Zork is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a variety of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects in them by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.
Sierra Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, Mystery House. It is also known for its graphical adventure game series King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory, as well as being the original publishers of Valve's Half-Life series.
Roberta Lynn Williams is an American video game designer and writer, who co-founded Sierra On-Line with her husband, game developer Ken Williams. In 1980, her first game, Mystery House, became a modest commercial success; it is credited as the first graphic adventure game. She is also known for creating and maintaining the King's Quest series, as well as designing the full motion video game Phantasmagoria in 1995.
Time Zone is a multi-disk graphical adventure game written and directed by Roberta Williams for the Apple II. Developed in 1981 and released in 1982 by On-Line Systems, the game was shipped with six double-sided floppy disks and contained 1,500 areas (screens) to explore along with 39 scenarios to solve. Produced at a time when most games rarely took up more than one side of a floppy, Time Zone is one of the first games of this magnitude released for home computer systems. Ports were released for Japanese home computers PC-88, PC-98 and FM-7 in 1985.
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, released on August 24, 1982, for the Apple II, is the second role-playing video game in the Ultima series, and the second installment in Ultima's "Age of Darkness" trilogy.
Softporn Adventure is a comedic, adult-oriented text adventure game produced for the Apple II in 1981. The game was created by Charles Benton and released by On-Line Systems, later renamed Sierra On-Line. Years later, Softporn Adventure was remade and expanded as Leisure Suit Larry series of adult-oriented video games, and the first entry in that series, 1987's Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, was a nearly direct graphical adaptation of Softporn Adventure. Another graphical version was released as Las Vegas for various Japanese computers in 1986 by Starcraft.
Mystery House is an adventure game released by On-Line Systems in 1980. It was designed, written and illustrated by Roberta Williams, and programmed by Ken Williams for the Apple II. Mystery House is the first graphical adventure game and the first game produced by On-Line Systems, the company which would evolve into Sierra On-Line. It is one of the earliest horror video games.
Kenneth A. Williams is an American game programmer who co-founded On-Line Systems together with his wife Roberta Williams. On-Line Systems eventually became Sierra On-Line and was ultimately renamed Sierra Entertainment. The couple were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. At its height, Sierra employed nearly 1,000 people prior to its acquisition in 1996.
Sexual content has been found in video games since the early days of the industry and games featuring sexual content can be found on most platforms and can be of any video game genre.
King's Quest is an adventure game developed by Sierra On-Line and published originally for the IBM PCjr in 1984 and later for several other systems between 1984 and 1989. The game was originally titled simply as King's Quest; the subtitle Quest for the Crown was added to the game box in the 1987 re-release, but did not appear in the game itself.
Tass Times in Tonetown is an adventure game published by Activision in 1986. It was designed by Michael Berlyn and Muffy McClung Berlyn and programmed by Rebecca Heineman of Interplay in cooperation with Brainwave Creations.
Synergistic Software was a video game developer based in Seattle. Founded in 1978, the company published some of the earliest available games and applications for the Apple II family of computers. They continued developing games for various platforms into the late 1990s.
Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love is the second game in the Leisure Suit Larry series of graphical adventure games, designed by Al Lowe and published by Sierra On-Line in 1988. Like its predecessor, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, it was developed for multiple platforms, including MS-DOS, Atari ST and Amiga. It utilizes Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI0) engine, featuring 16-color EGA graphics and a mouse-based interface for movement. The story continues the exploits of Larry Laffer, who becomes stranded on a tropical island during an ill-fated vacation.
Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals is a graphical adventure games designed by Al Lowe and published by Sierra On-Line for DOS, Atari ST and Amiga in 1989 as the third entry in their Leisure Suit Larry series. The plot first follows series protagonist Larry Laffer, fresh from an abrupt divorce, as he combs through a tropical resort looking for love. After he meets the latest woman of his dreams, Passionate Patti, and leaves her to enter the wilderness, the player takes control of Patti to search for him.
Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! is the fifth entry in the Leisure Suit Larry series of graphical adventure games published by Sierra On-Line and is a sequel to the 1991 video game, Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work. Originally developed for MS-DOS in 1993, an enhanced CD-ROM version was published a year later.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is a graphic adventure game, developed by Sierra On-Line and published in 1987. It was developed for the PC DOS and the Apple II and later ported to other platforms such as the Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIGS, Apple Macintosh, and the Tandy Color Computer 3. It utilizes the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine. In 1991, Sierra released a remake version titled Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards that used the Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI) engine with 256 colors and a point-and-click, icon-driven user interface, released for the PC DOS, Apple Macintosh, and Amiga.
The Dark Crystal is a graphic adventure game based on Jim Henson's 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal. The game was designed by Roberta Williams and published under the SierraVenture line in 1983 as Hi-Res Adventure #6: The Dark Crystal. It is the first Hi-Res Adventure released under the SierraVenture line, the previous games being released under earlier names and later re-released under SierraVenture. An alternative version of the game for younger players called Gelfling Adventure was released in 1984.
Space Quest: Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter, commonly known as Space Quest I, is a graphic adventure game released in October 1986 by Sierra On-Line. It is the first game in the Space Quest series. It quickly became a hit, selling in excess of 100,000 copies. Total sales are believed to be around 200,000 to date, not including the many compilations it has been included in.
Artillery games are two or three-player video games involving tanks trying to destroy each other. The core mechanics of the gameplay is almost always to aim at the opponent(s) following a ballistic trajectory. Artillery games are among the earliest computer games developed; the theme of such games is an extension of the original uses of computer themselves, which were once used to calculate the trajectories of rockets and other related military-based calculations. Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game", though they are more often classified as a type of strategy video game.
The Prisoner 2 1982 computer game by Edu-Ware is a remake of the 1980 game The Prisoner.
