Adventure International

Last updated
Adventure International
IndustryComputer game publishing
Founded 1979 [1]
Defunct 1986 [2]
FateBankrupt
Headquarters Longwood, Florida, United States
Key people
Scott Adams, Alexis Adams
Products Adventureland
Parent Scott Adams, Inc.
Subsidiaries Adventure Soft UK

Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system. The adventure game concept originally came from Colossal Cave Adventure which ran strictly on large mainframe systems at the time.

Contents

History

After the success of Adams' first text adventure, Adventureland, other games followed rapidly, with Adventure International (or "AI") releasing about two games a year. Initially the games were drawn from the founders' imaginations, with themes ranging from fantasy to horror and sometimes science fiction. Some of the later games were written by Scott Adams with other collaborators.

In 1980, five of the company's games were ported to the VIC-20. Developer Neil Harris recalled: "[O]ur sales guys could not figure out what they were gonna do with them. 'What are these games? It's all words on the screen! There's no graphics! What kind of a video game doesn't have video?' [laughs] And they became the best-selling cartridges for the VIC-20, period." [3]

By 1983 the company was employing 40 people and was based in Longwood, Florida. [4]

Fourteen games later, Adventure International began to release games drawn from film and fiction. The Buckaroo Banzai game[ citation needed ] was based on the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984). Other games came from Marvel Comics - Adventure International released three Questprobe games based on the Marvel characters The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, The Human Torch and the Thing. [5]

Adventure International at the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire. Computer Gaming World issue 2.3 (page 23 Adventure International).jpg
Adventure International at the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire.

In 1982, Adventure International began releasing Scott Adams Graphic Adventures for computers like the Apple II, while continuing to sell text-only games for less powerful computers such as the VIC-20 and TI 99/4A. [6] Graphic adventures like The Hobbit increased expectations of such games, however, and Adventure International's graphic adventures were inferior to others resulting in a rapid loss of market share. At its peak in late 1983/early 1984, right at the cusp of the video game crash of 1983, Adventure International employed approximately 50 staff and published titles from over 300 independent programmer/authors.

Adventure International was based in the Sabal Point subdivision of Longwood - at 155 Sabal Palm Drive, Longwood, Florida near the east side of Sabal Point Elementary School. The company also had a retail store located in Sweetwater Oaks at 966 Fox Valley Drive, Longwood.

Adventure International went bankrupt in 1986. The copyrights for its games reverted to the bank and eventually back to Scott Adams who released them as shareware.

In Europe the "Adventure International" name was a trading name of Adventure Soft and other games were released under the name that were not from Adventure International in the US.

Games

Scott Adams Adventure games

Scott Adams's original twelve adventure games were: [7]

The games were developed using an in-house adventure editor. The original interpreter was a two-word command interpreter running on a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, with later ports to many platforms. The source code for Adventureland was published in SoftSide magazine in 1980 [8] and the source code for Pirate Adventure was printed in the December 1980 issue of BYTE , [9] with an addendum in April 1981. [10] This enabled others to discover how the engine worked and the database format was subsequently used in other interpreters such as Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series. [11] The later graphics versions (SAGA) featured graphics drawn on an Apple II, mostly by in-house artist Kem McNair.

Other games

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<i>Ghost Town</i> (video game) 1980 video game

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Preppie! is an action video game for the Atari 8-bit family published by Adventure International in 1982. It was programmed by Russ Wetmore of Star Systems Software, whose name is prominently displayed on the box cover. Leaning on the preppy trend of the early 1980s, the game follows prep schooler Wadsworth Overcash as he navigates the hazards of a country club to retrieve golf balls. Preppie! borrows heavily from Konami's Frogger, with lanes of traffic in the bottom half of the screen and a river crossing the top portion. Alligators are an element from both Frogger and preppy fashion; an open-mouthed gator is the icon of shirt brand Izod. Reviewers recognized the game as derivative, but called the music and visuals some of the best for Atari 8-bit computers.

Russ Wetmore is an American programmer and video game designer best known for writing commercial games and applications for the Atari 8-bit family in the early to mid 1980s. His Frogger-inspired Preppie! was published by Adventure International as well as its sequel. He stopped writing games after the video game crash of 1983 and developed the integrated HomePak productivity suite for Batteries Included.

<i>Scott Adams Scoops</i> 1987 video game

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<i>Preppie! II</i> 1983 video game

Preppie! II is a video game written by Russ Wetmore for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Adventure International in 1983. Subtitled "The continuing saga of Wadsworth Overcash," it is a sequel to 1982's Frogger-inspired Preppie!. It loosely follows the preppy theme, primarily through a story in the manual, but replaces the country club setting with an abstract, overhead view maze. Some obstacles from the first game appear in the second.

References

  1. ↑ Ryan, Marie-Laure; Emerson, Lori; Robertson, Benjamin J. (15 April 2014). The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media. JHU Press. p. 304. ISBN   978-1-4214-1223-8.
  2. ↑ Smart, Tim (27 January 1986). "Blue Skies Turn Black At Scott Adams Inc. Debts Force Company Into Bankruptcy Court". The Orlando Sentinel. Vol. 110, no. 27. Orlando, Florida: Sentinel Communications Company. p. 11. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑ Herzog, Marty (January 1988). "Neil Harris". Comics Interview . No. 54. Fictioneer Books. p. 47.
  4. ↑ "Profiles: Scott Adams".
  5. ↑ "Adventuresoft UK | Retro Gamer". 15 January 2015.
  6. ↑ Maher, Jimmy (2012-08-28). "SAGA". The Digital Antiquarian. Archived from the original on 11 July 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
  7. ↑ Griffin, Brad (March–April 1983). "Scott Adams Adventures 1–12". ANALOG Computing (10). Archived from the original on 2016-03-03.
  8. ↑ Adams, Scott (July 1980). "Adventureland". SoftSide. p. 36. Archived from the original on 28 March 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
  9. ↑ Adams, Scott (December 1980). "Pirate's Adventure". BYTE. Vol. 5, no. 12. p. 192. Archived from the original on 31 March 2015. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  10. ↑ "Adventurous Bugs". BYTE. Vol. 6, no. 4. April 1981. p. 302. Archived from the original on 14 April 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  11. ↑ Graham, Nelson (2001). The Inform Designer's Manual (PDF). Dan Sanderson. p. 358. ISBN   0-9713119-0-0. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-11-07.
  12. ↑ "Airline". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
  13. ↑ "Saigon: The Final Days". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
  14. ↑ "Triad". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
  15. ↑ "Tutti Frutti". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
  16. ↑ "AREX". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
  17. ↑ "Preppie! II". Atari Mania. Archived from the original on 2021-10-02.
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