Let’s talk about a brutal game that still holds up!
If asked what Atari 2600 games still held up in 2025, before about a half-hour ago, my answers would have been : Warlords. Kaboom! River Raid. Pitfall/Pitfall 2, Yars’ Revenge… the usual. I popped Adventure in, and within minutes I had broken my joystick.
There’s three difficulty settings, and at first I was just dorking around on the first/easiest one. I only saw one yellow dragon. I was able to scoot around the maze, see some different like the black key and bridge and basically do a little sight-seeing. I had a memory of the “real” or full game being on the third version of the game. I wanted to try that. The “Game Select” button on the 2600 wasn’t working at first, and I wondered if it was broken, but it seemed to work after I died on the first version. So who knows or remembers. I dialed up version “3” and …
I saw the bridge stuck right in the middle of the yellow castle. Just plopped right into/onto another object. I could not even get my camera out from its bag before the red dragon had burst into the room WATCH OUT THROWIN’ ELBOWS and eaten me. By the time I snapped my first picture, the yellow dragon had also arrived and eaten me while I was still in the red dragon’s stomach! Good Christ, Warren. I restarted on version 3 and observed that, in simply resetting the game, all the items were exactly as I left them. I began, again, in front of the yellow castle, which was not a good starting position because two dragons were there, now with empty bellies. I had to outmaneuver them, which took a couple of resets and in my haste to try to dodge the dragons, I broke my joystick. If you break a controller playing a game, you have to say that it’s good. It currently does not let me move “down.” I really wasn’t looking to do a hardware investigation when I started this little project. Luckily, there are, ah, other 2600-compatible joysticks in this house/proxy warehouse and I was able to more gently get my dot guy adventurer around.
Eventually I got dragons Yorgle and Rhindle away from Adventure’s spawn point and I was able to make a little progress. I had no memory of the game reset button just essentially teleporting you back to the same starting point, leaving everything else where you left it. I was able to find the sword, which the magnet had attracted, and I pulled it free. I ran back to skewer some dragons and was greeted by the fact that in version 3 they RUN FROM THE SWORD. What a bunch of pussies! This adds brilliant strategy, natch, because it’s no longer a manner of dealing death and not having to worry about your own death once the dragons were easily killed. With them running from the sword, it now forces the player to make a decision if they want to grab the one item they are allowed to take at a time to open a drawbridge and so forth and lose the protection the sword provides. The lack of a real inventory leads to interesting decisions, one of the most important aspects of rating a game.
Adventure, on its most chaotic version, still holds up. I needed skill (evading the chomping dragons and trying to stab them) and strategy (which items to take where, what order to do when) to make any progress.
… Memories are ethereal, temporary, fragile. Illusional. One of the reasons I am on this project is to remember my mother and father and the happy home I grew up in with my brother. So, I have a memory, but it is just that – fragile. I remember my Dad buying Adventure in its boxed and cartridge form while we were all out for some other purpose. Perhaps we had to go to Sears. I remember a brochure that had blurbs on new games. I specifically remember the brochure stating that if you struggled, you could “win [Adventure] with a press of the button.” For some reason, that pseudo-phrase has stuck with me. As an adult, I think back to the moment of reading this in the car 40-ish(?) years ago on the way home, game safely with us, anticipating being able to actually win this game at any time. I had been getting my ass kicked by video games my entire life. The thought of winning one was appealing. But I don’t remember if this really happened or what the brochure would have been. (You cannot win Adventure, by the way, by pressing a single freaking button.)