Metroidvania Chronicles #002: Adventure

35 years ago this week, a key piece in the evolution of Metroidvania games hit the U.S. market: Atari's Adventure, a simple but ambitious console adaptation of the concepts behind William Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure — the same Colossal Cave Adventure that inspired Zork. In fact, Atari's Adventure works as a sort of console counterpart to Zork: The answer to the question of how one might go about making an adventure as complex as Zork work within the limitations of a console. Obviously, the answer was "it can't, and has to be simplified," but despite its restrictions Zork was a bold and important chapter in the evolution of game design.