The man who invented the Text Adventure genre #Gaming @ScottAdamsDev @MadNed

Mad Ned interviewed gaming pioneer Scott Adams about the dawn of adventure gaming last November. Adams is the “Adventure Guy”, the creator of Adventureland, widely regarded as the first text adventure game ever sold for microcomputers. Scott’s company, Adventure International, produced this and many other text adventure games through the 1980s, pioneering the genre of Interactive Fiction.

MNM: I have read some recent discussions about adventure game design and the trend towards avoiding the creation of deep paths that are dead ends. Has this kind of thinking informed your more recent game designs?

Scott: Yes, lessons learned. If you play Adventureland XL, you never have to start over. There is nothing you can do to prevent you from winning the game.

MNM: This is your 40th-anniversary reissue of the game. So is it a complete rewrite of Adventureland, or does it retain some of the original content?

Scott: It has all the content of the original, plus an additional new set of content. So if you want to have a better Adventureland experience, I would definitely recommend the XL version over the original.

You can read the entire article and interview by Mad Ned on Substack.


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1 Comment

  1. Ok I am old enough to say I played this on an old Commodore Vic 20. My very very very first game ever and I loved it. It also taught me how to make flow charts at a young age… not particularly proud of that however

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