – a key to unlock one of the castles, a magnet that attracts other objects, a bridge to travel through walls, or a sword. Find the chalice and return it to your home castle to win. But beware the dragons. If you have a sword, you can kill them. Otherwise they will attack and eat you. And there’s an annoying bat who randomly steals whatever you are carrying and rearranges the objects in the dungeon. I never had an Atari system growing up, but whenever I got a chance to visit a friend who did, Adventure was the game I wanted to play.
There are a number of Flash Adventure emulators if you’d like to try it out:
- Dwedit’s Atari Adventure. Seemed to be the best and most comprehensive emulation.
- Scott Pehnke’s Atari Adventure. I like the graphics, but couldn’t figure out the other levels/games.
- The official Atari version of Adventure. A little clunkier I thought, but it has a nice set of best times, if you’re feeling competitive.
I started off with Scott Pehnke’s version (from which I captured the screenshots). Here’s what happened.
My girls want me to play while they watch so they can see how to play. Fine. I start off on the easiest level in the simplest game: next to the gold castle. I sneak past the slow gold dragon, steal the corresponding gold key, and open the gold castle where I find the sword. I take the sword and slay the first (gold) dragon, who has conveniently followed me back to my castle. I slay the second (green) dragon, retrieve the key to the black castle, travel through the maze, and unlock the black castle. In picking up the black key, I left the sword on the other side of the map. Rather than go all the way back, I decide to try to steal the chalice from under the watchful eyes of the red dragon. He’s too fast and eats me. Shrieks of terror ensue.
In a moment of sheer terror (from a five year old's perspective) Daddy gets eaten by a red dragon in the classic Atari game, "Adventure."
I reassure the girls that it’s just a game.
“But he ATE you!” they insist.
“That’s because I wasn’t carrying the sword,” I explain calmly. “If I have the sword, I can kill the dragon.”
They look at me incredulously. Daddy’s behavior is completely incomprehensible. “WHY didn’t you bring the sword?”
“I can only carry one item, and I had to take the black key to unlock the black castle.”
“But WHY didn’t you go back and get the sword?”
“It was a long way back to pick it up, so I thought I’d try to sneak past the dragon.”
“He’s TOO FAST, Daddy. Take the sword or the dragon will EAT you!”
It was as if I told them I was going to jump out of an airplane and decided to leave my parachute behind for fun. I should have realized that the best I could hope for at that point was to show them some conservative play where I took no chances and was never killed by the dragons. And there was no way I could allow them to play – their dexterity wasn’t up to dodging the dragons. So I let them watch me play for a while – but it was too boring and I couldn’t resist the temptation to try to slip past the dragon again unarmed. He ate me again. Once more, the girls were seriously distraught – to the point of tears. And that was the end of my gaming with girls. For now.
Maybe I should wait a couple more years before introducing the girls to Doom?
Hans
Hans Schantz is CTO of The Q-Track Corporation, and a co-inventor of NFER® technology. His prior work experience includes stints with IBM, the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, The ElectroScience Lab of the Ohio State University, and Time Domain Corporation. Author of The Art and Science of Ultra-wideband Antennas (Artech House, 2005), his thirty-five U.S. patents include antennas, RF systems, RF-based location systems, and related inventions. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an amateur radio operator [KC5VLD]. Schantz earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds degrees in Industrial Engineering and Physics from Purdue University. Dr. Schantz blogs at ÆtherCzar and is @ÆtherCzar on Twitter. His wife, Barbara, invented The Baby Dipper® Bowl. Hans and Barbara have two sets of twins: girls aged seven, and boys three years old. The views expressed are the author's and are not necessarily the views of his employer, clients, investors, sponsors, or customers.
