Timeline
On this page I present a tentative timeline presenting some important
dates in the history of adventure games. This is still very much a work
in progress, so any feedback is appreciated.
I'd like the dates for the first instances of computer-based games
of any kind and the choose-your-path books on paper.
Significant points in adventure game history
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1972
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- Hunt the Wumpus is developed by Gregory Yob on a Time-Sharing
System at the University of Massachusettes in Dartmouth. This
is not an adventure game (it's a text-only maze game), but a
precursor.
- Will Crowther creates the first version of ADVENT
in FORTRAN on a PDP-1 while working for Bolt, Beranek and Newman
(BBN) in Boston.
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1976
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- Don Woods, then at Stanford University's Stanford Artificial
Intelligence Lab (SAIL) finds Crowther's ADVENT
and starts to expand it (with Crowther's blessing).
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1977
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- Don Woods creates yet another version of Adventure.
- MIT students Dave Lebling and Marc Blank are inspired by Adventure
and start to create a similar game by themselves. They name
the project Zork (the same name they
use for any work in progress).
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1978
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- Scott Adams releases Adventureland.
- Jon Thackray, David Seal, and Jonathan Partington at Cambridge
University create Acheton on an IBM 370 mainframe. It
will be followed by a number of other games, subsequently marketed
(to this day!) by Topologika Ltd.
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1979
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- The final puzzle is added to the mainframe version of Zork.
- An article titled "Zork: A Computerized Fantasy Simulation
Game" by P. David Lebling, Marc S. Blank, and Timothy A. Anderson
is published in the April issue of IEEE Computer (vol. 12, issue
4; pages 51-59). In the article, the authors say that all adventures
they are aware of at that time are Adventure,
Zork,
and Haunt. That
they fail to list Acheton
is understandable since it's from Britain, and I suppose Adventureland (which
was advertised) might have been published during the editing
process of the article.
- Scott Adams founds Adventure International.
- Dog Star Adventure
is published in the May issue of the TRS-80 magazine Softside.
It was written in Basic, and immediately people started reverse-engineering
the code and writing their own adventures based on the same
design.
- On July 22, Infocom is founded
by ten members of the MIT Dynamic Modeling Group (Tim Anderson,
Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley,
Dave Lebling, J. C. R. Licklider, Chris Reeve, Al Vezza). They
start looking for a distributor for Zork and finally find
one in Personal Software
(also known as Visicorp, the makers of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet
program for PCs). The TRS-80 version comes out in time for Christmas.
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1980
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- On-Line Systems later
Sierra On-Line) is founded by Ken and Roberta Williams and release
Roberta's Mystery
House, the first adventure game to feature graphics. The
graphics are actually black-and-white stick men and other line
drawings, but that doesn't stop the game from being an instant
success.
- Bruce Daniels creates a ZIP for the Apple II, making it possible
to run Zork on it.
- Sierra releases The
Wizard and the Princess, the first adventure to feature
graphics in color.
- An article titled "How to Fit a Large Program Into a Small
Machine" by Marc S. Blank and S. W. Galley is published in the
July issue of Creative Computing (pages 80-87). In the article,
the authors describe how the virtual machine that drives the
Infocom games works.
- Scott Adams publishes an article in the December issue of
Byte containing the Basic source code and data file for Pirate's
Adventure. Just like when Dog Star Adventure was published,
people start reverse-engineering the code to figure out how
it works and then create their own adventures based on the same
design.
- Brian Howarth publishes
the first three parts of the Mysterious Adventures series, using
the same data file format as the Scott Adams games.
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1981
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- The final update is made to the mainframe version of Zork.
- In October, Infocom ends the sales
agreement with Personal Software
to do their own distribution. Mike Dornbrook founds "Zork Users
Group" to handle requests for hints and merchandise.
- Level 9 Computing is
founded by the brothers Pete, Nick, and Nick Austin. Mike was
a fan of Adventure
and was disappointed that there was no port of it for the British
microcomputers, so he simply wrote his own (long before founding
Level 9).
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1982
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- Infocom begins development of the
database product called Cornerstone that will eventually become
their downfall.
- The Scott Adams games are rereleased with graphics.
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1983
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- The Zork Users Group is shut down in July, having 20000 members.
From now on, Infocom will handle
hints and such themselves.
- Level 9 Computing release
their first four games for various British microcomputers.
- The Australian company Melbourne
House relase The
Hobbit based on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel. It had a very
good command parser and non-player characters for its time.
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1984
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1985
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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1990
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- On March 12, Matthias Pfaller
posts the source code to zmachine to comp.os.minix. This is
the first publicly available release of an interpreter for Infocom datafiles. Today, there are a number of different
interpreters to choose from for just about any concievable platform.
Perhaps I should list a first date for other free adventure
interpreters as well (ScottFree, Level9, Magnetic, Sarien, Quill
-- any others?), but I don't know the relevant dates right now.
- Legend Entertainment
Company release their first game, Spellcasting
101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls.
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1991
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1992
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1993
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1994
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1995
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1996
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1997
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1998
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- Cascade Mountain
Publishing publishes Once and Future
(previously announced as Avalon). This is the first text adventure
released commercially for a number of years (even longer if
you consider that it lacks graphics). It has been eagerly awaited
in the interactive fiction community since G. Kevin "Whizzard"
Wilson made the monumentally premature first announcement of
it in 1993.
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1999
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2000
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