Adventure International

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Adventure International was a video game publishing company that existed from 1978 until 1985, 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.

History

After the success of their first game Adventureland, 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. Adventure International's games became known for quality, with a reputation only exceeded in the field at the time by Infocom.

Fourteen games later, Adventure International began to release games drawn from film and fiction. Adventure International released three Questprobe games based on the Marvel characters: The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Torch and the Thing (Not known to be released on the Dragon).

By the end of 1982, game tastes were changing. The traditional text-based adventure game market had moved to graphical based adventures. Games like The Hobbit had increased expectations of such games, and although Adventure International games included graphics of a sort, they were significantly inferior to contemporary offerings at the time and the company was rapidly losing market share. At its peak in late 1983 to early 1984 Adventure International employed approximately 50 individuals, and published titles from over 300 independent programmer/authors.

Adventure International went bankrupt in 1985. The copyrights for its games reverted to the bank and eventually back to Scott Adams who released them as shareware.

Games

Adventureland

Ghost Town

Golden Voyage

Mystery Funhouse

Pirate Adventure

Pyramid of Doom

Questprobe Featuring Spiderman

Questprobe Featuring the Hulk

Return to Pirates Island

Savage Island Part 1

Savage Island Part 2

Secret Mission

Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle

Strange Odyssey

The Count

Voodoo Castle