Making an Adventure of It

The year is 1978. You’ve just received a band-spankin’ new Atari game called Adventure. You’ve spent nearly a billion hours playing it, learning its secrets. You’ve found the “magic dot” and can practically beat it with your eyes closed. And now it sits in the basement, a layer of twenty years’ worth of dust covering it, completely forgotten. Well, it’s time to blow off the dust and rat droppings because here’s a few ways to infuse new life into it. (Alright, you can apply these to an emulator as well, but the imagery just wasn’t the same.)

The Guided Tour – If you end up getting swallowed by a dragon, don’t fret. If you’re lucky enough, the bat will come by, pick you up, and take you for a ride. (This happens more often if the bat is stuck in a vertical or horizontal pattern and you get in its way.) Once the bat picks you up, you’ll be flown all over the map with a nice aerial view. On rare occasions, sometimes you can grab the bat while you’re being flown around. When this happens, you’ll hear the “pickup” sound and the bat will stop. You can now control where the bat (and you, still in the dragon’s belly) will go, although sometimes you can only really travel in one direction. While this is an interesting glitch to play with on its own, the best part is that you can fly into the signature room without ever getting the dot!

Blind Man’s Bluff – Go grab the magic dot in the black castle and make your way through the blue maze. Now close your eyes and randomly move the joystick around for one full minute. Keep them shut and drop the dot. Randomly move the stick again for another minute. Now open your eyes and go find it. Good luck!

Hide ‘N Seek – Similar to Blind Man’s Bluff, but this one involves two players. One person again grabs the dot. Player two then closes his eyes while player one travels the kingdom and drops the dot anywhere he feels like it. Player one then moves the cursor to some far-away location, hands the stick to player two, and tells player one to go find the dot.

The Zoo – A bit of a challenge. Your goal is to trap each dragon in a specific castle and lock the gate behind it. The red dragon must be locked in the white castle, the gold dragon in the yellow castle, and the green dragon in the black castle. You must first unlock the castle gate, get the dragon to follow you inside, then quickly run out and lock it behind you. It’s harder than it sounds!

The Artist – It’s time to get creative! Make patterns, designs, and pictures with the objects in the game. (Of course, this is a lot easier if you’ve got the bat trapped somewhere so it won’t interfere with your creative process.) Bonus points if you make something vaguely pornographic. (Yes, you can give the dead yellow dragon a boob by placing the sword in a strategic location.)

The Seizure – Try to get every (and I mean EVERY) object in the game into the signature room. Again, this is a lot harder than it sounds because the only way to move a dead dragon is by using the bat, so plan ahead! Not recommended for epileptics.

Scavenger Hunt – Another two-player game. Player two again shuts his eyes/leaves the room/etc. while player one grabs items and puts them in out-of-the-way locations. Player one must then find the items and return them to a specific room in a limited amount of time. (Player two can also be a jerk and hide items in similar-colored walls, but let’s not tell player one, shall we?)

Hacks and Mods – There are several “remakes” of Adventure floating around the ‘Net, usually only playable through emulators. (Exception: Indenture, an excellent DOS remake that adds a LOT more stuff.) You can find a bunch of these at this link: http://www.toadstool.net/games/adventure/play.htm

Archery – This one’s a real toughy. You are only allowed to kill the dragons by dragging the sword with the magnet. Since the dragons move faster than the sword would, I wish you good luck.

Brave Sir Robin – You are not allowed to use the sword. At all. It doesn’t exist. In fact, just pretend it’s not a sword at all, but an arrow pointing to your certain doom.

The Big Swallow – No, it’s not a Ron Jeremy porn film. Your goal is to be swallowed by all three dragons. Fairly easy to do, and a bit de-moralizing as well!

Hope you’ve found some of those gameplay methods interesting and/or entertaining, and stay tuned for next time when I drag another tired old game out of the closet and examine it in ways no one else has before. I’m always open to game suggestions!