Adventure International
Encyclopedia
Adventure International was a computer game publishing company that existed from 1978 until 1985, started by Scott
and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system. The adventure game concept originally came from Colossal Cave Adventure
which ran strictly on large mainframe systems at the time.
to horror
and sometimes science fiction
. Some of the later games were written by Scott Adams with other collaborators (such as Philip Case). Adventure International marked the start of many development careers, including Russ Wetmore (author or Preppie! and Homepak
), and Jonathan Taylor (founder of Voxeo
). Adventure International's games became known for quality, with a reputation only exceeded in the field at the time by Infocom
.
Fourteen games later, Adventure International began to release games drawn from film and fiction. The extremely rare Buckaroo Banzai game, developed with Phillip Case, was based on the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984). Other games came from a more well known source: Marvel Comics
. Adventure International released three Questprobe
games based on the Marvel characters: The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Torch and the Thing.
By the end of 1982, game tastes were changing. The traditional text-based adventure game
market had moved to graphical based adventures. Games like The Hobbit
had increased expectations of such games, and although Adventure International games included graphics of a sort, they were significantly inferior to contemporary offerings at the time and the company was rapidly losing market share
. At its peak in late 1983 to early 1984 Adventure International employed approximately 50 individuals, and published titles from over 300 independent programmer/authors.
Adventure International was located in the Sabal Point subdivision of Longwood - at 155 Sabal Palm Drive, Longwood, FL near the east side of Sabal Point Elementary School. Adventure International also had a retail store front located in Sweetwater Oaks at 966 Fox Valley Dr, Longwood, FL near the west side of Sabal Point Elementary School. Both were in zip code 32750 (now 32779). Scott and Alexis Adams also lived in Sabal Point.
Adventure International went bankrupt
in 1985. The copyright
s for its games reverted to the bank and eventually back to Scott Adams who released them as shareware
.
In Europe
the "Adventure International" name was a trading name of Adventure Soft
and other games were released under the name that were not from Adventure International in the USA
.
The games were written using an in-house adventure creator with text compression and a sophisticated command interpreter running on a BBC Micro
and a graphics tool running on an Apricot F1
. The two parts were then merged, using a cross-compiler when necessary.
at the end
of the war
.
A quirk in this game's input parser
provided an unintentional surprise bit of morbid gameplay. At one point in the game, the player must figure out how to cross a predator-infested river. Entering the command "confess to war crime
s" here would not be rejected as gibberish as one might expect, but would actually kill the player. This turned out to not be a planned feature; the parser was finding the command "swim" embedded in the phrase ("confess to war crimes"), and swimming across the river was invariably a fatal move.
The actual solution to the game was no less macabre, involving zipping oneself into a body bag
to be carried out of the country by an evacuation
helicopter.
Scott Adams (game designer)
Scott Adams is the co-founder, with ex-wife Alexis, of Adventure International, an early publisher of games for home computers....
and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system. The adventure game concept originally came from Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure
Colossal Cave Adventure gave its name to the computer adventure game genre . It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky...
which ran strictly on large mainframe systems at the time.
History
After the success of their first game Adventureland, games followed rapidly, with Adventure International (or "AI") releasing about two games a year. Initially the games were drawn from the founders' imaginations, with themes ranging from fantasyFantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
to horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
and sometimes science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. Some of the later games were written by Scott Adams with other collaborators (such as Philip Case). Adventure International marked the start of many development careers, including Russ Wetmore (author or Preppie! and Homepak
Homepak
Homepak by Batteries Included, was an integrated application for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit personal computers.Homepak combined word-processor, database and communications modules into one application.*Hometext*Homefind*Hometerm...
), and Jonathan Taylor (founder of Voxeo
Voxeo
Voxeo Corporation is a technology company that specializes in providing development platforms for unified customer experience and unified communications applications...
). Adventure International's games became known for quality, with a reputation only exceeded in the field at the time by Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
.
Fourteen games later, Adventure International began to release games drawn from film and fiction. The extremely rare Buckaroo Banzai game, developed with Phillip Case, was based on the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984). Other games came from a more well known source: Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
. Adventure International released three Questprobe
Questprobe
Questprobe is a trilogy of graphical adventure computer games featuring Marvel Comics characters. The three games are Questprobe featuring The Hulk, Questprobe featuring Spider-Man and Questprobe featuring The Human Torch and The Thing....
games based on the Marvel characters: The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Torch and the Thing.
By the end of 1982, game tastes were changing. The traditional text-based adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
market had moved to graphical based adventures. Games like The Hobbit
The Hobbit (video game)
The Hobbit is a computer game released in 1982 and based on the book The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was developed at Beam Software by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler and published by Melbourne House for most home computers available at the time, from more popular models such as the ZX...
had increased expectations of such games, and although Adventure International games included graphics of a sort, they were significantly inferior to contemporary offerings at the time and the company was rapidly losing market share
Market share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
. At its peak in late 1983 to early 1984 Adventure International employed approximately 50 individuals, and published titles from over 300 independent programmer/authors.
Adventure International was located in the Sabal Point subdivision of Longwood - at 155 Sabal Palm Drive, Longwood, FL near the east side of Sabal Point Elementary School. Adventure International also had a retail store front located in Sweetwater Oaks at 966 Fox Valley Dr, Longwood, FL near the west side of Sabal Point Elementary School. Both were in zip code 32750 (now 32779). Scott and Alexis Adams also lived in Sabal Point.
Adventure International went bankrupt
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
in 1985. The copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
s for its games reverted to the bank and eventually back to Scott Adams who released them as shareware
Shareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
.
In Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
the "Adventure International" name was a trading name of Adventure Soft
Adventure Soft
Adventure Soft is a UK-based video game developer established by Mike Woodroffe, first as an importer and reseller of Adventure International games. The firm operates out of Sutton Coldfield, and is best known for the Simon the Sorcerer series of games....
and other games were released under the name that were not from Adventure International in the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The games
Scott Adams's original twelve adventure games were:- Adventureland (computer game): Explore a fantasy landscape and collect thirteen treasures.
- Pirate Adventure (also called Pirate's Cove): Hunt for lost pirate treasure.
- Secret Mission (originally called Mission Impossible): Prevent terrorists from destroying a nuclear reactorNuclear reactorA nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
. - Voodoo Castle: Free a count from a voodoo curse.
- The Count: Kill Count DraculaCount DraculaCount Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
. - Strange OdysseyStrange OdysseyStrange Odyssey was a text-based adventure program written by Scott Adams and Neil Broome .- Description :Published by Adventure International, this text-based adventure game was one of many from Scott Adams....
: Explore strange planets and collect treasure. - Mystery Fun HouseMystery Fun House (game)Mystery Fun House was a text-based adventure program written by Scott Adams, "Adventure 7" in the series released by Adventure International. The game setting was a fun house that the player had to explore in order to locate a set of secret plans, solving puzzles along the way...
: Capture secret plans hidden in a fun house. - Pyramid of DoomPyramid of DoomPyramid of Doom is a text-based adventure program written by Scott Adams.- Description :Published by Adventure International, this text-based adventure game was one of many from Scott Adams, co-written by Alvin Files....
: Plunder an Egyptian pyramid. - Ghost TownGhost Town (video game)Ghost Town is a computer game developed by Adventure International and released in 1981.-Plot:The player searches a Western ghost town for treasure...
: Search a Western ghost townGhost townA ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
for treasure. - Savage Island parts I & II: The most challenging adventure games, you are not even aware of the adventure's goal. If you complete part one, you are given the password to play the second part.
- The Golden Voyage: Sail the world and find the fountain of youthFountain of YouthThe Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John...
.
The games were written using an in-house adventure creator with text compression and a sophisticated command interpreter running on a BBC Micro
BBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...
and a graphics tool running on an Apricot F1
Apricot Computers
Apricot Computers is a British manufacturer of business personal computers, originally founded in 1965 as "Applied Computer Techniques" , changing its name to Apricot Computers, Ltd. in the 1980s...
. The two parts were then merged, using a cross-compiler when necessary.
Saigon: The Final Days
A later Adventure International title, Saigon: The Final Days, had as its very dark scenario the escape of a soldier from VietnamVietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
at the end
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on April 30, 1975...
of the war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
A quirk in this game's input parser
Text parser
In an adventure game, a text parser takes typed input from the player and simplifies it to something the game can understand. Usually, words with the same meaning are turned into the same word and certain filler words are dropped .The parser makes it easier for the game's author to react on input...
provided an unintentional surprise bit of morbid gameplay. At one point in the game, the player must figure out how to cross a predator-infested river. Entering the command "confess to war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s" here would not be rejected as gibberish as one might expect, but would actually kill the player. This turned out to not be a planned feature; the parser was finding the command "swim" embedded in the phrase ("confess to war crimes"), and swimming across the river was invariably a fatal move.
The actual solution to the game was no less macabre, involving zipping oneself into a body bag
Body bag
A body bag is a non-porous bag designed to contain a human body, used for the storage and transportation of corpses. Body bags can also be used for the storage of corpses within morgues. Before purpose-made body bags were available, cotton mattress covers were sometimes used, particularly in...
to be carried out of the country by an evacuation
Operation Frequent Wind
Operation Frequent Wind was the evacuation by helicopter of American civilians and 'at-risk' Vietnamese from Saigon, South Vietnam, on 29–30 April 1975 during the last days of the Vietnam War...
helicopter.