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.
