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Adventure (2600)


JacobZu7zu7

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That magic for Adventure must be its NOSTALGIA and probably %40 of why the game is loved so much. I'm like you it wasn't one I played long ago like, Donkey Kong or Pac-man.

The same could likely be said about any 2600 game.

 

When I brought the Flashback 2 home, Adventure quickly became one of my kids' Atari favorites.

 

Maybe without the nostalgia factor Adventure doesn't appeal as much to adults, because we've had our imaginations dulled by the grind of the world.

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Anybody who thinks "Adventure" is overrated is **OBVIOUSLY** not old enough to have either existed, or been old enough for consciousness in the era in which it was released.

It was simply amazing. There was nothing finer.

 

 

Is there no end to revisionist history, by the young?

 

Well if they agreed with you?? Then what it's all ok...? The whole idea behind rating a game based and baised by our own opinions. As long as there's some kinda idea or reason to back it up, maybe a youngster could chime in about a classic video game. As long as they think and don't follow the crowd or do the typical answers.

 

So, if we go by "FIRSTS" that means Pong is the best game of all time, because "at the time", (early 1970's) there was nothing better and it sold right into peoples living rooms.

 

If someone questions an Atari classic it doesn't always mean they are under 35-40 years old. Some older gamers don't like Missle Command and/or Space Invaders, but these folks did play it "in the day". Just how they feel about the game, and might put their opinion to the test.

 

In my opinion, Adventure hasn't got enough to quality or "enough to it", to be a classic. I think I might prefer Haunted House even. But I guess the gameplay in Adventure is innovative and timeless and is why people like it. I just think it's a great game but not "Amazing my favorite", I'd rather play E.T.!

 

One thing I don't like much about Adventure is the lack of vision walking through the maze, with a little bit of effort and memorizing, you always get where you need to go, so why not just be able to see clear through, or maybe after the first blind run through it??

 

Seems ironic how on one side, Adventure is the great classic on Atari VCS, and E.T. is often considered the "NAIL IN THE COFFIN" for Atari 2600.

I'm not seeing a big gap between the two, even if down a "deep" well.

 

To me, Quest for the Rings on Odyssey 2 is my dragon-style classic game, and always feels more fun and challenging to play.

 

Here you sit, in an era where home video games run in H.D. 1080p on multicore whizbang super-consoles, and you judge Adventure - a 4K (that's 4,096 bytes) ROM that ran on a machine with 128 bytes (that's 1/4 of 1K) of RAM. In this world, you review Atari Adventure and find it inadequate. That's the point. You might as well say that you're not impressed with Penicillin, either. Why not? Look at all the "fancy" antibiotics in the world now. I'd trade a pile of Odyssey 2s for a single Atari 2600 (with Adventure cart, no less), but that's just opinion as well.

Edited by wood_jl
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I think I have had the opposite experience with regards to Adventure. I wasn't fond of it as a kid, but grew to appreciate it as an adult.

 

I got my first copy of Adventure in i think 1985 at a yard sale and at the time I found it unplayable because I didn't have a copy of the instruction manual. I'll have to say that the biggest drawback to the game in my experience is that you pretty much need the manual to have any idea what is going on. I must have spent an hour wondering what that "arrow" was and how to fire it if that's what it was. And in the end I had no idea what the end goal of the game was. Unlike some other games of the era, just running around trying to play the game offers little help.

 

After playing it on Stella after having read the manual I can say that it's a great game. It's certainly a little overrated, but it was the "Zelda" of its time.

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Anybody who thinks "Adventure" is overrated is **OBVIOUSLY** not old enough to have either existed, or been old enough for consciousness in the era in which it was released.

It was simply amazing. There was nothing finer.

 

 

Is there no end to revisionist history, by the young?

 

Well if they agreed with you?? Then what it's all ok...? The whole idea behind rating a game based and baised by our own opinions. As long as there's some kinda idea or reason to back it up, maybe a youngster could chime in about a classic video game. As long as they think and don't follow the crowd or do the typical answers.

 

So, if we go by "FIRSTS" that means Pong is the best game of all time, because "at the time", (early 1970's) there was nothing better and it sold right into peoples living rooms.

 

If someone questions an Atari classic it doesn't always mean they are under 35-40 years old. Some older gamers don't like Missle Command and/or Space Invaders, but these folks did play it "in the day". Just how they feel about the game, and might put their opinion to the test.

 

In my opinion, Adventure hasn't got enough to quality or "enough to it", to be a classic. I think I might prefer Haunted House even. But I guess the gameplay in Adventure is innovative and timeless and is why people like it. I just think it's a great game but not "Amazing my favorite", I'd rather play E.T.!

 

One thing I don't like much about Adventure is the lack of vision walking through the maze, with a little bit of effort and memorizing, you always get where you need to go, so why not just be able to see clear through, or maybe after the first blind run through it??

 

Seems ironic how on one side, Adventure is the great classic on Atari VCS, and E.T. is often considered the "NAIL IN THE COFFIN" for Atari 2600.

I'm not seeing a big gap between the two, even if down a "deep" well.

 

To me, Quest for the Rings on Odyssey 2 is my dragon-style classic game, and always feels more fun and challenging to play.

 

Here you sit, in an era where home video games run in H.D. 1080p on multicore whizbang super-consoles, and you judge Adventure - a 4K (that's 4,096 bytes) ROM that ran on a machine with 128 bytes (that's 1/4 of 1K) of RAM. In this world, you review Atari Adventure and find it inadequate. That's the point. You might as well say that you're not impressed with Penicillin, either. Why not? Look at all the "fancy" antibiotics in the world now. I'd trade a pile of Odyssey 2s for a single Atari 2600 (with Adventure cart, no less), but that's just opinion as well.

 

I get what you're saying, and agree with you to most extents. Don't mean to sound defensive.

I guess the huge (OBVIOUSLY) word sparked a debate in me.

 

WELL, yes you're correct only so tiny bit of ram why be picky, I do understand this. It is again, not a bad game, keep in mind I never called it bad or terrible, or anything less then great. It's just other games and systems made in 70's such as Odyssey2 and Intellivision get a bad reputation and some of their classic titles get lost in Atari 2600's glory.

 

I think even though Odyssey 2 is humble in its game inventory, it is one fine system, which suffers from (not as good as the CONSOLES of its time) syndrome.

 

I think Odyssey 2 could have been better with more programmers/distribution/popularity.

 

 

I ranked O2 to Atari 2600 in gameplay and action quality, and felt with O2's best games were better then some of Atari's.

 

(A)Alien Invaders/Space Invaders

(O2)Pick Axe Pete/Donkey Kong

(O2)K.C. Munchkin/Pac-man

(02)U.F.O./Asteroids

(TIE)Freedom Fighters/Defender

(A)Attack of Timelord/Centipede

(O2)Turtles/Mouse Trap

(O2)2100 A.D./Outlaw

(O2)Acrobats/Circus Atari

 

 

In my gaming world, I would give up the game Adventure in a second for Pick Axe Pete or Turtles. That is if I had to choose 1 game from either system.

 

Would I choose Odyssey 2 over Atari 2600, that might be a different story all together.

Glad I don't have to. ;)

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I think I have had the opposite experience with regards to Adventure. I wasn't fond of it as a kid, but grew to appreciate it as an adult.

 

I got my first copy of Adventure in i think 1985 at a yard sale and at the time I found it unplayable because I didn't have a copy of the instruction manual. I'll have to say that the biggest drawback to the game in my experience is that you pretty much need the manual to have any idea what is going on. I must have spent an hour wondering what that "arrow" was and how to fire it if that's what it was. And in the end I had no idea what the end goal of the game was. Unlike some other games of the era, just running around trying to play the game offers little help.

 

After playing it on Stella after having read the manual I can say that it's a great game. It's certainly a little overrated, but it was the "Zelda" of its time.

 

Yes, I had the same thing pretty much, well I was a teenager in the 90's, when I first played Adventure... and didn't get where the fun or point was. 'Till some 11 years later I got the manual and forced myself to play all 3 game levels (completed all in under 45 mins). I like the older video games the best era (1977-1984), so I'm not just sayin it is because Adventure is "old" that its overrated... just felt it became very familar in gameplay and pretty easy, quickly.

 

Superman and E.T. often get a dud reputation, when Adventure shows up as one of the best games ever for Atari gamers. I can grasp why they like it better then E.T. or Superman, but don't understand the MASSIVE opinion gap between Adventure bein' brillant and other two games sucky or bad. :ponder: One of lifes mysteries lol... :twisted:

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Superman and E.T. often get a dud reputation, when Adventure shows up as one of the best games ever for Atari gamers. I can grasp why they like it better then E.T. or Superman, but don't understand the MASSIVE opinion gap between Adventure bein' brillant and other two games sucky or bad. :ponder: One of lifes mysteries lol... :twisted:

Superman's map is virtually incomprehensible, so that, coupled with the annoying sound effects and mega-flicker make it less than delightful to play. E.T., well, it's just not a great game. Adventure has it's flicker-fault, but you can learn the map pretty easily and the game feels basically fair.

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I'm going to have to go ahead and defend E.T. It follows the whole "collect stuff and get to the goal" gameplay arc, has great graphics for the time, and is based on one of the most successful movies ever.

 

The biggest drawback is that the pits just don't work at all and are massively distracting. I'd say that without that one drawback, the game would be considered a classic today, even with any other faults it has.

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Comparing Adventure to Superman & E.T... I dunno. I like to think I'm awesome at Superman (I played it to death in the early 80's and I still remember everything), but it's no Adventure. And neither is E.T...another game I'm good at. The reason is simply Adventure has such interactivity between the game objects that the other 2 games don't.

 

i.e. Key stuck in a wall? Well we better go find the magnet.. or maybe the bridge could help. The interactivity of the objects and environments in Adventure allowed you to come up with your own creative solutions to problems and obstacles.. much much much more than you ever could in Superman or E.T. I mean who here hasn't tried climbing through a border wall to another screen using the bridge and trying to pick up/drop while in the wall? Stuff like that. :)

 

I mean in Superman you got the bad guys and the bridge scattered, and you gotta go get them. That's it. Pretty much no room to be creative aside from making the bridge not blow up. :P

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arrow?

post-3056-126574097873_thumb.png

 

Ah - you must be holding it wrong

post-3056-126574098868_thumb.png

you should never hold a sword by the pointy side :ponder:

 

Whoa! That totally blows my mind! I always thought it looked like an arrow and held it that way! But, the other way, it DOES look like a sword!

 

I know it says it is a sword in the manual but I allways thought it was a spear, makes alot more sense to me anyways and I haven't even played it yet :roll: I suppose that'll have to be the next game on the list now :)

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[...] ran on a machine with 128 bytes (that's 1/4 of 1K) of RAM.

No, that's 1/8 of 1K of RAM!

 

 

me = :dunce:

 

Thank you.

 

:lol: I'm a bigger :dunce: I have no clue what that means. Someone could post 401 K's of RimRam equals 1/28 of FlimFlam and I wouldn't know any better!

Edited by Miss 2600
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Superman and E.T. often get a dud reputation, when Adventure shows up as one of the best games ever for Atari gamers. I can grasp why they like it better then E.T. or Superman, but don't understand the MASSIVE opinion gap between Adventure bein' brillant and other two games sucky or bad. :ponder: One of lifes mysteries lol... :twisted:

Superman's map is virtually incomprehensible, so that, coupled with the annoying sound effects and mega-flicker make it less than delightful to play. E.T., well, it's just not a great game. Adventure has it's flicker-fault, but you can learn the map pretty easily and the game feels basically fair.

 

E.T. has the randomizing like Adventure, but also gives a score and difficulty settings.

 

I still don't see the falling in a well a problem...

(i've had many harder times with other games) if you can stand Gravitar for example.

or Pitfall I or II.

 

Odd how E.T. was hated because some didn't "read the manual", but Adventure you also had to,

read a manual, to play correctly and that is a must play on 2600. Maybe in 1980, expectations for games was lower. Not to mention Adventure didn't have falling in it's game.

Maybe falling triggers the idea that the gamer is losing and causes a quitting spell.

 

Hmmm, Superman is not a bad game.

You can figure out the map in Superman, but it's quite a complexity. It does make sense, but it's more complicated then it needs to be. The game DOES have a point, a decent one for bein' basically the same age as Adventure.

 

I often read how the map in Superman is impossible or the complicated way of it, is what makes the game bad. I disagree.. what would the game be, if you could just map the place in a short time and then just take short cuts and get the crooks and bridge complete the game without any struggle??

 

The flicker isn't too bad, only when lots of crooks are on the same screen, but I hadn't even took notice of flicker in Superman.

 

Sound effects are excellent for Superman, I thought.

 

I didn't notice anything too annoying in its effects??? :ponder:

 

I did notice Adventures sound effects, are little to nothing and the Dragon-duck getting stabbed is but just a sick synth-piano key.

Edited by JacobZu7zu7
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I like Superman. Sure it has flaws but when I was a kid I never thought of them as flaws. It was just a fun game to play to catch the crooks and fix the bridge as fast as you can :)

 

I liked it when I first played it. :thumbsup:

 

I didn't care about getting lost in the city, because

you could fly so quick... it didn't take long to get from screen to screen, would be different if you could only walk Clark Kent around slooowly.

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Comparing Adventure to Superman & E.T... I dunno. I like to think I'm awesome at Superman (I played it to death in the early 80's and I still remember everything), but it's no Adventure. And neither is E.T...another game I'm good at. The reason is simply Adventure has such interactivity between the game objects that the other 2 games don't.

 

i.e. Key stuck in a wall? Well we better go find the magnet.. or maybe the bridge could help. The interactivity of the objects and environments in Adventure allowed you to come up with your own creative solutions to problems and obstacles.. much much much more than you ever could in Superman or E.T. I mean who here hasn't tried climbing through a border wall to another screen using the bridge and trying to pick up/drop while in the wall? Stuff like that. :)

 

I mean in Superman you got the bad guys and the bridge scattered, and you gotta go get them. That's it. Pretty much no room to be creative aside from making the bridge not blow up. :P

That's true, but is that the overall reason Adventures way ahead? The objects interact well with each other? In Superman, you can get dressed up in the Phone booth and start flying (or walk), catch criminals and collect the bridge pieces scattered around the city. It just a different concept with it's clock running an' all.

 

Adventure you play a blue square, and the interactions are about 4 items total and using a magnet to get a key you might not be in reach of...or place a bridge to get onto another part of the maze. Nice stuff. but is that interaction amazing fun compared with Superman and E.T.?? After you memorize (the map/castle mazes) you will find and complete the game without much challenge, (unless you meet dragons before gettin' the sword). I do think it's a better game then Superman, but not by the amount some others do.

 

E.T. has stronger challenge going for it, and the best use of randomized gameplay on Atari 2600. Adventure would probably be the second best, IMO.

 

E.T. offered some unique symbols to locate phone pieces, move, and call Elliot or the ship. These change every round, so one run through could be easy and another very complicated. With each game solved a new one starts up and you can build a nice score for yourself.

 

I spend many more days addicted and playin E.T. then I did Adventure. Just felt the game E.T. had more actual charecter to it... then Adventure did. E.T. is my fav 2600 game I think. I find it really fun to move that guy around, and ironic cause I think the movie is kinda "not my fav" or anything.

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Well, Superman's map is tricky because the key screens with the phone booth and bridge location are set up so that the normal map connections don't work, which feels like a cheat. For instance, if you fly up from the phone booth screen -- which my map would identify as A4 -- you end up on C1, but if you go down from C1 you end up on D1, not A4. So you can exit either phone or bridge screens vertically, but never enter them the same way. It's not easy to memorize a map that isn't consistent. I never quite "got" the Superman map until I actually drew it out, and even then it was a challenge to draw the map in anything approaching an understandable way.

post-867-128954799895_thumb.gif

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Adventure was the first video-game version of text adventures, D&D, etc. It was the first video game to incorporate A.I., however simplex, as well as characters who moved independently of the current on-screen action. And the sheer novelty of moving off the edge of the screen in order to appear in a new "room" was spellbinding at the time. So in terms of its innovations, no -- it's not too highly praised.

 

In terms of visceral enjoyment, it's still a great game, even notwithstanding its "firsts." Thanks chiefly to Game 3, which boasts enough random starting configurations to keep the challenge enjoyable (it's not the sort of game that thrives on drudgery or twitch-like difficulty), I return to Adventure a quarter-century after first having played it -- much more often than I return to the later multi-screen adventure games available in the 1980s.

 

I like the others well enough, and agree that E.T. is underrated, but this one is still my favorite. The elements just work extremely well together; the quick and intuitive travel, the eerie silence, the object-finding aspect. It can't all be chalked up to nostalgia or retained childhood fascination, because I seldom return to many other games that I enjoyed at the time.

 

So the answer is that it's purely subjective; if somebody likes something, "too highly praised" doesn't really apply, one way or the other. It's a case-by-case thing, based on an individual's personal tastes. There's no right or wrong, if you see what I mean.

 

But even if we zoom out to a context of influence, innovation, or successful game design (quite apart from commercial success), then I'll still have to answer the challenge that you've submitted with a resounding "No; it's not too highly praised."

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Adventure

 

So the answer is that it's purely subjective; if somebody likes something, "too highly praised" doesn't really apply, one way or the other. It's a case-by-case thing, based on an individual's personal tastes. There's no right or wrong, if you see what I mean.

 

But even if we zoom out to a context of influence, innovation, or successful game design (quite apart from commercial success), then I'll still have to answer the challenge that you've submitted with a resounding "No; it's not too highly praised."

 

Nicely broken down article on Adventure.

 

What maybe the question I posed, was... mostly on about "how fun or exciting the game Adventure is to play" and is it, over-praised too often by reviewers and gamers feedback?

 

Notice the ?question mark? at the begining of the post here, I didn't or at least try not to state my opinions as a FACT. However, I like to hear some imput, debates or just thoughts on the subject... and so far so good. :thumbsup:

 

Nope, it's not over praised by innovations or things like influence, because I'm sure Adventure earned that and even stands as facts, u could say.

 

I'm not pro or anti with this game, sorta inbetween... but the more praise I read about Adventure, the more I notice it's flawed, but these are somewhat subtle flaws, and doesn't really hurt the gameplay much... but it's overlooked entirely. Which if the game was not very fun, any little issue would be attacked at every corner.

 

Just somethin to think about.

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If this helps, the glitches are overlooked (in terms of criticism) because they're part of the experimental fun of playing; the game is rare in that respect, as most games are considered weaker if they have little display bugs, etc. Not so here; they can actually be effectively incorporated into the player's strategy. Suffice to say that any big fan of Adventure would find a version of the game with all the quirks removed to be highly unacceptable. :)

Edited by Chris++
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If this helps, the glitches are overlooked (in terms of criticism) because they're part of the experimental fun of playing; the game is rare in that respect, as most games are considered weaker if they have little display bugs, etc. Not so here; they can actually be effectively incorporated into the player's strategy. Suffice to say that any big fan of Adventure would find a version of the game with all the quirks removed to be highly unacceptable. :)

 

Not the little stuff, but in 3/6 games I played in a row... on game select (3) I had to restart the thing because of strange reasons, stuff that the magnet or bridge couldn't help.

Doesn't happen too often, but it did that last time I played it.

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