Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What was the first adventure game?
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
The original "Dragon Slayer", released for the PC-88 in 1984, is considered to be the first action-RPG. In contrast to earlier turn-based roguelikes, "Dragon Slayer" was a dungeon crawl RPG that was entirely real-time with action-oriented combat. "Dragon Slayer" also featured an in-game map to help with the dungeon-crawling, required item management due to the inventory being limited to one item at a time, and introduced the use of item-based puzzles which later influenced "The Legend of Zelda". "Dragon Slayer" was a major success in Japan, where its overhead action-RPG formula was used in many later games. The game's MSX port was also one of the first titles to be published by Square.
"The Legend of Zelda", the first game of the series, was first released in Japan on February 21, 1986, on the Famicom Disk System. A cartridge version, using battery-backed memory, was released in the United States on August 22, 1987, and Europe on November 27, 1987. The game features a "Second Quest," accessible either upon completing the game, or by registering one's name as "ZELDA" when starting a new quest. The Second Quest features different dungeons and item placement, and more difficult enemies.
The first game in the series is based on the video game "Age of Empires III", and was originally titled Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery before being renamed to Glenn Drover's Empires: The Age of Discovery in 2011 following the loss of the naming rights to the "Age of Empires" series. It was originally published in 2007 by Tropical Games, and is currently distributed by Drover's own publishing company, Eagle Games. The game may be played by up to five players, though pieces for a sixth player were available in limited supply, and are included in the "Builders Expansion", released in 2011 along with the renaming of the series.
Dragon Quest is the first role-playing video game (RPG) in the "Dragon Quest" media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Family Computer (or Famicom for short) and published by Enix in Japan in 1986 as "Dragon Quest" and by Nintendo in 1989 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) as Dragon Warrior. "Dragon Quest" has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and mobile phones. In play, players control a hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. "Dragon Warrior"s story became the second part in a trilogy. Several more anime and manga series, which revolved around this overarching plot were created.
"The Secret of Monkey Island" is the first game in the "Monkey Island" series and was released in 1990. The game, noted for its greater use of witty humor over previous titles, was designed by Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer. The concept itself was pioneered by Gilbert. Following the deviation in gameplay in "Loom", "The Secret of Monkey Island" returned to similar point-and click gameplay featured in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". The SCUMM engine was again upgraded for the title. Set in the Caribbean in the Golden Age of Piracy, the game introduced Guybrush Threepwood, a hapless amateur pirate. The game's MIDI music soundtrack was the first to feature work by Michael Land. The added a new CD-audio music soundtrack, and updated the game's graphical user interface.
That same year saw the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. The inventor, Ralph H. Baer, had initially had the idea in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. Unable to do so with the technological constraints at the time, he began work on a device that would attach to a television set and display games in 1966, and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was licensed to Magnavox to adapt and produce. They announced the console in May 1972, and it went on sale that September. The console and its games featured numerous innovations beyond being the first video game device for home consumers: it was the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting up in the video game industry as it grew in popularity.
An important influence on the action RPG genre was the 1986 action-adventure, "The Legend of Zelda", which served as the template for many future action RPGs. In contrast to previous action RPGs, such as "Dragon Slayer" and "Hydlide," which required the player to bump into enemies in order to attack them, "The Legend of Zelda" featured an attack button that animates a sword swing or projectile attack on the screen. It was also an early example of open-world, nonlinear gameplay, and introduced new features such as battery backup saving. These elements have been used in many action RPGs since.
The history of game making begins with the development of the first video games, although which video game is the first depends on the definition of "video game". The first games created had little entertainment value, and their development focus was separate from user experience—in fact, these games required mainframe computers to play them. "OXO", written by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952, was the first computer game to use a digital display. In 1958, a game called "Tennis for Two", which displayed its output on an oscilloscope, was made by Willy Higinbotham, a physicist working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1961, a mainframe computer game called "Spacewar!" was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students led by Steve Russell.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, known in the PAL regions as Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King, is a role-playing video game developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. It was first released in Japan in 2004, and was later released in North America in 2005 and PAL regions in 2006, making it the first main series installment released in the PAL region. It is the eighth installment of the popular "Dragon Quest" series and it is the first English version of a "Dragon Quest" game to drop the "Dragon Warrior" title. A version of the game for Android and iOS was released in Japan in December 2013, and worldwide in May 2014.
Doom (typeset as DOOM in official documents and stylized as DooM in other media) is a 1993 first-person shooter (FPS) video game by id Software. It is considered one of the most significant and influential titles in video game history, for having helped to pioneer the now-ubiquitous first-person shooter. The original game was divided into three nine-level episodes and was distributed via shareware and mail order. The Ultimate Doom, an updated release of the original game featuring a fourth episode, was released in 1995 and sold at retail.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is an action-adventure video game developed by Ninja Theory and published by Namco Bandai Games. Announced in 2009 as "Enslaved", it was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2010. As a loose adaptation of the novel "Journey to the West", the game is set 150 years in a future post-apocalyptic world following a global war. Only remnants of humanity survive, along with the still active war machines left over from the conflict. The game's story follows Monkey who is forced to escort Trip home safely after they survive a ship crash. Players play as Monkey, who must combat enemies using his staff from a third-person perspective, engage in different platforming challenges and solve puzzles.
In 1972, the first commercially available video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had a light gun accessory, the Shooting Gallery. This was the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
The "Wolfenstein" series of video games started with the 1981 stealth-adventure video game "Castle Wolfenstein". It was developed by American programmer Silas Warner, a pioneer in the early eras of video gaming, especially the stealth genre. It was published by his (then) company M.U.S.E. Inc. (Muse Software). The player controls an unnamed American prisoner of war as he steals war files containing information about secret German war plans while avoiding or sometimes killing guards, and tries to escape the fortified Nazi stronghold Castle Wolfenstein, set during World War II. The game is often credited as one of the first video games of the stealth genre, since it focuses more on avoiding or disarming enemies, and killing them is considered a last resort.
"Age of Empires", released on October 26, 1997, was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios. It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made, utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of "Civilization" and "". The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, "The Rise of Rome", published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.
The game was conceived in 1988 by Lucasfilm employee Ron Gilbert, who designed it with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert's frustrations with contemporary adventure titles led him to make the player character's death almost impossible, which meant that gameplay focused the game on exploration. The atmosphere was based on that of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. "The Secret of Monkey Island" was the fifth game built with the SCUMM engine, which was heavily modified to include a more user-friendly interface.
The first-person shooter may be considered a distinct genre itself, or a type of shooter game, in turn a subgenre of the wider action game genre. Following the release of "Doom" in 1993, games in this style were commonly termed "Doom clones"; over time this term has largely been replaced by "first-person shooter". "Wolfenstein 3D," released in 1992, the year before "Doom", has been credited with introducing the genre, but critics have since identified similar though less advanced games developed as far back as 1973. There are occasional disagreements regarding the specific design elements which constitute a first-person shooter. For example, "Deus Ex" or "BioShock" may be considered as first-person shooters, but may also be considered role-playing video games as they borrow from this genre extensively. Certain puzzle games like "Portal" are also called first-person shooters, but lack any direct combat or shooting element, instead using the first-person perspective to help immerse players within the game to help solve puzzles. Some commentators extend the definition to include combat flight simulators where the cockpit or vehicle takes place of the hands and weapons.
Adventure board games often integrate various role-playing game mechanics, such as experience points and character creation into the board game format. The origins of these two types of game are related. In the early 1970s, Dave Arneson introduced his role-playing game, Blackmoor, to a group of players. One of those players, Gary Gygax, collaborated with Arneson to create "Dungeons & Dragons" (1974). Another member of that gaming group, Dave Meggary, translated the experience into the board game, "Dungeon!" (1975), the first adventure board game. In fact, the term "adventure gaming" in the 1970s referred to what later became known as tabletop role-playing games, and only later became associated with board games.
Silas Warner, an American programmer and an employee of software company Muse Software, was a pioneer of early video game development, especially the stealth genre. He had access to computers in college, and when he worked for the IBM Mainframe architectures before joining Muse Software. The computer he used for game-development, P.L.A.T.O., was one of the firsts with multiple functioning terminals and an example of early computer networks. Warner developed, with P.L.A.T.O., a series of classic video games like his flight simulator and arcade shooter. Inspired by the arcade shooter video game "Berzerk" and the 1961 war film "Guns of Navarone", he developed "Castle Wolfenstein", a stealth-adventure video game in which the player controls an unnamed American prisoner of war as he steals German files containing secret war plans, while avoiding, disarming or at times killing hostile guards and trying to escape the fortified Nazi stronghold 'Castle Wolfenstein', set in World War II. The game was published in 1981 by Warner's company M.U.S.E. Inc. (Muse Software).
Grand Theft Auto is an action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design and published by BMG Interactive. It was first released in Europe and North America in October 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was later re-released on 12 December 1997 in Europe and 30 June 1998 in North America for the PlayStation. It is the first instalment of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, to be followed by 1999's "Grand Theft Auto 2". The series, which has led to five main entries and several special edition games over 16 years, has sold more than 150 million units as of September 2013. The story follows a group of criminals in three fictionalised versions of US cities as they perform bank robberies, assassinations, and other illegal activities for their respective crime syndicates.
"Quest for Glory" (1992) was produced by Sierra Entertainment, known for point-and-click adventure games, and combined CRPG and adventure-game mechanics into a unique, genre-bending mix. The series featured involved stories, complex puzzles, and arcade-like combat. The last of its five titles was released in 1998. It was originally conceived as a tetralogy built around the themes of the four cardinal directions, the four classical elements, the four seasons and the four mythologies. The designers felt that the series' storyline made "" too difficult, and so inserted a fifth game, "", into the canon and renumbered the series.
The first known graphical adventure game was "Mystery House" (1980), by Sierra On-Line, then at the time known as On-Line Systems. The game featured static vector graphics atop a simple command line interface, building on the text adventure model. Sierra would continue to produce similar games under the title "Hi-Res Adventure". Vector graphics would give way to bitmap graphics which also enabled for simple animations to show the player-character moving in response to typed commands. Here, Sierra's "King's Quest" (1984), though not the first game of its type, is recognized as a commercially successful graphical adventure game, enabling Sierra to expand on more titles. Other examples of early games include Koei's "Night Life" and "Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku" (1982), "Sherwood Forest" (1982), Yuji Horii's "Portopia Serial Murder Case" (1983), "The Return of Heracles" (which faithfully portrayed Greek mythology) by Stuart Smith (1983), Dale Johnson's "Masquerade" (1983), Antonio Antiochia's "Transylvania" (1982, re-released in 1984), and "Adventure Construction Set" (1985), one of the early hits of Electronic Arts.
As the first action-adventure video game and first console fantasy game, "Adventure" established its namesake genre on video game consoles. In addition to being the first graphical adventure game on the Atari 2600 console, it is the first video game to contain a widely known Easter egg, and the first to allow a player to use multiple, portable, on-screen items while exploring an open-ended environment, making it one of the first examples, even as small and primitive as it is, of an open world game. The game has been voted the best Atari 2600 game in numerous polls, and has been noted as a significant step in the advancement of home video games. "GamePro" ranked it as the 28th most important video game of all time in 2007. In 2010, "1UP.com" listed it as one of the most important games ever made in its "The Essential 50" feature. "Entertainment Weekly" named "Adventure" as one of the top 10 games for the Atari 2600.
Toy subsequently enrolled in computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the late 1970s. Working first on UCSC's PDP-11 and then its VAX-11, Toy began exploring what games were available over ARPANET, the predecessor of the current Internet. One game that intrigued him was "Colossal Cave Adventure" (also known as "Adventure") (1976) by William Crowther and Don Woods. "Adventure", considered the first text-based adventure game, challenged the player to explore a cave system through descriptions given by the computer and commands issued by the player. Toy was impressed by the game and started writing his own.
One of the first action-adventure games was the Atari 2600 game "Adventure" (1980). It was directly inspired by the original text adventure, "Colossal Cave Adventure". In the process of adapting a text game to a console with only a joystick for control, designer Warren Robinett created an action-adventure game by incorporating action arcade game elements.