In an arcade adventure you explore with a joystick. There is a large map to find your way around, objects to collect and puzzles that need the right object in the right place, as in an adventure game, but nothing is typed. You run, jump, dodge and fight in real time, and a mistake with the controls can end the game as surely as a wrong decision. In 1984 CRASH looked back on Ultimate’s Atic Atac and said it had “pointed the way to arcade/adventures”, and that it “suggested that arcade players didn’t just want mindless zap games”. For the rest of the decade the British computer magazines used the term for some of their most admired games.
Fast facts
- What you do: explore a map of connected rooms or landscapes, collect objects and use them to get further, in real time.
- Controls: joystick or keys, not typed commands.
- Early landmarks: Atic Atac (1983), Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf (1984), Knight Lore (1984).
- Heartland: British home computers, above all the ZX Spectrum.
- Recognition: CRASH‘s readers’ awards had a category for it; Head Over Heels won it for 1987.
Where the name came from
The phrase was in use before the games that defined it. In 1982 American adverts for Moonbase Io promised “three exciting arcade adventures in one exciting game”, using it loosely for any action game with a story. In February 1983 a small British publisher, Newsoft, advertised The Great Western in Sinclair User as an “Arcade Adventure in the Wild West”: “Shoot the Moose, hunt the gold or fight the Indians. You have to be fast to survive the journey.”
The games that gave the term its British meaning arrived at the end of 1983 and during 1984. Atic Atac put the player in a haunted castle, seen from above, room by room, with a key in three pieces to find. Jet Set Willy let Willy wander freely through a mansion of sixty rooms. Personal Computer Games called it “the first game which combines the zany action of the platform games with the complexity and intrigue of an adventure”, and CRASH saw that it was “much more of an adventure in which the player can move freely between the linking rooms”. Sabre Wulf sent Sabreman through a 256-screen jungle for the pieces of an amulet.
How the games worked
Most arcade adventures shared a few habits:
- A map to learn. The world was usually a set of connected screens, flipped one at a time, though some scrolled. Players drew their own maps, and magazines printed them.
- Objects as keys. Something found in one place opened the way somewhere else. Many games limited how much the hero could carry: Gargoyle’s Cuchulainn could hold four objects at once, so the player had to plan what to take.
- Hazards more than enemies. Monsters were often obstacles to avoid rather than opponents to beat. In Tir Na Nog none of Cuchulainn’s enemies could be killed, only driven off for a short time.
- Little explanation. Ultimate’s instructions were famously brief. CRASH reviewed Sabre Wulf and declined to give it a percentage: “Let’s just say ‘unrateable!’ and leave it.”
Two ways of doing it
Ultimate made the fast, wordless kind. After Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf came Knight Lore in November 1984, which drew each room of a castle as a solid-looking scene that Sabreman could walk behind, over and through. Sinclair Programs gave it 99% and CRASH 94%. By 1988 CRASH could say that Knight Lore had “brought about a new genre, the forced-perspective (or isometric) 3-D arcade adventure”. Other programmers took up the view: Gargoyle’s Sweevo’s World, which CRASH later called the precursor of “a genre which would reach fulfilment in Head Over Heels”, and Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond’s Batman and Head Over Heels. The isometric view was a way of drawing the game, not the genre itself: many arcade adventures used none.
Gargoyle Games made a slower, more literary kind. In Tir Na Nog (1984) and Dun Darach (1985) a large, realistically animated Cuchulainn walked through a scrolling world from Irish myth, trading, talking and solving puzzles built on Gargoyle’s jokes and clues. Greg Follis told CRASH he wanted stories that seemed “the tip of the iceberg”. CRASH scored the two games 92% and 97%. Gargoyle’s Heavy on the Magick (1986) pushed the mix further towards the adventure game: its sorcerer was animated on screen, but the player gave him orders in a terse typed language, and CRASH reviewed it in its Adventure Trail pages.
The two kinds found different audiences. Atic Atac was second in CRASH‘s first readers’ chart, and CRASH reported in 1988 that Sabre Wulf had sold more than 350,000 copies on the Spectrum. Gargoyle’s games were more at home in CRASH‘s readers’ Adventure chart, which Heavy on the Magick topped for ten months out of twelve from September 1986, while in the Hotline for all games it peaked at 13. Both charts counted readers’ votes, not sales (see Reading the charts).
The later years
Head Over Heels (1987) took 97% in CRASH, and its readers voted it the best arcade adventure of 1987 with 26% of the vote. One reviewer called it “the cutest arcade adventure yet”. The term stayed useful as the machines changed. CRASH called Ocean’s Batman: The Caped Crusader “a finely-honed arcade adventure” in January 1989, and in 1991 Amiga Format used it for Prince of Persia and for the Amiga version of Exile.
Sources
- Electronic Games, October 1982: Moonbase Io advert (“three exciting arcade adventures in one exciting game”).
- Sinclair User issue 11, February 1983: Newsoft Products advert (The Great Western, “Arcade Adventure in the Wild West”).
- CRASH issue 6, July 1984, p. 62: Sabre Wulf review (“unrateable”).
- CRASH issue 12, January 1985: p. 10, Lloyd Mangram’s review of 1984 (Atic Atac “pointed the way to arcade/adventures”); pp. 16–17, Knight Lore review (94%).
- Sinclair Programs, January 1985: Knight Lore review (99%).
- CRASH issue 11, December 1984: Tir Na Nog review (92%). CRASH issue 18, July 1985: Dun Darach review (97%).
- CRASH issue 24, Christmas Special 1985: “Going Ga-Gargoyle” (Greg Follis on the stories).
- CRASH issue 29, June 1986, pp. 87–88: Heavy on the Magick, Adventure Trail.
- CRASH issue 39, April 1987, pp. 20–21: Head Over Heels review (97%).
- CRASH issue 48, January 1988: “The CRASH History” (Sweevo’s World and Head Over Heels).
- CRASH issue 51, April 1988, pp. 35–38: Ultimate feature (Knight Lore and the isometric arcade adventure; Sabre Wulf’s sales).
- CRASH issue 60, January 1989: Batman: The Caped Crusader review.
- Sinclair User issue 73, April 1988: the Rebound re-release of Gargoyle’s adventures (Cuchulainn’s four objects; enemies that cannot be killed).
- Amiga Format issue 20, March 1991 (Prince of Persia), and issue 23, June 1991 (Exile).
- Charts, awards and further reviews as cited in the Atic Atac, Jet Set Willy, Head Over Heels and Heavy on the Magick entries.