Adventure (also known as
ADVENT or
Colossal Cave) was the first
computer game to appear in the genre of
interactive fiction (before it was even called that).
Will Crowther[?], a
programmer at the legendary
Bolt, Beranek & Newman[?] (developers of
ARPANET, the forerunner of the
Internet), was an amateur caver, who applied his experience in
Mammoth Cave (in
Kentucky) to create a game that he could enjoy with his young daughters.
[1] (
http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html) Crowther was exploring the real Mammoth Cave in
1972, and did create a map of the real cave, but the game seems to be a completely separate entity, created around
1975.
[2] (
http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/canon/Adventure.htm) The version that is known today was created in
1976 by
Don Woods, who added additional rooms and puzzles to Crowther's unfinished game. It was written in
FORTRAN, originally for the
PDP-10. Many versions of Adventure may be found, for nearly any computer imaginable.
Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different." is a memorable line from the game.
Among hackers it is sometimes modified to refer to something other than passages that one can be lost in (you are lost in a maze of twisty little encyclopedia entries, all different (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage)).
What is really interesting about the maze is that the phrase maze of twisty little passages is varied systematically into 12 slightly different formulations:
- Maze of twisty little passages
- Twisty maze of little passages
- Little twisty maze of passages
- Maze of little twisty passages
- Little maze of twisting passages
- Little maze of twisty passages
- Twisting maze of little passages
- Twisty little maze of passages
- Twisting little maze of passages
- Maze of little twisting passages
- Maze of twisting little passages
- Little twisting maze of passages
When you first arrive at Y2, you receive the message A hollow voice says "plugh". The magic word takes you between the rooms "inside building" and "Y2".
xyzzy was a magic word found in the game. It has later been used as a metasyntactic variable by hackers.
Many other interactive fiction games contain responses to the command XYZZY as a tribute to Adventure. Zork, for example, replies with:
- A hollow voice says, "Fool."
while more recent games have shown a trend of increasingly more elaborate and
in-jokey responses.
Other memorable lines from the game are:
- A huge green fierce snake bars the way!
- With what? Your bare hands? (refers to killing a dragon, etc. )
- ....