Adventure International

Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a microcomputer system. The adventure game concept originally came from Colossal Cave Adventure which ran strictly on large mainframe systems at the time.

This article is about the American company. For the British software distributor using the same brand, see Adventure Soft.
Adventure International
IndustryComputer game publishing
FateBankrupt
Founded1979[1]
Defunct1986[2]
HeadquartersLongwood, Florida, United States
Key people
Scott Adams, Alexis Adams
ProductsAdventureland
ParentScott Adams, Inc.
SubsidiariesAdventure Soft UK

History

After the success of Adams' first text adventure, Adventureland, other games followed rapidly, with Adventure International (or "AI") releasing about two games a year. Initially the games were drawn from the founders' imaginations, with themes ranging from fantasy to horror and sometimes science fiction. Some of the later games were written by Scott Adams with other collaborators.

In 1980, five of the company's games were ported to the Commodore VIC-20. Developer Neil Harris recalled: "[O]ur sales guys could not figure out what they were gonna do with them. 'What are these games? It's all words on the screen! There's no graphics! What kind of a video game doesn't have video?' [laughs] And they became the best-selling cartridges for the VIC-20, period."[3]

By 1983 the company was employing 40 people and was based in Longwood, Florida.[4]

Fourteen games later, Adventure International began to release games drawn from film and fiction. The Buckaroo Banzai game was based on the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984). Other games came from Marvel Comics - Adventure International released three Questprobe games based on the Marvel characters The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, The Human Torch and the Thing.

In 1982, Adventure International began releasing Scott Adams Graphic Adventures for computers like the Apple II, while continuing to sell text-only games for less powerful computers such as the VIC-20 and TI 99/4A.[5] Graphic adventures like The Hobbit increased expectations of such games, however, and Adventure International's graphic adventures were inferior to others resulting in a rapid loss of market share. At its peak in late 1983/early 1984, Adventure International employed approximately 50 staff and published titles from over 300 independent programmer/authors.

Adventure International was based in the Sabal Point subdivision of Longwood - at 155 Sabal Palm Drive, Longwood, Florida near the east side of Sabal Point Elementary School. The company also had a retail store located in Sweetwater Oaks at 966 Fox Valley Drive, Longwood.

Adventure International went bankrupt in 1986. The copyrights for its games reverted to the bank and eventually back to Scott Adams who released them as shareware.

In Europe the "Adventure International" name was a trading name of Adventure Soft and other games were released under the name that were not from Adventure International in the US.

Games

Scott Adams Adventure games
Main article: List of Scott Adams Adventure video games

Scott Adams's original twelve adventure games were:[6]

The games were developed using an in-house adventure editor. The original interpreter was a two-word command interpreter running on a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, with later ports to many platforms. The source code for Adventureland was published in SoftSide magazine in 1980[7] and the source code for Pirate Adventure was printed in the December 1980 issue of BYTE,[8] with an addendum in April 1981.[9] This enabled others to discover how the engine worked and the database format was subsequently used in other interpreters such as Brian Howarth's Mysterious Adventures series.[10] The later graphics versions (SAGA) featured graphics drawn on an Apple II, mostly by in-house artist Kem McNair.

Other games

References
  1. Ryan, Marie-Laure; Emerson, Lori; Robertson, Benjamin J. (15 April 2014). The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media. JHU Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-4214-1223-8.
  2. Smart, Tim (27 January 1986). "Blue Skies Turn Black At Scott Adams Inc. Debts Force Company Into Bankruptcy Court". The Orlando Sentinel. 110 (27). Orlando, Florida: Sentinel Communications Company. p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. Herzog, Marty (January 1988). "Neil Harris". Comics Interview (54). Fictioneer Books. p. 47.
  4. https://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n4/scottadams.html
  5. Maher, Jimmy (2012-08-28). "SAGA". The Digital Antiquarian. Archived from the original on 11 July 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
  6. Griffin, Brad (March–April 1983). "Scott Adams Adventures 1–12". ANALOG Computing (10). Archived from the original on 2016-03-03.
  7. Adams, Scott (July 1980). "Adventureland". SoftSide. p. 36. Archived from the original on 28 March 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
  8. Adams, Scott (December 1980). "Pirate's Adventure". BYTE. p. 192. Archived from the original on 31 March 2015. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  9. "Adventurous Bugs". BYTE. April 1981. p. 302. Archived from the original on 14 April 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2013.
  10. Graham, Nelson (2001). The Inform Designer's Manual (PDF). Dan Sanderson. p. 358. ISBN 0-9713119-0-0. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-11-07.
  11. "Airline". Atari Mania.
  12. "Saigon: The Final Days". Atari Mania.
  13. "Triad". Atari Mania.
  14. "Tutti Frutti". Atari Mania.
  15. "AREX". Atari Mania.
  16. "Preppie! II". Atari Mania.
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