| ADVENTURE Atari 2600 Review | |||||||||||||||||||||
  Adventure was a Console-Based Action RPG in the same kind of vein as The Legend of Zelda, designed and programmed by Warren Robinette back in 1978 for the Atari (2600) Video Computer System (VCS). It was likely the first of it's kind, and quite an impressive game to be running on a console designed to play the simple arcade games Atari released in the 1970's such as Pong (Video Olympics) or Tank Plus (Combat).
In Adventure, you play as a knight in a kingdom where the evil Wizard has hidden an enchanted chalice somewhere in the kingdom, you must find the chalice and bring it back to the golden castle to win. While it seems like a very simple task....there's a handful of characters (not including the vaporware Wizard) to get in your way: three dragons (Yorgle (yellow), Grundle (green), and Rhindle (red)), and a bat with a serious case of Serial Kleptomania. Impressively Warren managed to cram all this in a tiny little 4K ROM chip with 54 bytes to spare for the original video game Easter Egg - all running on a wimpy little 1.79MHz 6502 based console with one button controllers and only 128 BYTES of RAM and no dedicated GPU. THere are three game variations in Adventure: Game 1 is a simple tutorial game with a heavily reduced "world" to play in, Game 2 is the standard difficulty game that has objects placed in fixed locations, and Game 3 is the HARD mode game that randomly places all the antagonists and objects randomly throughout the world every time - leaving some "unwinnable" combinations even.1 **SPOILER** - Game Variation 1 is sort of like the "tutorial", I'd suggest starting here. It contains 2 dragons (Yorgle and Grundle), no bat, no red dragon, 2 keys, the bridge, the sword, and the chalice. There is also no access to the "Easter Egg" in this game. When you reset, you'll find yourself sitting outside the yellow castle with a yellow key to the left. Take that key, unlock the castle door, and then go inside. HEre you will see an "Arrow" - aka the "sword" - grab that. Now exit the castle, down, down, and then left, then give Yorgle the good ole' stabby mcstabberson, and then head right, and then down, and take out Grundle. Feel free to drop the sword here, and snag the black key. Now - just follow the maze path above to the black castle, unlock the door, snag the chalice, and take the reverse path back to the yellow castle, and win. What - this seems so simple, well this IS an Atari 2600 game, what did you expect? 32 levels of dragon-stomping madness? C"mon, it's amazing enough that he fit THIS into a 4K Cartridge in 1978! Alternate Route with Bridge - There's also an alternate route to the black castle using the bridge - it was strategically placed to make the "blue magical maze" (maybe Journey was playing Advennture when they wrote "Edge of the Blade" for the Frontier's album in 1983, but I digress) much easier for an entry level player to navigate. 2 **SPOILER** - Game Variation 2 is the standard "Adventure" game. Basically put, the dragons (and likely the bat) all start at fixed positions, and so do all the objects, making the game "winnable" every time, but providing the full challenge. The "Easter Egg" is present in this version. 3 **SPOILER** - Game Variation 3 is the *HARD* difficulty. Basically, in this variation, you get all the works as game #2, BUT, everything is RANDOMLY arranged, leading to some unwinnable games, and some pretty interesting scenarios (like three Dragons hunting you out of the gate!). It also has the "Easter Egg" In It. EASTER EGG **SPOILER** - Adventure contains what is most often cited as the first video game easter egg. Developer Warren Robinette had some extra bytes lefts, so he put a secret room in the game, with his name in it, accessible by finding a literal, singular "Pixel" to carry to a special spot to gain access to this secret room. Conditions - The conditions to access the hidden room are this. The room lies beyond the black bar (I always think of it as a lexan panel) in the path in front of the yellow castle to the rightmost (Eastmost) side. It basically exploits a glitch in the Atari 2600's programming limitations where they have to "multiplex" sprites to get more than the usual amount of sprites on screen at a time - causing the objects on screen to flicker. I dunno how Warren programmed it to do this, but this also REMOVES that black bar, opening access to the secret room. So first off, you're going to need all three dragons killed (it makes this a LOT Easier) - hopefully one of them is already on the screen you need the pile of objects on (and dead) so that Mr. Kleptomaniac Moustache Bat has to exchange ANOTHER item for it to pick one of the items on that screen up - improving your chances. It's a good idea just to do this by grabbing ALL of the objects you can find in the game and bringing them to that screen. After all the above is achived. Now, open the black castle (if you have not already done so, which you should have by now since Rhindle/Red Duck/Red Dragon needs knocked out too), go grab the bridge, and then head on the path. There's a completley blocked off "shell space" in the black castle where the magical mystery dot is. The easiest way is, from the fist room in the red casle, up, left, and you'll be in a corner next to it, use the bridge to cross the wall, then use it a second time to grab the dot. Go over the bridge again, place the dot really close to the edge of the wall...so you can see it - release - put the bridge back, and then use that route. Alternatley - you can take another route OUT of the castle to leave without the bridge, but it takes longer. TAke the dot with you back to the gold screen with all the objects on it. At the screen, you can drop the dot (or take it with you) - I THINK in one way, you CAN get stuck back there - especially if you take the dot with you and drop it on the other side, or if the bat takes one object away and does not exchange one, and you had just enough to remove the bar. APPENDIX Adventure uses a Joystick controller in the back left Joystick port (right if facing toward the joystick port) and only allows one player. You use the joystick to move the square around 8-directions and the fire button to grab and release objects. TO use an object, you just touch or place the object over to something on screen it has an interaction with. Adventure Objects
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