OMFG “Adventure” comes to the iPhone! And it’s FREE!
Yes kids, there was a time when video games looked this bad, and they were played on a little thing called the Atari 2600. I remember when my brothers and I got our 2600 for Christmas, and Adventure was included in the box.
Above: Behold the awesomeness that IS the golden castle!
Above: I can’t believe I still remember the route of the maze after 25 years… and yes, that arrow is your sword.
The description of the game painted a vision of a magical world full of sorcery, dragons, sword fights, and danger. The reality was decidedly different, leaving pretty much EVERYTHING up to the player’s imagination.
“An evil magician has stolen the Enchanted Chalice and has hidden it somewhere in the Kingdom. The object of the game is to rescue the Enchanted Chalice and place it inside the Golden Castle where it belongs.
This is no easy task, as the Evil Magician has created three Dragons to hinder you in your quest for the Golden Chalice. There is Yorgie, the Yellow Dragon, who is just plain mean; there is Grundle, the Green Dragon, who is mean and ferocious; and there is Rhindle, the Red Dragon, who is the most ferocious of all. Rhindle is also the fastest Dragon and is the most difficult to outmaneuver”
Above: Oh no! Yorgie the Yellow Dragon is terrifying! Or is that a duck?
Above: Oh no! Yorgie the Yellow Dragon is totally going to eat me!
Above: Hmm… I guess when I was five I missed just how much it looks like Yorgie had an erection after eating me
Peter Hirschberg, creator of the vector game emulator Vector Dream has successfully ported Adventure to the iPhone, and all the crappy graphics and gameplay are there. I remember there was a magic “dot” you could find that if you brought it to a certain screen would allow you to travel through a wall and see the game’s creators (one of the first console game cheats I can remember). While 25 years later I am impressed that I still remember how to navigate the maze, I can’t remember where the dot is, so I don’t know if Peter threw that in, and honestly, I got bored after 5 minutes, so I don’t think I will bother Googleing the dot and finding out, but kudos to Peter for what appears to be a very faithful port of the game that got me addicted to games.
bring on yar’s revenge!
Too funny! Yes, I too was the proud owner of an Atari 2600. It was a Christmas present during my 7th grade year in school. Still one of the greatest Christmas presents ever! Why Peter spent time on this particular game I do not know. I think Missile Command, Joust, even Space Invaders would have been a more worthy port, but perhaps there is no licensing issue on a game of this, urhmmm, caliber.
Did you find the invisible dot on Level 3? 🙂
@kelly: two characters for you. ET!
Given the hardware limitations 30+ years ago (128 bytes of ram, 4k rom carts & a 1.19mHz cpu), the Atari programmers did some remarkable things. Some games were complete failures (i.e. the afore mentioned E.T.) but many are still classics because of their great game play & despite the now primitive graphics. How primitive will today’s hot titles look in 2038? Yes, son, back in my day you had to sit in front of a computer, watch a flat screen,and use a keyboard & mouse. Daddy, what’s a ‘puter?
From my 25 year memory: The dot is in the main castle, the one that is not illuminated. It’s in a the part of the maze — a square room, I suppose you could say — that is inaccessible except if you use that thing that looks like two brackets that lets you go through walls. It’s in one of the corners of the room, so you have to feel around the walls till you bump into it.