In the late 1970s, Jim Connelly acquired a Commodore PET to assist in his work as a Dungeon Master. He led a regular game in California. One of his players was a man named Jon Freeman, the author of books like The Complete Book of War Games, and A Player’s Guide to Table Games. With the newly acquired PET, the two decided to venture into the world of videogames, forming the company Automated Simulations (later renamed Epyx). The story goes that the idea to write the first game came about so that the computer purchase could be turned into a business expense that Connelly could write off on his taxes.

After two space themed games (Starfleet Orion and Invasion Orion) Connelly and Freeman decided to create a game deeply rooted in their love of D&D. Jeffrey Johnson, another regular at

Connelly’s D&D sessions helped them create the game. It was to become the first in a series of games called Dunjonquest and the first game of the series was a dungeon delve called Temple of Apshai.

Players took on the role of an adventurer searching the ruins known as The Temple of Apshai, which had four dungeons and over two hundred rooms to explore. Character creation took place with the Innkeeper. Like Dungeons & Dragons, attributes were set up using a 3D6 probability curve (achieved in D&D by using three six sided die). Once your Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Intuition and Ego were set, you could choose things like weapons, shield, and armor. The gear you could equip depended on your attributes.

After your character was created, you moved to the Dunjonmaster portion of the game, in which your adventurer explored the dungeons. Players were presented with a split screen with one portion providing a top down view of gameplay while the other provided your status. You moved your character by selecting the number of spaces you wanted to move (up to nine) As you moved through the dungeons, you encountered monsters (there were 30 types) and battled them in a mix of real time and turn based battle.

As you moved, you had to keep track of things like Fatigue. When your energy level reached zero, you had to rest. If a monster defeated you, an NPC could revive your character, but they would occasionally take a portion of your inventory.

The game’s manual provided detailed descriptions of the rooms and treasures, helping paint the pictures that the game’s sparse graphics could not provide. In addition, the manual provided a short story called The Adventures of Brian Hammerhand which helped give players a feel for the world their character inhabited.

As for plot, players simply moved through the dungeons, found treasure and gained experience. There wasn’t an ending per se, no ultimate goal that you were working toward.

Automated Simulations released the game in 1979 for the TRS-80 and Commodore PET. It went on to win Best Computer Game of 1980 at the Origin Awards and by 1981 had sold over 20,000 copies.

It was a victorious end to a quest that began around a game of D&D.

For a good idea of gameplay, check out this walk through of the TRS-80 version of the game:

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The world of text based adventure games was still fairly new in 1978, when Scott and Alexis Adams created the company Adventure International. Colossal Cave Adventure, the genre’s first game, had been released two years previously. Playing Colossal Cave Adventure inspired Adams to create the game Adventureland, but he wanted to write it for his microcomputer (a TRS-80), an idea his friends deemed impossible. In Adams own words, he was, “not daunted by their laughter” and, six months after beginning, the game was released by The Software Exchange of Milford, New Hampshire and Creative Computing Software.

Alexis Adams, Scott’s wife, came up with the idea behind Pirate Adventure. Players began the story in their London flat before being transported to Pirate Island. From Pirate Island, the player had to figure out how to build a ship that would transport them to Treasure Island. This ship building element was something unique at the time. According to Adams it was, “different from any that had ever been written before. Instead of simply searching for treasure in this Adventure, you now had an added ingredient–a mission.” On Treasure Island, the player had to locate the lost treasure.

As with other text based games of the time, action was achieved through simple two word commands like, “Climb Tree” or “Get Book.”  There was also a special two word command used later in the game, “Say YoHo”, which became the name of Scott Adams’s regular column in SoftSide Magazine.

The original Pirate Adventure was created for the TRS-80, but eventually found its way to a wide variety of systems including the Apple II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, and ZX Spectrum (among others). Commodore engineer Andy Finkel programed the Commodore version of Pirate Adventure (as well as four others adventures created by Adams). The source code for the game was published in a 1980 issue of BYTE, allowing other creators to make similar games.

Both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure enjoyed success, and Adventure International went on to create a number of other popular adventure titles such as Voodoo Castle, Pyramid of Doom, Savage Island, and Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle, before moving on to graphic adventures like the Marvel superhero series Questprobe (which featured the Hulk, Spiderman, and members of the Fantastic Four). Sadly, the company went bankrupt in 1985, at the tail end of the video game crash.

Adams left the video game industry for a time, going to work for Insight (a company created by John Mathias, former head of the games department for Commodore International. The company later became AVISTA and later Esterline). Fifteen years after Adventure International went bankrupt, Adams returned to the world of adventure games with Return to Pirate Island 2. It was a happy return for the man proclaimed, “the creator of the personal computer gaming industry.”

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I’ve wasted countless hours playing the 1986 Bally/Midway classic arcade game Rampage, where players controlled George (the giant ape), Lizzie (a Godzilla knock off), or Ralph (the werewolf) and used them to destroy cities. The game was a popular success, spawning a series of sequels, and eventually a feature film which was (very loosely) based on the arcade, but it wasn’t the only monster mayhem game of its era. A full blown monster invasion was sweeping across the gaming world.

In 1981, Epyx released Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit (releasing ports for the C64 and VIC-20 later). The game allowed players to choose between a variety of monsters with names like Goshzilla, the Kraken, the Glob, and Mantra. Players could also grow a monster, but the end goal was to destroy cities around the globe. Before you attacked the cities, you selected one of five game objectives: Balanced (gaining points for everything), Killer Monster (gaining higher points for killing humans), Combat Machine (which gave points for killing combatants, but not civilians), Destruction (which focused on destroying structures), and Survival.

A year before Rampage, Electronic Arts released Mail Order Monsters for the Commodore 64. The game allowed players to create custom monsters and then battle each other or, in single player mode, the computer. Battles took place across the globe and terrain affected your fighting.

The following year, Epyx released The Movie Monster Game for the Commodore 64 and Apple II computers. It was sort of an unofficial of sequel to Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! The game fully embraced the camp of the old creature features. It contained movie style advertisements for treats like “Gummi Glogs” and trailers for other Epyx titles. Players could choose one of six monsters: Godzilla, Spectra, The Glog, Tarantus, Mr. Meringue, and Mechatron. Like Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, players could choose between game modes: Berserk (based on destruction), Escape (getting your monster safely out of the city), Search (where your monster must find its missing children), Destroy Landmark (self explanatory, but you had to destroy world famous landmarks), and Lunch (where the goal was to eat as many humans and vehicles as possible).

The games weren’t masterpieces of video game craft, and they didn’t revolutionize the industry. They were just fun. They were funny and exciting, and a good way to waste an afternoon or Saturday morning. What more can you ask for in a game?

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George Lucas released the film Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977, beginning a pop culture phenomenon that continues to this day. People around the world latched on to the story of Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, and the menacing Darth Vader. The film’s impact went far beyond the cinema, generating toys, books, video games, and more. For some fans, the film become a way of life.

Two years after the release of Star Wars, Lance Micklus gave the world Dog Star Adventure, a text based game for the TRS-80 microcomputer and inspired by the Star Wars franchise. It immediately made history when Micklus published the source code in the May 1979 issue of SoftSide Magazine (your BASIC software magazine). The article included a brief description of the game along with a bit of history. He cited the influence of the text based adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure, developed by William Crowther, which had been written in FORTRAN for the PDP-10 computer in 1976. A year later, Don Woods of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory discovered the game and made a few enhancements.

Micklus was working at Vermont’s public television station (which used the University of Vermont’s computers) and discovered Crowther’s game. When the University computers were upgraded, Micklus lost access to Adventure and began writing his own game. He wrote Dog Star Adventure in BASIC 1 and based it on the first Star Wars movie. To avoid legal issues the names of characters were changed. Princess Leia’s name was changed to Leya, Darth Vader became General Doom, and the Death Star became…the Dog Star. Players were tasked with rescuing Leya. To complicate matters, Leya was wearing a necklace of “Shinestones”, one of which contained the strength and location of the “Freedom Forces” fighting the evil General Doom.

According to the “computer-puppet” hiding aboard Princess Leya’s ship:

“It’s possible, although very difficult, to save the day by rescuing the princess and recovering her necklace of Shinestones and the treasury of the Freedom Fighting Force. Even if we are unsuccessful, anything we can do to deter General Doom may help win a victory in the battle for peace in the galaxy.”

Players controlled the game by typing in simple instructions. For instance, to pick up an object the player typed “Get” plus whatever they wanted picked up. Players had to solve various puzzles and problems to beat the game, including one particularly memorable puzzle involving a hamburger. The player discovered a hamburger and later encountered a hungry robot. If too much time had elapsed between finding the hamburger and giving it to the robot, the burger was cold and the robot refused it. The robot attacked and the player died.

A year after the release of Dog Star Adventure, David Malmberg created a port to the Commodore PET. Malmberg worked as a business analyst, but was heavily involved in the emerging world of microcomputers. He held a firm belief in their teaching potential and had a love of text based gaming. In the PET version of the game many of the original Star Wars names returned (for instance, Doom once again became Darth Vader). The new version also added a character graphic of the Dark Lord of the Sith.

The game’s greatest legacy lay in the decision to publish its source code. While Don Woods had distributed his source code for Colossal Cave Adventure, Dog Star Adventure was the first to officially publish. As a result, the text based adventures which followed were largely built on the blocks first laid by Micklus and Dog Star.

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