Adventure reminds me of staying at my grandma’s house playing this game. She was a cool Italian grandma who completely spoiled us grandkids with amazing food and having an Atari at her house for when we would come over. Miss you grandma. ❤
Robinett said adventure was his attempt to translate a text adventure into an VGS game. Apparently his boss told him not to make this game because translating a text adventure into a VGS was not possible. He did it anyway, and it is one of my favorite VGS games. Apparently, Robinett was one of the only Atari programmers that actually had a programming education at the time and wrote Adventure using data structure and like a simulation. An interesting side effect because of this is, if you get eaten by a dragon and the bat picks the dragon up, you end up getting an aerial view of the kingdoms which is really sweet. Robinett’s post-mortem at one of the past GDCs is a must watch if you like Adventure and programming.
@@BeastCake1349 There are people who said they couldn't figure out what to do in game 1. Maybe because they were little and didn't have someone to teach them, and couldn't read the instructions? At least winning gives you a triumphant victory flash and bang, which Pitfall! didn't do! Game 1 has 1 less castle, 1 less dragon, and no maze inside the black castle, so is a good introduction. Yes, game three is a little more complicated but not brain-busting difficult. You do have to learn how to get to black and white castles, which you should learn playing game 2.
2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1
@@capolayawait, WHAT??? 40 years and I hear of that NOW???
I spent hours playing Adventure, I mapped everything on graph paper, so I saw there was a hidden room, after some head scratching I realised what the bridge was for, and then wandered around with the dot trying all sorts of things to see what might happen. My amazement at discovering the easter egg was a highlight of my video gaming life.
I'm envious that you had the joy of discovering it on your own. I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, so I knew what I was looking for. 😀🦇
The first time I watched my friend playing Adventure changed my life! We soon successfully begged my parents for our own 2600… and it eventually inspired me to become a programmer :)
It's funny how it hits old fear memories. "That's just a square. That's just a line. Pff, that's just a squiggle. AHH, LOOK OUT, IT'S A FUCKING DRAGON!!!!"
I love how these old games still had the system requirement of imagination. Yeah, it's an arrow and a block. But, at the time, you could imagine. That's the one thing awesome graphics take away. Today, you're basically playing a movie. Very cool, but there is something to be said for a good flex of the inner eye. The closest we have now is a good card game or board game, which existed in that era as well. It was like video games were just another medium to encourage us to use our imagination. Now, we get spoon fed the story, and complain it doesn't look real enough. Different times, for sure. Great video, as always.
It's interesting what you mention because that's how I started to feel as early as 5/6 years old that, I wanted the video games, from both 2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th/7th generation consoles, including PC games, to be more like video game movie adaptations, that focus on the player in a slice of life type of style. Where the video game player plays the game, and whatever happens in the video game world, affects how the player in front of the TV partners with the character in the video game world beating/slaying/accomplishing, etc. Either that, or have the video game player be transported through the TV/Computer monitor into that specific video game world, and either solve problems, have a ton of fun racing, or doing mini games with Mario and his friends, and just have fun or accomplish something that has a moral/personal meaning to the video game player from the friends and events he/she's been through along the way. That's the type of video game movie I would like to see, but instead Hollywood wants it to be like some stupid blockbuster AAA film full of actors nobody knows about, and providing very, very little of the original game itself (which is not really the vision I thought of when adapting video games into movies).
@@SuperFlashDriver Like I said, that's cool in its own right. Since my earliest years, in the mid-70s, there was an almost decade long push to develop and use your imagination. I took it very much to heart, and I developed a very vivid imagination. It has served me well to this day. Be it a novel, MTG, D&D, etc, I saw the whole game (or story) universe in my head, if ample description was provided. It was far more personal, meaning nobody else was seeing exactly what I was in our heads. Great graphics remove that. It shows you exactly what you are meant to see. That can be a big problem. What seems lacking nowadays seems to be imagination. Kids all the way to 30-somethings seem to really lack it. Perhaps that's why they get so bored so quickly. Adventure, or any old video game is just too bad graphically to spoon feed you much of anything. Naturally it'll seem boring, pointless, and downright stupid. While modern games are indeed cool, I miss the days of the huge imagination push.
@@73twall Yeah, I have a feeling it's made to be more like a video game movie rather than something you would play. For me I stopped playing video games except for those that I personally enjoy spending time building and creating say a city or a theme park and such.
"Then there's this damn bat!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! I have no idea how many times I said " get away you damn bat...".... OMG, thanks for bringing that back!!! And I was the 11111111 base-2 thumbs up for you.
This is my favorite game of all time! I first saw it demoed in a K-Mart back in 1980 and was mesmerized. It was the first game I bought for my Atari VCS (2600) in 1983. Believe it or not, there's a way to get into the "secret room" without the dot (only on levels 2 and 3, since the room is inaccessible on level 1). If you place the magnet just above the floor to the right of the wall (it's okay if it overlaps the wall) you can then take the bridge in the catacomb level directly beneath it. Very carefully working your way up the side of the bridge allows you to go through the "ceiling". Make sure to grab the bridge right as you are about to switch screens and let the bridge go when you get to the screen above. If you've done it right, move along with the bridge as it gets drawn to the magnet and you'll end up "inside" the black wall in the east room. From there you can go right into the secret room. Of course, at this point, you're stuck and not getting out of there. Also, prepared to get stuck in the catacomb "ceiling" many times until you get the bridge cadence *just* right! :) You can also move past the Warren Robinett words by going through the opening in the secret room ceiling - you'll end up in the maze floor on the way to the black castle but you can still move to the right. After moving down you can even poke out behind the west hallway room black wall. You can get back to the east by doing the same in reverse. Did I mention, this was my favorite game? :) I played it quite a bit!
My first gaming console was a 7800 and i did have a cool library of 2600 games but i didn't have Adventure. I only knew about it by those old 2600 gaming catalogs that had game cover art. Later as a grown up, i ran into a book in Barnes and Noble that featured vintage gaming cover art. Then i read Ready Player One and then watched the movie where Adventure gets it's proper due. So one of the reasons i recently bought an Atari GSP this past Christmas was to relive the classic gaming vibes with my 13 yr old son and of course finally play ADVENTURE!⚃🐉🗡🦇🕹
I played Adventure on visits to my grandparents house nearly each Friday & Saturday during the mid 1980’s. Being really young at the time I obviously had no idea of the existence of this easter egg. This is the first time I’ve seen it demonstrated. I wish my grandfather was still alive to see this. He would have loved it! Adventure was one of his favorite games on the 2600 too.
My #1 favorite Atari 2600 game, and thanks to GXG, I started playing it daily last month and got the Easter Egg for my first time in my life. This led to me discovering the 2009 Windows reboot of the game, it's pretty much Final Fantasy graphics and sound with the exact same map. Unfortunately it doesn't control as well and the bat, if you can believe it, is even more of a pain. Fun (and free) to try, but the original still wins. Another great video, I should get back to work now...well, maybe one more haha!
Thanks for this video! I never had this game back in the day, nor would I have had the patience to play it, so I appreciate your walkthrough now! I enjoyed Haunted House when it first came out.
Haunted House was interesting but could have been better had they done 24-30 screens like Superman and Adventure. Funnily enough, when I went back to improve my scores of lives and matches, I found that game 8 is harder to win quickly than game 9. The reason is the bat and scorpions can't move through locked doors, so follow you to a dead end.
One of my absolute favourite games of all time and its been a joy to play my old childhood cart on my 2600+. It's only recently occurred to me that probably the most amazing thing about the game, is that if you get eaten, you can hit reset and try again but wirh everything where you left it. Considering how basic the 2600 is, thats an amazing feature.
Wow! That really takes me back! It was a visceral experience. I haven't played Adventure since like 1983-ish but I was still with you every step of the way. I remembered all the paths thru the mazes, all the details & all the secret stuff. Adventure was one of my favorite games back then. I was a latch-key kid. I'd come home from school and play Atari and listen to records or the radio. J.Geils band 'Centerfold' must be burned into my brain along with Adventure. And some funky Greg Kihn band song... 'Jeopardy'. And Rockwell 'Somebody's Watchin Me' and of course Thomas Dolby 'She Blinded Me with Science'. Funny how tightly music is fused with the gaming deep in the neurons. Probably not a popular opinion but I also loved the Raiders of the Lost Arc game that was inscrutable and you had to use 2 joysticks to control it. Damn! It took me forever to figure that game out. Something about using grenades or explosives while you were falling to open up a wall or something like that... lets just say I was prepared for Zelda once that was a thing. Ha! Howard Scott Warshaw prepared me! Yar's Revenge was another favorite. Thanks for doing this one and rattling those memories... I had no idea the fidelity with which they are still stored. Like holograms. I can see it, feel it, live it like I was 12 all over again. Whew!
This comment is a cross-section of everything we love about growing up GenX. Do you happen to listen to our weekly podcast? We talk about all of this stuff! genxgrownup.com/pod
Broooooooo!!! I’m high AF! In my first play through of that game, my brothers and I found the chalice, but we didn’t know that we could kill the dragons with the sword. So we were running from the black castle all the way to the yellow castle with the green and yellow dragons is chasing us. We were screaming and screaming. It was our first experience of survival horror! Imagine that back in 81!😅
Adventure is my favorite Atari 2600 game purchased second behind Space Invaders. I can't describe in words but I really bought into the "world". The no-soundtrack silence gave it that liminal spaces feel as if we're adventuring the final moments of a dying kingdom. Played it so much, I could make it through the mazes with my eyes closed. It baffles me why they couldn't make better sword and sorcery games later [on the 2600]. I'm looking at you Swordquest!
Yeah, no soundtrack needed... I'd scare myself playing Adventure, grabbing the chalice and zooming through a maze with the Red Dragon chomping on yer heels!!!
They knew what they were doing with Adventure and Superman, and the open-play concept (or whatever it's called) was brilliant. Some people like Haunted House, but it's only 4 scrolling screens with 6 rooms each. Meanwhile the former games had 24-30 screens that you move between. They could have done this with Haunted House, having 24 screens: one for each room, and a different layout or background for each, or things to do, like look in cabinets, chests, fireplaces, furniture etc. E.T. had some problems like falling into pits, and Raiders of the Lost Ark was unwinnable for nearly everyone without a walkthrough you could call to get in the mail. Then the "score" at the end of Raiders as a manlift was whack, so you could never get to the top. They should have made those action games like a bicycle chase and a truck chase game, respectively. They did sell over a million, as well as Adventure (but not Superman and Haunted House?). Then they just lost their minds with Swordquest, thinking kids and adults would buy it for the chance to win thousands of dollars in treasure. The walkthroughs I've seen show there's no sense to the items and locations for solving puzzles, other than a few that help you navigate screens. After trial and error gives you a clue, you're supposed to find a word in a comic book on that page and panel. Once you get all the words, you're supposed to send in six of them in the hopes you picked the right ones. And when too many people sent in correct answers (for Fireworld) they asked them to write an essay saying why they think it's the greatest game of all time.
I can't believe you did that in 10 minutes. I was a young boy when this came out and I played my friend's copy (I didn't have an Atari) for hours and never finished the game. Thanks for letting me see what happens!
Oh, for sure! It was probably more like 15-20 since I did some editing to eliminate boring parts where I was just going from one place to another, but once you know all the rules it doesn't lake long to complete. Now you should give it a try!
Loved this game and I remember renting it a bunch of times back in the day. I played it so much that I literally memorized the entire map. Seeing that there was an inaccessible area made me say to my self "hey, that doesn't make sense". So my curiosity led me to discover the Easter Egg for myself and I remember feeling so much satisfaction from a game like I never had before. It was like seeing the end credits of a movie.
@@GenXGrownUp Be careful, there's a lot of hate for that game, by people who were told to hate it. Last time I played it, I got him on the ship 7x. But I can definitely see why little kids couldn't play it and parents took it back to the store.
I remember playing this game at my friends house for a solid 4 hours at a time. Sometimes more. I has been my absolute favourite since the early 80s. It makes sense that there is a map but…. Mind blown!!!!
Fellow Gen Xer here, just found the channel as TH-cam recommended this video for me, and it was right! I love this game and play it on break at work thanks to an online emulator I found. And yes always game mode 3 once you're used to it! Subbed! And that dang bat! Always stealing our stuff, still annoying to this day!
The bat (named Knubberrub outside the manual) was such a mischievous and frustrating villain, that they used it in a couple more games: in Haunted House the bat can steal your item, and I think in Mountain King. For some reason, in Dark Cavern, the spiders that look like the bat paralyze you, while the blob steals your bullets.
Even at nearly 45 years old, this game is one of a kind. You feel like you're in a real kingdom with the other dragons roaming about, living their artificial lives. In a modern game, this would be completely scripted; you restart a checkpoint and continually encounter the same dragon at the same corner every time until you slay it. And the bat doesn't deliberately target you or magically teleport to new areas you occupy. (I've never played a homebrew Adventure game that got this right by the way.) The bat is also roaming the kingdom until it randomly finds you. Yes, he's a pain, but you know encountering him is more bad luck than some sadistic game design. I'm convinced Warren Robinett was a genius.
Adventure rules! That view of the map actually blew my mind, I expected the mazes to be much bigger. Looking forward to more videos of just casually going through other Atari classics, strangely enough there's not that many channels doing that.
I remember my sister and I finding the easter egg in 1980 back when I was in 3rd grade. We would play that game all the time and just happened to stumble across the pixel searching the game for areas we haven't been to yet. Good stuff.
Great job, Jon! The game feels so similar to Superman with the maps. Superman and Pitfall are my favorite 2600 games. Would love to see playthroughs of both!
Thanks. That's no coincidence. Superman was programmed using Robinett's multi-room enging as a starting point. I've already got Superman on my list of titles to cover in this way!
I'd say Adventure had the original jump scare with you entering a room and having a dragon right there in your face. Followed of course by a wacky chase scene through the mazes with a dragon hot on your heels.
Going to the next screen: POW a dragon chomps at you. And I would call it more menacing than whacky to have a fast dragon (on A difficulty) pursuing you. Although I can see it might be whacky when you're in place and a dragon (that some call a duck) slowly comes toward you bouncing up and down.
I remember playing this when I was around 10, along with the haunted house game which we thought was very scary back then ;) I wasn't sure if we ever finished Adventure until I saw the ending again and then I realized we did actually did finish it. Maybe we might have even mapped it a bit, but I don't think we found the Easter egg. ;) though I know we played the game more than a few times. I think it was more to see how fast we could get to the end. ;) We also just had fun poking the dragon with our spear. I didn't even realize there were different modes so I don't know which we played, but do remember remember going through the mazes. Cool video :)
With as much trouble as the bat was giving you I figured you would use the bat trapping method. If you didnt know, you can open the yellow castle and put the key in the upper right corner of the room. Later you can catch the bat with anything other than a dragon and then hold on to him till you get to the yellow castle. By the time you get there he will be bored with whatever he has and want something different. Let him loose in the yellow castle and he will fly and grab the yellow key. In the vast majority of the time he will keep flying in that direction effectively trapping him there. Grab what he had and leave. No more bat problem. Sometimes he will grab the yellow key and then switch direction and head for the door. But that is rare. Adventure is my favorite from the 2600 when I was a kid. My younger brother and I saved our allowances to buy it. We loved it.
This, next to Montezuma's Revenge was the game I played the most back in the day. Saved my pocket money to buy both. Beyond that I was fortunate to own some 4-in-1 cartridges, Boxing, Tennis, Plaque Attack, Frostbite, Combat, Air-Sea Battle to name some. 😂
In the situation you ran into in the beginning, when you have the bat holding onto the gold key, you can take the bat into the Gold Castle and release him inside. As long as he doesn't hit the entrance as he's flying, he will be stuck there, and you don't have to worry about him for the rest of the game. 👍😉
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub! 😁
Good show - I remember not having this game (until later) and calling my friends and having them play it and describe his game play over the phone so I could hear his "Adventure". Something else I remember but cannot put my finger on exactly why it was or when exactly - more how I felt and it might make a good show- was when Atari changed its packaging to silver and how the games just suddenly got better. The most famous is probably Ms. Pac-Man which is covered in many places compared to the original Atari Pac-man. But others per my memory include (and in the following order I got them in the 80's) were - Krull, Vanguard and the last (new) Atari 2600 game I ever remember buying Mario Bros. These games had more depth and attention to detail than the earlier solid color boxes in the non-silver packaging.
Someone said they outsourced 5200 games in 1982, and 2600 games in 1983, including Jungle Hunt and Moon Patrol, both having music in part of the game. I had Vanguard and Krull but couldn't beat the third levels. I got Ms. Pac-Man much later and it was a blast! They had gone to 8K ROM carts for Ms. Pac-Man and some others. I got a red-label game, Donkey Kong, Jr., in the late 1980s but it was just the 1983 Coleco cartridge, that they bought for their own without updating it, and was bad. Squeaky-squeaky-squeaky. The original Donkey Kong, like Pac-Man only used a 4K ROM, so even though they were top-sellers, they could have been better and, I think, sold millions more.
Thanks, Butter! No, luckily, Knubberub will NOT steal your secret dot. Can you imagine trying to find it again? Especially since it's also immune to the magnet!
I remember getting Atari for Xmas in the early 80s with combat. It was a two player game and I had nobody to play it with and I was amazed and loved it .them days were so simple and great then we got a vcr and that blew my mind .
As a "GenXGrownUp" myself, I have such fond memories of this game. That was the first game we got when we got the Atari 2600, along with Space Invaders. One thing you can do to not have to deal with that pesky bat is to lock it into the gold castle. Of course, before you did that, make sure it grabbed an object you don't care about, especially one of the dead dragons. You do realize you can "relock" a castle by touching the gate with the corresponding key and it will close again. I also remember just screwing around in the game such as piling every single object into the gold castle, including the dead dragons (needed the bat to move those) as well as the little "magic dot", then pulling in the golden chalice at the very end, thus putting every single thing in the game in one castle. And speaking of the "magic dot", I do recall discovering that little "Easter egg" with one of my brothers and one of my cousins. I do remember when we realized what that dot did and ended up in that "secret" area. We were like, "what the hell?". Did not realize the significance of that until much later.
My friends and I when we played this would when the gold castle was opened, we would then try to trap the bat inside. If the bat's flight pattern was to the left ight, diagonal up left ight, or straight up, then we knew we would not have to worry about items getting stolen from us.
Good times! I know the technique & I certainly could've trapped him. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
A somewhat similar game that might be worth a video is Haunted House. I'm pretty sure I spent more time playing Adventure than any other VCS game, but Haunted House would definitely be in the top 5 (also way up there, Pitfall and Megamania).
You do know that if you release the BAT in the castle - it stays in the castle. Also - never drop your key on the gate of the castle the key opens - you can accidentally lock the key inside...
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
I absolutely loved this game growing up. It was the precursor to all those hours playing Zelda and Final Fantasy games years later. I have this district memory of hitting a bug once, where I'm pretty sure the white key was in the black castle, and the black key was in the white castle, as neither was anywhere to be found.
Atari's Superman game for the 2600 is based on much of the same code as this one. I had a friend who had memorized where everything was in the Superman game and could fully complete the game in about one minute! By the way, Warren Robinett went on to form "The Learning Company", which was one of the very first educational software companies. He's also a really nice guy. I found him online a few years and sent him an email telling him how much I liked Adventure (and I asked him about the Easter egg of course). To my surprise he not only replied, but specifically answered my questions and recommended a book on how the 2600 works, called "Racing the Beam". A lot of people are turned off by Adventure's very limited use of sound, but to me that massively added to the whole ambiance! When that dragon comes out of nowhere and eats you the sound has that much more impact. (Another really great adventure game for the 2600 - sometimes claimed to be the very first RPG - is "Dragon Stomper" for the Supercharger add-on. You should review it!)
Adventure was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games. (I didn't know about the gray dot.) Which Atari games did I enjoy more? Hmm… • Pitfall II • River Raid • Snoopy and the Red Baron For that last one, there are many games like it… Defender, Chopper Command, Empire Strikes Back. Space Invaders was a really good 2600 game too.
My life changed when I was able to play on a color T.V. First part of my experience was a Zenith b/w 12" screen. My friend had the color T.V. when Adventure came out. It made a difference seeing it in color.🤟😐👌
I’d put the magnet right above the gold castle gate. Then while holding the chalice, release it from below and it will drift up to victory. Even better, leave the castle area heading downward as soon as you release the chalice. Head down into the hall below. Wait. Now peek up into the gold castle room then immediately pull back down. If you’re quick enough, you’ll win the game in the hallway area instead of at or in the castle. Or put the bridge in the hallway below, in the middle, head downward and you’ll win from inside the gold castle’s top open rectangular gray area.
Another quirk of the game is when you push the Game Select lever when the victory celebration is happening it will make the music crawl to a snail’s pace.
Lock that bat in the gold castle while it is holding the magnet. Sometimes it takes a few tries. Then go dragon hunting. I think I play this at least once a month. One of my all time favorites!
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
@@GenXGrownUp funny how so many people leave the same comment, and you always leave the same reply. Too bad people don't at least do a cursory look at the top comments before repeating.
My favorite is when you manage to grab a hold of the bat while it's carrying a live dragon. As you move, the dragon swings around the bat and snaps at your square.
The true vintage challenge of Adventure is to get literally every item in the gold castle before the chalice. That includes the dead dragons, bat, and dot. Bonus for a live dragon.
I still remember when my friend had an Atari magazine and told me about this. He also told me about the most amazing Pitfall II Easter Egg for the Atari 8-bit computers where you get a whole other set of caverns if you do things in a certain order.... videos on this explain why they hid it... and it was because their bosses refused to let them put it in the 8-bit game :)
I was so good at skill level 1 I would walk back and pick up every item I could to see the screen blink on every sprite one at a time in the starting yellow castle! Great content my friend.
Right! It was not only a fun game to play, but a fun game to play WITH. I remember taking the bridge around to every wall and ever screen edge trying to see what I could see and maybe find more hidden secrets!
@@GenXGrownUp I was thinking that just like they have that room in the white castle that you can only get to by the bridge (or sending the bat), he should have made a room you can't get to (unless inside a dragon's belly while carried by the bat) but can only peek at by trying to use the bridge at the top of your screen, and the magnet could be used to bring down one object at a time to your screen. Before I lost the manual, I used to imagine there really was an evil wizard somewhere in the kingdom, you could find. Perhaps he'd look like the madman in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Despite being an 80s kid, I never grew up with the Atari 2600. My thing was the NES, and so the old VCS graphics were so bland for me as a kid. As an adult, however, I find Adventure as a perfect game to understand what everyone loved about the 2600 in the days before the NES. I think you'll enjoy it!
Bought in 80 for 30 dllrs. Still play xbox disc atari anthology. Play version 3 w diff switch on harder so dragons run from sword. Hide sword off screen and when dragon comes pull it out and get it. Try to kill all dragons and get all objects in first castle. Bonus for dead dragons in first castle.
To any who are just swinging by here and read my comment, Atari had a policy of not crediting their programmers. I forget if they believed the programmers were expendable or if they were afraid their programmers would get poached by other companies (the latter is why a lot of NES game used pseudonyms for their devs), but a lot of the programmers got fed up with it, left Atari, and formed Activision, which then went on to make some of the best games for the Atari 2600 console (much to Atari's chagrin, if I'm not mistaken). Unlike Atari, which would not credit the programmers for their games, Activision credited the programmers of their games (usually in one of the last pages in the game's manual).
I had a boss that my co-worker upon requesting a transfer said told her, "I don't like you, but I don't want to lose you." That's Atari's attitude to their VCS/2600 programmers. Also, my grandfather once said there's an attitude, "If you were any good, you wouldn't be working for me," which is why so many prefer contractors to employees. They had 3 divisions: arcade, home computer and VCS. I think they liked those who made arcade games, but looked down on those "copying" arcade games to the VCS.
Adventure was my third purchased game. I would always try to leave the bat inside the gold castle flying upwards or horizontally. As long as there was nothing in there except the bat and whatever (unneeded) thing it was carrying, it wouldn't bother me for the rest of the game. I found the dot very soon after buying the game but never realised the significance. To my teenager brain it just seemed like some kind of mistake or programming artefact. I'd carry it around and play with it but It was only about 10 years ago that I found out about the Easter egg and finally got to Warren's secret ending. I developed a strategy of getting every single sprite inside the gold castle (including the dead dragons, the bat and the dot) before carrying the goblet in behind me to finish the game. It would take at least an hour to get the bat to pick up the immovable dragons and drop them inside the gold castle then catch the bat. Sometimes the bat would accidentally touch the goblet to the gate while I was in the gold castle courtyard, causing an premature ending. The flickering when you do the "full house" ending is intense. (With a small amount of programming, the state of having all sprites in the gold castle could trigger an alternative Easter egg game over. Any homebrewers out there want to take that idea and play with it?) Given the chronic lack of ROM they had back in the day, I wonder how many bytes Warren used to create the Easter egg.
Probably my fave game on the 2600 , remember playing it over and over , really captured my imagination , had no idea about the easter egg till i watched ready player one
The only two things you did not do was press select while the fanfare was playing, and holding down on the joystick at the select screen after having played the game once.
Also the game gets really weird if you start shorting pins on the TIA all willy nilly. And then suddenly most of the colors stop showing on every game you play and... oh look a new Atari is only 50 bucks now. How fortuitous! This happened to a friend of mine, of course. I'd never do something so stupid!
There's plenty more I didn't do, too. Like trap the bat or end the game with every sprite in the Gold castle! But gotta save something for another day. 😀
@@GenXGrownUpThere's ways to make the bat stand still. Or at least I've seen it happen. But I never knew how to cause it. I remember once I found the bat in the white castle not holding anything and standing still. I never saw that happen again.
@@KatriceMetaluna I've seen that several times, but I don't know what triggered it. Maybe how you hit the reset? I'd have to find it like that, then hit reset, then go back and see if it's still standing in place.
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
The game has a bug of sorts. There’s a small chance for game 3 to be unbeatable. It happens when the one key spawns inside its own castle making it unopenable.
Couldn’t the bat do that too? And be the solution too? IIRC the bay will swap out items off screen so you never can be sure what he will have. On another note, ever have the bay take the 🔑 key and fly over a castle gate and close it? Perhaps while you’re inside? Ask me how I come to bring up this 😢
I was looking to see if someone had said the OP, before I posted. There's a 1/29 chance (3.4%) that the gold key will be located in the gold castle, making it unwinnable. There's a 1.7% chance that the white, black and/or gold keys are mutually locked in each other's castles, together making it a 5% chance you can't win! I tried playing repeatedly to see where everything was at the start: outside, black, gold, or white castle. And I encountered both situations (presumably). I never found the black key in the white castle in game 3. Then I read online how the game matrix was set up. Black key is in rooms 1-18, where the first 17 are outside rooms, and number 18 is inside the gold castle. White key can be in rooms 1-22, which does not include inside the white castle. Chalice can be in rooms 19-26 which first 4 are inside black and second 4 are inside white. Gold key can be in any room 1-29 (not the easter egg room, 30). Room 27 is just inside the black castle, and rooms 28-29 are outside, somewhere you never find the black and white keys unless the bat puts them there. You probably noticed that no more than two objects, including enemies, start in the same room. I think there is some value in the game not being winnable every time. You have to explore to make sure, before giving up. Alternatively, if you can open the gold castle you know you can win. There is a chance that the gold key could be in the unreachable room in the white castle, while both the bridge and the bat that would help you get it are inside the gold castle, but it's 1/29^3 or 0.000041 or 0.0041%. If instead bat and bridge are in black, while black key is in gold, then it's even lower 25*(1/29)^4=0.000035. And how would you know that the problem isn't the gold key being in the gold castle?
Im glad you had a walkthough , i just got the my arcade portable handheld and was stuck in the 2nd level and every time i started the level that bat swiped the yellow key when the gameplay started i was very confused
Haha! Yes, many commenters have mentioned trapping the bat. I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
Also, if you do a cartrage fry (wiggle the power cord while on), you can shift the position of the black gates. It is possible to get to the other side of the gates this way... But if the secret dot isn't present in the room, you go to the opposite gate room instead of the name room. So the dot does more than just let you phase through the gates. Edit: Don't do this. Stella can simulate a cartridge fry.
This is awesome! I am also a old schooler genx-er like yourself! I think the Atari box covers were probably the best designed boxes of any console, even to this day. Great art that contrasted the pixelated graphics. So, as a request, i Was wondering if you could do the three sword quest games, and if you knew how to beat them? I never ever owned the comics you had to read and only just learned of the hidden messages just a year ago! I know the game is pointless now to win, but it was interesting. Thanks!! Great stuff.
Loved Adventure. One goofy little glitch I found when I was a kid, at the level select screen, if you hold down on the controller for a couple seconds the square will appear, and you can move around on that screen.
Another glitch (although I don't know if it only works on real hardware)... When you move the chalice into the gold castle, hit the game reset button right after. It turns the victory sound effects into a bizarre, slowed extended finale!
I’d put the magnet right above the gold castle gate. Then while holding the chalice, release it from below and it will drift up to victory. Even better, leave the castle area heading downward as soon as you release the chalice. Head down into the hall below. Wait. Now peek up into the gold castle room then immediately pull back down. If you’re quick enough, you’ll win the game in the hallway area instead of at or in the castle. Or put the bridge in the hallway below, in the middle, head downward and you’ll win from inside the gold castle’s top open rectangular gray area.
Nice walk-thru! I didn't own this game, but got to borrow it for a short time, so I never did conquer this one. Now I'm just too busy playing my favorites.
There was one time I was playing level 3 when the bat had the chalice and flew into the castle gate. The game ended with a win! I would imagine the player would have to be in the castle room in order for this to happen!
I originally played this on dos and it was epic to me. This game alone made me want to play RPG'S and adventure games. Thank you Atari and thank you Adventure. Your a key to my heart
Adventure reminds me of staying at my grandma’s house playing this game. She was a cool Italian grandma who completely spoiled us grandkids with amazing food and having an Atari at her house for when we would come over. Miss you grandma. ❤
Awwww, this comment made me smile. Here's to all the grandmas, both here and passed. 🥰
That's awesome. Definitely a grandmother that understood the sign of the times.
Now that's a lady.
My grandma was almost exactly the same except she wasn’t Italian and it was an 8 bit Nintendo instead of an Atari
@@frankschalk7790 What’s your point?
i used to play this game for hours and hours and never got tired of it. it was so cool when it came out! KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON!!!
Robinett said adventure was his attempt to translate a text adventure into an VGS game. Apparently his boss told him not to make this game because translating a text adventure into a VGS was not possible. He did it anyway, and it is one of my favorite VGS games.
Apparently, Robinett was one of the only Atari programmers that actually had a programming education at the time and wrote Adventure using data structure and like a simulation. An interesting side effect because of this is, if you get eaten by a dragon and the bat picks the dragon up, you end up getting an aerial view of the kingdoms which is really sweet.
Robinett’s post-mortem at one of the past GDCs is a must watch if you like Adventure and programming.
We always called that, "A Bat-Tour."
Level three difficulty looks hard. 🤯
@@GenXGrownUp that is if by any chance the bat flies over the sword it kills the dragon and you go free. Happened to me once.
@@BeastCake1349 There are people who said they couldn't figure out what to do in game 1. Maybe because they were little and didn't have someone to teach them, and couldn't read the instructions? At least winning gives you a triumphant victory flash and bang, which Pitfall! didn't do!
Game 1 has 1 less castle, 1 less dragon, and no maze inside the black castle, so is a good introduction. Yes, game three is a little more complicated but not brain-busting difficult. You do have to learn how to get to black and white castles, which you should learn playing game 2.
@@capolayawait, WHAT??? 40 years and I hear of that NOW???
I spent hours playing Adventure, I mapped everything on graph paper, so I saw there was a hidden room, after some head scratching I realised what the bridge was for, and then wandered around with the dot trying all sorts of things to see what might happen. My amazement at discovering the easter egg was a highlight of my video gaming life.
I'm envious that you had the joy of discovering it on your own. I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend, so I knew what I was looking for. 😀🦇
I forget whether I figured it out myself or read it in Atari Age and did that. Probably the latter.
The first time I watched my friend playing Adventure changed my life! We soon successfully begged my parents for our own 2600… and it eventually inspired me to become a programmer :)
Awesome!
It's funny how it hits old fear memories. "That's just a square. That's just a line. Pff, that's just a squiggle. AHH, LOOK OUT, IT'S A FUCKING DRAGON!!!!"
Yes. Exactly! 🕹️
I love how these old games still had the system requirement of imagination. Yeah, it's an arrow and a block. But, at the time, you could imagine. That's the one thing awesome graphics take away.
Today, you're basically playing a movie. Very cool, but there is something to be said for a good flex of the inner eye. The closest we have now is a good card game or board game, which existed in that era as well. It was like video games were just another medium to encourage us to use our imagination.
Now, we get spoon fed the story, and complain it doesn't look real enough. Different times, for sure.
Great video, as always.
👆 this
It's interesting what you mention because that's how I started to feel as early as 5/6 years old that, I wanted the video games, from both 2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th/7th generation consoles, including PC games, to be more like video game movie adaptations, that focus on the player in a slice of life type of style. Where the video game player plays the game, and whatever happens in the video game world, affects how the player in front of the TV partners with the character in the video game world beating/slaying/accomplishing, etc. Either that, or have the video game player be transported through the TV/Computer monitor into that specific video game world, and either solve problems, have a ton of fun racing, or doing mini games with Mario and his friends, and just have fun or accomplish something that has a moral/personal meaning to the video game player from the friends and events he/she's been through along the way. That's the type of video game movie I would like to see, but instead Hollywood wants it to be like some stupid blockbuster AAA film full of actors nobody knows about, and providing very, very little of the original game itself (which is not really the vision I thought of when adapting video games into movies).
@@SuperFlashDriver Like I said, that's cool in its own right.
Since my earliest years, in the mid-70s, there was an almost decade long push to develop and use your imagination. I took it very much to heart, and I developed a very vivid imagination. It has served me well to this day. Be it a novel, MTG, D&D, etc, I saw the whole game (or story) universe in my head, if ample description was provided. It was far more personal, meaning nobody else was seeing exactly what I was in our heads. Great graphics remove that. It shows you exactly what you are meant to see. That can be a big problem.
What seems lacking nowadays seems to be imagination. Kids all the way to 30-somethings seem to really lack it. Perhaps that's why they get so bored so quickly. Adventure, or any old video game is just too bad graphically to spoon feed you much of anything. Naturally it'll seem boring, pointless, and downright stupid.
While modern games are indeed cool, I miss the days of the huge imagination push.
@@73twall Yeah, I have a feeling it's made to be more like a video game movie rather than something you would play. For me I stopped playing video games except for those that I personally enjoy spending time building and creating say a city or a theme park and such.
It takes more imagination to play Atari then it does to read a book
Someone from REDDIT tried to say they found the "Easter Egg" in 1978 - I said "Amazing you found something 2 years before it was released"
Poor Square Hero, continually being stabbed by holding the sword the wrong way.
Holding it backwards like that, I relabeled it as a Spear 😄
We knew they were dragons, but we always called them ducks.
"Then there's this damn bat!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! I have no idea how many times I said " get away you damn bat...".... OMG, thanks for bringing that back!!! And I was the 11111111 base-2 thumbs up for you.
This is my favorite game of all time! I first saw it demoed in a K-Mart back in 1980 and was mesmerized. It was the first game I bought for my Atari VCS (2600) in 1983. Believe it or not, there's a way to get into the "secret room" without the dot (only on levels 2 and 3, since the room is inaccessible on level 1). If you place the magnet just above the floor to the right of the wall (it's okay if it overlaps the wall) you can then take the bridge in the catacomb level directly beneath it. Very carefully working your way up the side of the bridge allows you to go through the "ceiling". Make sure to grab the bridge right as you are about to switch screens and let the bridge go when you get to the screen above. If you've done it right, move along with the bridge as it gets drawn to the magnet and you'll end up "inside" the black wall in the east room. From there you can go right into the secret room. Of course, at this point, you're stuck and not getting out of there. Also, prepared to get stuck in the catacomb "ceiling" many times until you get the bridge cadence *just* right! :) You can also move past the Warren Robinett words by going through the opening in the secret room ceiling - you'll end up in the maze floor on the way to the black castle but you can still move to the right. After moving down you can even poke out behind the west hallway room black wall. You can get back to the east by doing the same in reverse. Did I mention, this was my favorite game? :) I played it quite a bit!
My first gaming console was a 7800 and i did have a cool library of 2600 games but i didn't have Adventure. I only knew about it by those old 2600 gaming catalogs that had game cover art. Later as a grown up, i ran into a book in Barnes and Noble that featured vintage gaming cover art. Then i read Ready Player One and then watched the movie where Adventure gets it's proper due. So one of the reasons i recently bought an Atari GSP this past Christmas was to relive the classic gaming vibes with my 13 yr old son and of course finally play ADVENTURE!⚃🐉🗡🦇🕹
I played Adventure on visits to my grandparents house nearly each Friday & Saturday during the mid 1980’s. Being really young at the time I obviously had no idea of the existence of this easter egg. This is the first time I’ve seen it demonstrated. I wish my grandfather was still alive to see this. He would have loved it! Adventure was one of his favorite games on the 2600 too.
My #1 favorite Atari 2600 game, and thanks to GXG, I started playing it daily last month and got the Easter Egg for my first time in my life. This led to me discovering the 2009 Windows reboot of the game, it's pretty much Final Fantasy graphics and sound with the exact same map. Unfortunately it doesn't control as well and the bat, if you can believe it, is even more of a pain. Fun (and free) to try, but the original still wins. Another great video, I should get back to work now...well, maybe one more haha!
And now I'm aware of something new! I've seen several re-imagining & reboots of Adventure, but that one was new to me. Thanks! 😁
Thanks for this video! I never had this game back in the day, nor would I have had the patience to play it, so I appreciate your walkthrough now! I enjoyed Haunted House when it first came out.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Haunted House was interesting but could have been better had they done 24-30 screens like Superman and Adventure. Funnily enough, when I went back to improve my scores of lives and matches, I found that game 8 is harder to win quickly than game 9. The reason is the bat and scorpions can't move through locked doors, so follow you to a dead end.
One of my absolute favourite games of all time and its been a joy to play my old childhood cart on my 2600+. It's only recently occurred to me that probably the most amazing thing about the game, is that if you get eaten, you can hit reset and try again but wirh everything where you left it. Considering how basic the 2600 is, thats an amazing feature.
Wow! That really takes me back! It was a visceral experience. I haven't played Adventure since like 1983-ish but I was still with you every step of the way. I remembered all the paths thru the mazes, all the details & all the secret stuff. Adventure was one of my favorite games back then. I was a latch-key kid. I'd come home from school and play Atari and listen to records or the radio. J.Geils band 'Centerfold' must be burned into my brain along with Adventure. And some funky Greg Kihn band song... 'Jeopardy'. And Rockwell 'Somebody's Watchin Me' and of course Thomas Dolby 'She Blinded Me with Science'. Funny how tightly music is fused with the gaming deep in the neurons. Probably not a popular opinion but I also loved the Raiders of the Lost Arc game that was inscrutable and you had to use 2 joysticks to control it. Damn! It took me forever to figure that game out. Something about using grenades or explosives while you were falling to open up a wall or something like that... lets just say I was prepared for Zelda once that was a thing. Ha! Howard Scott Warshaw prepared me! Yar's Revenge was another favorite. Thanks for doing this one and rattling those memories... I had no idea the fidelity with which they are still stored. Like holograms. I can see it, feel it, live it like I was 12 all over again. Whew!
This comment is a cross-section of everything we love about growing up GenX. Do you happen to listen to our weekly podcast? We talk about all of this stuff! genxgrownup.com/pod
Broooooooo!!! I’m high AF! In my first play through of that game, my brothers and I found the chalice, but we didn’t know that we could kill the dragons with the sword. So we were running from the black castle all the way to the yellow castle with the green and yellow dragons is chasing us. We were screaming and screaming. It was our first experience of survival horror! Imagine that back in 81!😅
Adventure is my favorite Atari 2600 game purchased second behind Space Invaders. I can't describe in words but I really bought into the "world". The no-soundtrack silence gave it that liminal spaces feel as if we're adventuring the final moments of a dying kingdom. Played it so much, I could make it through the mazes with my eyes closed. It baffles me why they couldn't make better sword and sorcery games later [on the 2600]. I'm looking at you Swordquest!
Yeah, no soundtrack needed... I'd scare myself playing Adventure, grabbing the chalice and zooming through a maze with the Red Dragon chomping on yer heels!!!
They knew what they were doing with Adventure and Superman, and the open-play concept (or whatever it's called) was brilliant.
Some people like Haunted House, but it's only 4 scrolling screens with 6 rooms each. Meanwhile the former games had 24-30 screens that you move between. They could have done this with Haunted House, having 24 screens: one for each room, and a different layout or background for each, or things to do, like look in cabinets, chests, fireplaces, furniture etc.
E.T. had some problems like falling into pits, and Raiders of the Lost Ark was unwinnable for nearly everyone without a walkthrough you could call to get in the mail. Then the "score" at the end of Raiders as a manlift was whack, so you could never get to the top. They should have made those action games like a bicycle chase and a truck chase game, respectively. They did sell over a million, as well as Adventure (but not Superman and Haunted House?).
Then they just lost their minds with Swordquest, thinking kids and adults would buy it for the chance to win thousands of dollars in treasure. The walkthroughs I've seen show there's no sense to the items and locations for solving puzzles, other than a few that help you navigate screens. After trial and error gives you a clue, you're supposed to find a word in a comic book on that page and panel. Once you get all the words, you're supposed to send in six of them in the hopes you picked the right ones. And when too many people sent in correct answers (for Fireworld) they asked them to write an essay saying why they think it's the greatest game of all time.
I can't believe you did that in 10 minutes. I was a young boy when this came out and I played my friend's copy (I didn't have an Atari) for hours and never finished the game. Thanks for letting me see what happens!
Oh, for sure! It was probably more like 15-20 since I did some editing to eliminate boring parts where I was just going from one place to another, but once you know all the rules it doesn't lake long to complete. Now you should give it a try!
Loved this game and I remember renting it a bunch of times back in the day. I played it so much that I literally memorized the entire map. Seeing that there was an inaccessible area made me say to my self "hey, that doesn't make sense". So my curiosity led me to discover the Easter Egg for myself and I remember feeling so much satisfaction from a game like I never had before. It was like seeing the end credits of a movie.
I remember a friend of mine showing me this way back in the 80s. He also showed me the Easter egg on Imagics Fathom.
Nice to see my all time favourite Game in this video format you are doing, It Will be so nice seening an E.t. video like this
Sounds like a good idea.
@@GenXGrownUp Be careful, there's a lot of hate for that game, by people who were told to hate it. Last time I played it, I got him on the ship 7x. But I can definitely see why little kids couldn't play it and parents took it back to the store.
I remember playing this game at my friends house for a solid 4 hours at a time. Sometimes more. I has been my absolute favourite since the early 80s. It makes sense that there is a map but…. Mind blown!!!!
Same!
When we played it in the 1980s my mom couldn’t believe the silly “microscope thing” was supposed to be a dead dragon.
Fellow Gen Xer here, just found the channel as TH-cam recommended this video for me, and it was right! I love this game and play it on break at work thanks to an online emulator I found. And yes always game mode 3 once you're used to it! Subbed!
And that dang bat! Always stealing our stuff, still annoying to this day!
The bat (named Knubberrub outside the manual) was such a mischievous and frustrating villain, that they used it in a couple more games: in Haunted House the bat can steal your item, and I think in Mountain King. For some reason, in Dark Cavern, the spiders that look like the bat paralyze you, while the blob steals your bullets.
Even at nearly 45 years old, this game is one of a kind. You feel like you're in a real kingdom with the other dragons roaming about, living their artificial lives. In a modern game, this would be completely scripted; you restart a checkpoint and continually encounter the same dragon at the same corner every time until you slay it. And the bat doesn't deliberately target you or magically teleport to new areas you occupy. (I've never played a homebrew Adventure game that got this right by the way.) The bat is also roaming the kingdom until it randomly finds you. Yes, he's a pain, but you know encountering him is more bad luck than some sadistic game design. I'm convinced Warren Robinett was a genius.
👆 this
My favorite Atari game for sure. I always lock the bat in one of the castles. Gives me the most satisfaction.
Adventure rules! That view of the map actually blew my mind, I expected the mazes to be much bigger.
Looking forward to more videos of just casually going through other Atari classics, strangely enough there's not that many channels doing that.
Glad you enjoyed it! More coming.
They tried to make bigger mazes for one of the later games in those collections after 2000. But what did that accomplish, really?
I remember my sister and I finding the easter egg in 1980 back when I was in 3rd grade. We would play that game all the time and just happened to stumble across the pixel searching the game for areas we haven't been to yet. Good stuff.
We ended up finding it because of a magazine article.
Great job, Jon! The game feels so similar to Superman with the maps. Superman and Pitfall are my favorite 2600 games. Would love to see playthroughs of both!
Thanks. That's no coincidence. Superman was programmed using Robinett's multi-room enging as a starting point. I've already got Superman on my list of titles to cover in this way!
I'd say Adventure had the original jump scare with you entering a room and having a dragon right there in your face. Followed of course by a wacky chase scene through the mazes with a dragon hot on your heels.
“wacky chase”: cue yakety sax 🎷 and conjure up Benny Hill and co.
Going to the next screen: POW a dragon chomps at you. And I would call it more menacing than whacky to have a fast dragon (on A difficulty) pursuing you. Although I can see it might be whacky when you're in place and a dragon (that some call a duck) slowly comes toward you bouncing up and down.
Played the game so much when I was a kid, actually did find the Easter egg. Great memories.
I remember playing this when I was around 10, along with the haunted house game which we thought was very scary back then ;) I wasn't sure if we ever finished Adventure until I saw the ending again and then I realized we did actually did finish it. Maybe we might have even mapped it a bit, but I don't think we found the Easter egg. ;) though I know we played the game more than a few times. I think it was more to see how fast we could get to the end. ;) We also just had fun poking the dragon with our spear. I didn't even realize there were different modes so I don't know which we played, but do remember remember going through the mazes.
Cool video :)
With as much trouble as the bat was giving you I figured you would use the bat trapping method. If you didnt know, you can open the yellow castle and put the key in the upper right corner of the room. Later you can catch the bat with anything other than a dragon and then hold on to him till you get to the yellow castle. By the time you get there he will be bored with whatever he has and want something different. Let him loose in the yellow castle and he will fly and grab the yellow key. In the vast majority of the time he will keep flying in that direction effectively trapping him there. Grab what he had and leave. No more bat problem. Sometimes he will grab the yellow key and then switch direction and head for the door. But that is rare. Adventure is my favorite from the 2600 when I was a kid. My younger brother and I saved our allowances to buy it. We loved it.
This, next to Montezuma's Revenge was the game I played the most back in the day. Saved my pocket money to buy both. Beyond that I was fortunate to own some 4-in-1 cartridges, Boxing, Tennis, Plaque Attack, Frostbite, Combat, Air-Sea Battle to name some. 😂
Great video, thanks for excellent commentary too, now I feel like I could actually take on this game! Keep being awesome!
You can do it - go for it! 😁 Thanks for watching!
@@GenXGrownUp :-) Thanks!
In the situation you ran into in the beginning, when you have the bat holding onto the gold key, you can take the bat into the Gold Castle and release him inside. As long as he doesn't hit the entrance as he's flying, he will be stuck there, and you don't have to worry about him for the rest of the game. 👍😉
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub! 😁
Good show - I remember not having this game (until later) and calling my friends and having them play it and describe his game play over the phone so I could hear his "Adventure".
Something else I remember but cannot put my finger on exactly why it was or when exactly - more how I felt and it might make a good show- was when Atari changed its packaging to silver and how the games just suddenly got better. The most famous is probably Ms. Pac-Man which is covered in many places compared to the original Atari Pac-man. But others per my memory include (and in the following order I got them in the 80's) were - Krull, Vanguard and the last (new) Atari 2600 game I ever remember buying Mario Bros. These games had more depth and attention to detail than the earlier solid color boxes in the non-silver packaging.
Someone said they outsourced 5200 games in 1982, and 2600 games in 1983, including Jungle Hunt and Moon Patrol, both having music in part of the game. I had Vanguard and Krull but couldn't beat the third levels. I got Ms. Pac-Man much later and it was a blast! They had gone to 8K ROM carts for Ms. Pac-Man and some others.
I got a red-label game, Donkey Kong, Jr., in the late 1980s but it was just the 1983 Coleco cartridge, that they bought for their own without updating it, and was bad. Squeaky-squeaky-squeaky. The original Donkey Kong, like Pac-Man only used a 4K ROM, so even though they were top-sellers, they could have been better and, I think, sold millions more.
Fantastic play through. it’s one of my all time favorites!! One thing I can’t remember….. will the bat steal the Easter egg dot?
Thanks, Butter! No, luckily, Knubberub will NOT steal your secret dot. Can you imagine trying to find it again? Especially since it's also immune to the magnet!
I remember getting Atari for Xmas in the early 80s with combat. It was a two player game and I had nobody to play it with and I was amazed and loved it .them days were so simple and great then we got a vcr and that blew my mind .
As a "GenXGrownUp" myself, I have such fond memories of this game. That was the first game we got when we got the Atari 2600, along with Space Invaders. One thing you can do to not have to deal with that pesky bat is to lock it into the gold castle. Of course, before you did that, make sure it grabbed an object you don't care about, especially one of the dead dragons. You do realize you can "relock" a castle by touching the gate with the corresponding key and it will close again. I also remember just screwing around in the game such as piling every single object into the gold castle, including the dead dragons (needed the bat to move those) as well as the little "magic dot", then pulling in the golden chalice at the very end, thus putting every single thing in the game in one castle. And speaking of the "magic dot", I do recall discovering that little "Easter egg" with one of my brothers and one of my cousins. I do remember when we realized what that dot did and ended up in that "secret" area. We were like, "what the hell?". Did not realize the significance of that until much later.
My friends and I when we played this would when the gold castle was opened, we would then try to trap the bat inside. If the bat's flight pattern was to the left
ight, diagonal up left
ight, or straight up, then we knew we would not have to worry about items getting stolen from us.
Good times! I know the technique & I certainly could've trapped him. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
I'm not a GenX but I'm a huge 2600 fan and I love all your videos on this system
Thanks for being here! 😁
So many 2600 games are timeless treasures. This is beyond a shadow of a doubt is one of them. And the easter egg solidifies that.
A somewhat similar game that might be worth a video is Haunted House. I'm pretty sure I spent more time playing Adventure than any other VCS game, but Haunted House would definitely be in the top 5 (also way up there, Pitfall and Megamania).
You do know that if you release the BAT in the castle - it stays in the castle. Also - never drop your key on the gate of the castle the key opens - you can accidentally lock the key inside...
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
I absolutely loved this game growing up. It was the precursor to all those hours playing Zelda and Final Fantasy games years later.
I have this district memory of hitting a bug once, where I'm pretty sure the white key was in the black castle, and the black key was in the white castle, as neither was anywhere to be found.
This game always seemed like such a mystery to me. When you show the entire game map it blew my mind lol
Atari's Superman game for the 2600 is based on much of the same code as this one. I had a friend who had memorized where everything was in the Superman game and could fully complete the game in about one minute! By the way, Warren Robinett went on to form "The Learning Company", which was one of the very first educational software companies. He's also a really nice guy. I found him online a few years and sent him an email telling him how much I liked Adventure (and I asked him about the Easter egg of course). To my surprise he not only replied, but specifically answered my questions and recommended a book on how the 2600 works, called "Racing the Beam".
A lot of people are turned off by Adventure's very limited use of sound, but to me that massively added to the whole ambiance! When that dragon comes out of nowhere and eats you the sound has that much more impact. (Another really great adventure game for the 2600 - sometimes claimed to be the very first RPG - is "Dragon Stomper" for the Supercharger add-on. You should review it!)
Man I played that game so much it was the closest to dungeons and dragons we had
Adventure was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games. (I didn't know about the gray dot.) Which Atari games did I enjoy more? Hmm…
• Pitfall II
• River Raid
• Snoopy and the Red Baron
For that last one, there are many games like it… Defender, Chopper Command, Empire Strikes Back. Space Invaders was a really good 2600 game too.
How quiet this game is adds a creepy element
Great stuff. Thanks for the video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
My life changed when I was able to play on a color T.V. First part of my experience was a Zenith b/w 12" screen. My friend had the color T.V. when Adventure came out. It made a difference seeing it in color.🤟😐👌
Oh, yeah! Did you happen to catch my vid all about that TV Type switch? th-cam.com/video/rj4lO_UVuRo/w-d-xo.html
@@GenXGrownUp Wow, really great channel! Nostalgia just jumped up and bit me!
@@ghoulinthegraveyard399 That's what I love to hear! 😀 Welcome!
I’d put the magnet right above the gold castle gate. Then while holding the chalice, release it from below and it will drift up to victory. Even better, leave the castle area heading downward as soon as you release the chalice. Head down into the hall below. Wait. Now peek up into the gold castle room then immediately pull back down. If you’re quick enough, you’ll win the game in the hallway area instead of at or in the castle. Or put the bridge in the hallway below, in the middle, head downward and you’ll win from inside the gold castle’s top open rectangular gray area.
I like to hit the reset button to hear the victory tones change into bad-sounding notes on the number screen.
Good video love the old retro games 👍
Thanks for the visit
Adventure was one of the first games we bought for the Atari VCS. Never knew about the secret back then though. It was loads of fun.
I'd never actually seen adventure played through. But heard ALL about it from ready player one (the book, not the film) Thanks for this.
I remember reading in the Atari magazine about the Easter egg and finding it easily.
Another quirk of the game is when you push the Game Select lever when the victory celebration is happening it will make the music crawl to a snail’s pace.
Right. It's like the sound progression gets stuck in molasses!
Lock that bat in the gold castle while it is holding the magnet. Sometimes it takes a few tries. Then go dragon hunting. I think I play this at least once a month. One of my all time favorites!
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
I always trapped him in the gold castle while he was holding the gold key.
@@GenXGrownUp funny how so many people leave the same comment, and you always leave the same reply. Too bad people don't at least do a cursory look at the top comments before repeating.
My favorite is when you manage to grab a hold of the bat while it's carrying a live dragon. As you move, the dragon swings around the bat and snaps at your square.
The true vintage challenge of Adventure is to get literally every item in the gold castle before the chalice. That includes the dead dragons, bat, and dot. Bonus for a live dragon.
That should also include getting yourself in the castle, meaning pulling the chalice in.
I still remember when my friend had an Atari magazine and told me about this. He also told me about the most amazing Pitfall II Easter Egg for the Atari 8-bit computers where you get a whole other set of caverns if you do things in a certain order.... videos on this explain why they hid it... and it was because their bosses refused to let them put it in the 8-bit game :)
I was so good at skill level 1 I would walk back and pick up every item I could to see the screen blink on every sprite one at a time in the starting yellow castle! Great content my friend.
Right! It was not only a fun game to play, but a fun game to play WITH. I remember taking the bridge around to every wall and ever screen edge trying to see what I could see and maybe find more hidden secrets!
@@GenXGrownUp This!!
@@GenXGrownUp I was thinking that just like they have that room in the white castle that you can only get to by the bridge (or sending the bat), he should have made a room you can't get to (unless inside a dragon's belly while carried by the bat) but can only peek at by trying to use the bridge at the top of your screen, and the magnet could be used to bring down one object at a time to your screen.
Before I lost the manual, I used to imagine there really was an evil wizard somewhere in the kingdom, you could find. Perhaps he'd look like the madman in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Great game, loved it playing in the 70s
The way we found this was from a early video game magazine back in 80.. Unforgettable
Adventure is a game I didn't have, nor ever played as a kid, nor even as an adult. I'll have to check it out.
Despite being an 80s kid, I never grew up with the Atari 2600. My thing was the NES, and so the old VCS graphics were so bland for me as a kid. As an adult, however, I find Adventure as a perfect game to understand what everyone loved about the 2600 in the days before the NES. I think you'll enjoy it!
Smh
Bought in 80 for 30 dllrs. Still play xbox disc atari anthology. Play version 3 w diff switch on harder so dragons run from sword. Hide sword off screen and when dragon comes pull it out and get it. Try to kill all dragons and get all objects in first castle. Bonus for dead dragons in first castle.
To any who are just swinging by here and read my comment, Atari had a policy of not crediting their programmers. I forget if they believed the programmers were expendable or if they were afraid their programmers would get poached by other companies (the latter is why a lot of NES game used pseudonyms for their devs), but a lot of the programmers got fed up with it, left Atari, and formed Activision, which then went on to make some of the best games for the Atari 2600 console (much to Atari's chagrin, if I'm not mistaken). Unlike Atari, which would not credit the programmers for their games, Activision credited the programmers of their games (usually in one of the last pages in the game's manual).
👍
I had a boss that my co-worker upon requesting a transfer said told her, "I don't like you, but I don't want to lose you." That's Atari's attitude to their VCS/2600 programmers. Also, my grandfather once said there's an attitude, "If you were any good, you wouldn't be working for me," which is why so many prefer contractors to employees. They had 3 divisions: arcade, home computer and VCS. I think they liked those who made arcade games, but looked down on those "copying" arcade games to the VCS.
Adventure was my third purchased game. I would always try to leave the bat inside the gold castle flying upwards or horizontally. As long as there was nothing in there except the bat and whatever (unneeded) thing it was carrying, it wouldn't bother me for the rest of the game.
I found the dot very soon after buying the game but never realised the significance. To my teenager brain it just seemed like some kind of mistake or programming artefact. I'd carry it around and play with it but It was only about 10 years ago that I found out about the Easter egg and finally got to Warren's secret ending.
I developed a strategy of getting every single sprite inside the gold castle (including the dead dragons, the bat and the dot) before carrying the goblet in behind me to finish the game. It would take at least an hour to get the bat to pick up the immovable dragons and drop them inside the gold castle then catch the bat. Sometimes the bat would accidentally touch the goblet to the gate while I was in the gold castle courtyard, causing an premature ending. The flickering when you do the "full house" ending is intense.
(With a small amount of programming, the state of having all sprites in the gold castle could trigger an alternative Easter egg game over. Any homebrewers out there want to take that idea and play with it?)
Given the chronic lack of ROM they had back in the day, I wonder how many bytes Warren used to create the Easter egg.
This is absolutely amazing
And I never thought the map was THAT small. That's so interesting! 😮
Probably because of the twists and turns inside one screen.
@sandal_thong8631 one of the MANY reasons why this game is one of the best atari 2600 games I ever played
Probably my fave game on the 2600 , remember playing it over and over , really captured my imagination , had no idea about the easter egg till i watched ready player one
You’ve got me on a 2600 rabbit hole and I thank you for that.
It's my ABSOLUTE pleasure! 😉
@ the first video game I ever played at home was Combat on the 2600 in 1979. I was 6.
I played this so much as a kid it was revolutionary!!
I really enjoyed watching this easter egg!!! Also nice gears pop hat
Thank you twice! 😁
The only two things you did not do was press select while the fanfare was playing, and holding down on the joystick at the select screen after having played the game once.
Also the game gets really weird if you start shorting pins on the TIA all willy nilly. And then suddenly most of the colors stop showing on every game you play and... oh look a new Atari is only 50 bucks now. How fortuitous! This happened to a friend of mine, of course. I'd never do something so stupid!
There's plenty more I didn't do, too. Like trap the bat or end the game with every sprite in the Gold castle! But gotta save something for another day. 😀
@@GenXGrownUpThere's ways to make the bat stand still. Or at least I've seen it happen. But I never knew how to cause it. I remember once I found the bat in the white castle not holding anything and standing still. I never saw that happen again.
@@KatriceMetaluna I've seen that several times, but I don't know what triggered it. Maybe how you hit the reset? I'd have to find it like that, then hit reset, then go back and see if it's still standing in place.
If you let go of the bat in the yellow castle he is confined to only that area and will no longer bother you.
I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
The game has a bug of sorts. There’s a small chance for game 3 to be unbeatable. It happens when the one key spawns inside its own castle making it unopenable.
I've heard rumor of that, but not sure I've ever experienced it myself.
Couldn’t the bat do that too? And be the solution too? IIRC the bay will swap out items off screen so you never can be sure what he will have.
On another note, ever have the bay take the 🔑 key and fly over a castle gate and close it? Perhaps while you’re inside? Ask me how I come to bring up this 😢
@@GenXGrownUp You can lock a castle's key inside that castle if you release the key at the same moment you're using it to shut the gate. D'oh.
I was looking to see if someone had said the OP, before I posted.
There's a 1/29 chance (3.4%) that the gold key will be located in the gold castle, making it unwinnable.
There's a 1.7% chance that the white, black and/or gold keys are mutually locked in each other's castles, together making it a 5% chance you can't win!
I tried playing repeatedly to see where everything was at the start: outside, black, gold, or white castle. And I encountered both situations (presumably). I never found the black key in the white castle in game 3. Then I read online how the game matrix was set up. Black key is in rooms 1-18, where the first 17 are outside rooms, and number 18 is inside the gold castle. White key can be in rooms 1-22, which does not include inside the white castle. Chalice can be in rooms 19-26 which first 4 are inside black and second 4 are inside white. Gold key can be in any room 1-29 (not the easter egg room, 30). Room 27 is just inside the black castle, and rooms 28-29 are outside, somewhere you never find the black and white keys unless the bat puts them there. You probably noticed that no more than two objects, including enemies, start in the same room.
I think there is some value in the game not being winnable every time. You have to explore to make sure, before giving up. Alternatively, if you can open the gold castle you know you can win.
There is a chance that the gold key could be in the unreachable room in the white castle, while both the bridge and the bat that would help you get it are inside the gold castle, but it's 1/29^3 or 0.000041 or 0.0041%. If instead bat and bridge are in black, while black key is in gold, then it's even lower 25*(1/29)^4=0.000035. And how would you know that the problem isn't the gold key being in the gold castle?
Thanks, Jon for the memories...🙂
Played this a lot and never got anywhere. Love the dragons though. Great video.
Im glad you had a walkthough , i just got the my arcade portable handheld and was stuck in the 2nd level and every time i started the level that bat swiped the yellow key when the gameplay started i was very confused
I admire you for completing it without trapping the bat in the gold castle. That's always the first thing I do 😅
Haha! Yes, many commenters have mentioned trapping the bat. I know the technique & I certainly could've. However, that's kind of an "advanced" strategy that would deprive viewers of learning just how much we hate Knubberub!
I accused my kids at age 2 to 4 as going threw the “Bat” stage. My wife didn’t understand until she played this game.
Now she gets it. 😁
Excellent video! Thank you!
Also, if you do a cartrage fry (wiggle the power cord while on), you can shift the position of the black gates.
It is possible to get to the other side of the gates this way... But if the secret dot isn't present in the room, you go to the opposite gate room instead of the name room.
So the dot does more than just let you phase through the gates.
Edit: Don't do this. Stella can simulate a cartridge fry.
Classic game! Great video! 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇
I love your chats with the bat. 🦇😹😹😹
Dammit, Knubberub! (Yes, that's the bat's name.)
@@GenXGrownUp 🙀🙀🙀
This is awesome! I am also a old schooler genx-er like yourself! I think the Atari box covers were probably the best designed boxes of any console, even to this day. Great art that contrasted the pixelated graphics.
So, as a request, i Was wondering if you could do the three sword quest games, and if you knew how to beat them?
I never ever owned the comics you had to read and only just learned of the hidden messages just a year ago! I know the game is pointless now to win, but it was interesting.
Thanks!! Great stuff.
The SQ games were never my cup of tea, but there have been some requests, so I'll see what I can do in the future. Thanks for watching!
No problem! I can't say they were mine either :) thanks for the response! Looking forward to seeing your next videos!
Absolutely one of my faves!
Loved Adventure. One goofy little glitch I found when I was a kid, at the level select screen, if you hold down on the controller for a couple seconds the square will appear, and you can move around on that screen.
Another glitch (although I don't know if it only works on real hardware)... When you move the chalice into the gold castle, hit the game reset button right after. It turns the victory sound effects into a bizarre, slowed extended finale!
I’d put the magnet right above the gold castle gate. Then while holding the chalice, release it from below and it will drift up to victory. Even better, leave the castle area heading downward as soon as you release the chalice. Head down into the hall below. Wait. Now peek up into the gold castle room then immediately pull back down. If you’re quick enough, you’ll win the game in the hallway area instead of at or in the castle. Or put the bridge in the hallway below, in the middle, head downward and you’ll win from inside the gold castle’s top open rectangular gray area.
@@zabagar Sounds fun!
the bat the bat the goddam bat!!!!!!!!!! still one my most hated enemies still to this day!!!!!!!!!
KNUBBERUB!
Nice walk-thru! I didn't own this game, but got to borrow it for a short time, so I never did conquer this one. Now I'm just too busy playing my favorites.
Insert joke about them being ducks, not dragons, here.
The most creative way I've found to win is to use the magnet to levitate the chalice into the yellow castle.
There was one time I was playing level 3 when the bat had the chalice and flew into the castle gate. The game ended with a win! I would imagine the player would have to be in the castle room in order for this to happen!
@@ChrisJarzynka I think things can leave the open castle when you're not there, but can only go inside if you're on the castle screen.
Adventure…. I cant tell you how many hours i played that game.
That was satisfying.
I originally played this on dos and it was epic to me. This game alone made me want to play RPG'S and adventure games. Thank you Atari and thank you Adventure. Your a key to my heart