Atari's Adventure

Atari's Adventure is considered one of the first action-adventure games to be released of its time. It was created in 1979 for the Atari VCS. The game is about an evil magician that has stolen an enchanted chalice and has hidden it somewhere in the kingdom. The object of the game is to find the enchanted chalice and take it back to the Golden Castle where it belongs. This becomes difficult though as the evil magician has created dragons that you must overcome to reach your objective, the enchanted chalice. There are three castles in the Kingdom; the White Castle, the Black Castle, and the Golden Castle. Each castle has a Gate over the entrance. The gate can be opened with the corresponding colored key.


This game did only take me 5 minuets to complete. Though, when looking at the time of the game's release it is evident that it was a high point for the gaming industry. The puzzle like game play and enemy obstacles point towards the evolution of action adventure games along with role playing games. This is a game though that I would recommend you first read the description of the game. If you are a "jump in head first" type of gamer like myself, you might hit a snag. For instance with my first play through of the game I was just running around and "exploring" and accidently beat the game. After that the game just froze and I thought I broke it. The game is definitely as my professor stated, a portal for the imagination, starting with how the main character is just a single block pixel. For the time of the game though, the game play is very detailed for this epic quest. You can not progress throughout the game with out first finding the proper and necessary tools. For example we can can compare this to a more recent game such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Where Dragons have been raised as obstacles, like in Adventure. Also, how in quests you must first complete one objective to reach the next. Another very popular title that can be related to this game is the Zelda franchise. The additional modes also add a little variety to the game play.


Atari's Adventure also holds one of the very first in game easter eggs. Now this is a small dot that can be found inside the Black Castle's catacomb's lower wall. It can only be reached with the bridge, and is not attracted by the magnet. After doing a bit of research, I found that the dot was nicknamed the "invisible dot". The dot is not exactly invisible, just the same color of the corresponding wall it is found in. If you bring the dot to east section of the area  that the Golden Castle is located in while other different colored objects are present, it will turn the wall "invisible". This will allow the player to go through the wall to a room that displays the words "Created by Warren Robinett"

Sneaky Sneaky

Altogether The game is very good for when it came out. It makes it obvious where future Action-Adventure and RPGs found there inspiration for release.