"The Legend of Zelda may owe something to Adventure, but is this game really worth playing anymore?"

The answer to that question, is yes. In a way. You see, Adventure is a fine game that should be owned by everyone who has an Atari 2600. Though at the same time, Adventure really hasn't aged as magnificently as most other Atari games do. You see, the real reason Atari games age so well is because of their timeless gameplay. Jumping over logs, blasting through corridors, and collecting items in a maze never really gets old. But action RPGs have come so far in the past 41 years that it's hard to play Adventure without thinking how much you'd rather play Zelda, or Montezuma's Revenge, or even Space Dungeon. That's not to say Adventure isn't still a good game, though. It just gets far more praise than it really deserves.

Now, Adventure revolves around the classic formula of finding items and using them to get past different sections of a giant maze. You can get keys to unlock colour-coded castles, letting you inside to grab whatever may be in them. You can also find a bridge that lets you move right through any section of wall it is placed on (very useful), a sword that kills dragons, and a chalice that you must return to the golden castle to win the game. Oh, in case you didn't pick it up back there, there are dragons in this game. Big dragons. Fast dragons. Dragons that have holes in their stomachs that are the exact size and shape of YOU! Anyway, you can kill these dragons with one tough from the sword, so unless you get stuck in a dead-end they're not the huge problem here.

No, the huge problem is that you can only hold one item at a time. This means that if a dragon comes at you while you are carting a key or bridge around, you will have to backtrack to where you left the sword, then come back and kill it. This is highly annoying, to say the least. The only compensation the game offers if you get eaten, is that your items will all be where you left them, and all the dragons you killed stay dead. If this sounds like a good challenge, then don't worry: that's only level one.

Level two adds an invisible maze and a bat that steals your items. This can be very, very frustrating if you aren't good at avoiding that bat (there's no way to kill it) and can't memorize the layout of a simple maze. It is still manageable, at least. I can't say that much for level three, though. By the time you get there, the game seems to be deliberately working against you. The dragons are demonic, the bat is psychic, and the maze is as tricksy and confusing as Daedalus's labyrinth.

Once you've completed level one (and two, if you're very good), you've seen all that's worth seeing. Adventure is still very much worth playing, but its own simplicity actually works against it. No map, the ability to carry only one item, and the overall roughness that permeates the entire game make it far more frustrating than it really needs to be. If you want an adventure RPG that holds up well, play The Legend of Zelda. But if you want an action RPG for Atari 2600, Duck Attack is a great buy if you don't mind spending a bit of cash for it.

Actual rating: 6.8

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/11

Game Release: Adventure (US, 1979)