The Adventure begins on the Atari 2600 in March 1980


There’s a chill in the air of late, a final, biting breath of winter before the spring truly takes hold. I spent much of the morning in my study, a mug of ultimate hot chocolate at my elbow, and my mind went back…back to a warmer spring, many years ago.

March 1980. A different world. A different age. I was younger then, and my dreams were full of starships and dragons. And it was in that spring that a new kind of magic arrived, contained not in a leather-bound tome, but in a small black plastic cartridge.

I’m speaking, of course, of Adventure.

It has near finished its fourth decade, that little cartridge, but I remember when it was a knight in shining armor to those of us who craved more than just another round of Pong. Warren Robinett, the sorcerer who crafted this world of thirty screens, had to forge his own tools to do it. Atari’s high lords were oft cool to the idea of a graphical quest, and Robinett was like to be punished for his ambition.

But he persisted, whilst others would have surrendered. He built a kingdom of mazes and castles, a Golden Castle and a Black, and peopled it with creatures of dread. The dragons…Yorgle, the yellow craven; Grundle, the green brute; and Rhindle, the red fury. How many times did I find myself staring at that flickering screen, a tiny grey square representing my own heroic soul, as a great, duck-headed beast bore down upon me, ready to swallow me whole?

The quest was simple: recover the Enchanted Chalice and return it to the Golden Castle. But simplicity is not a vice. It was an epic journey in miniature. I wielded my sword, I carried the magnet to pull treasures through walls, I navigated the catacombs and the Blue Labyrinth, and I used the bridge to cross the walls. It was a world you could get lost in, a world where you had to find your own path.

It was more than just a game; it was a promise. A promise that these new electronic toys could do more than just test our reflexes. They could tell stories. They could create worlds. They could give us adventures.

And Robinett, brave soul that he was, left a secret message, hidden from the gaze of his masters. A small, almost invisible dot, which, if carried to the correct place, would unlock a chamber where his name, and his name alone, shone in glowing colors. The first Easter egg. A quiet rebellion. I smile oft when I think of that.

We’ve come far from that little grey square, in these forty years. Our graphical kingdoms are now so vast and detailed that a man could spend a lifetime exploring them and never see the half. The stories are more complex, the choices more painful, and the dragons…well, the dragons are magnificent, but they still have that same hunger. But is the fire as pure as it twas in that age of Adventure?

I can’t help but look back on Adventure with a certain fondness. It was the first. It was the seedling from which so much has grown. In that March, long ago, we were all explorers, setting foot on a new continent. We did not know what we would find, but we knew it would be an adventure.

I switch on my old 2600. Perhaps Grundle is still waiting for me in the Black Castle. A man can dream. 

Adventure sold by the millions. It birthed a genre, the action-adventure, though none then called it such. It whispered to later creators—of Hyrule and its Master Sword, of Metroid and its labyrinths—that worlds could be open, that stories could live in silence and color rather than text alone. It taught that even in the smallest of realms, a man might leave his mark, unseen yet eternal.

Location: Sunnyvale, CA, USA

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