Adventure 2600 Reboot: New Adventure game for the PC!

[Zap!]

Do you guys remember Adventure for the Atari 2600? No, you don't, because the game was released in 1979. My mom was 21 years old at the time and, for all intents and purposes, she probably rode a pterodactyl to work.

For those of you too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia, Adventure's premise involves questing through an overworld in search of a golden chalice and bringing it back to your home castle. That seems simple enough, but a giant-assed bat randomly steals and drops items -- keys, swords, and f*cking dragons -- which complicates the whole affair. In fact, the large overworld, complex mazes, and the Bat's erratic behavior were supposed to be more than the Atari could handle, but creator Warren Robinett managed to fit it all in. He also included the very first Easter Egg in games history, which reads, appropriately, "created by Warren Robinett."

Thankfully for us modern philistines, a team of Penny Arcade forum members have created an unauthorized remake called Adventure 2600 Reboot. It includes new 16-bit graphics, actual music (the original score was just bleeps and bloops), a more user-friendly interface, and a few gameplay tweaks, the most important of which regards the Bat's behavior.

The project took about seven months of work, according to a GameSetWatch interview with William Stiernberg, who coded and designed Reboot. The interview is pretty interesting, and Stienberg talks about a lot of the design choices the team had to make. You can find more information about Adventure 2600 Reboot, the team that made it, and how to download it here.

Did I mention that the original has awesome box art (especially compared to its prosaic title)? Well, it does. Hit the jump to see a gameplay video.

http://www.destructoid.com/adventure-26 ... 0480.phtml

[Rob]

Sounds like it defeats the purpose of liking the original- appreciation for all of its primitive charm.

I like the original, but honestly I have no desire to play this redux.

[Darryl B.]

I can't blame you--it's strange how they managed to screw this up.

Because the thing is, everything is as is, they left all the paths to the catacombs and all intact. The castles look cool, especially the white one; wow! Snow and ice on it. The labyrinth is the same.

But DAAAAAMN...when they said they changed the bat's behavior, they weren't kidding!

They made it WORSE.

Damn thing steals crap left and right. And it's not like you're in the labyrinth with the black key, it makes a beeline for it, and you can hold onto him and unlock the castle anyway, he ALWAYS gets away. Sure, sometimes he broke free in the original, but he always gets away this time. That's not right.

Also not right is him being in the catacombs, you go into the white castle, and HE'S IN THERE. Big load of shit! The only time he goes into a castle is if you take him there, he flies into the gate, or you unlock a castle and he's in there; now he gets into the castles all the time (somehow). I had to backtrack left and right who knows how many freakin' times to unlock the Gold castle because he kept on taking stuff over and over again during a game, it took forever. In the original, you got much more of a chance, not but here.

I'll give it another go later on tonight, since I want to see what the unlockable stuff is. I don't see how the hell I'll be able to get the dot and see what the secret is, because of the damn bat. I give this a 5 out of 10, it's too hard and infuriating.

Oh, and make sure you check off "classic bridge", since it's screwy how it works if you don't do that.

The only good one to play so far is the first game, that's it. Screw the ones with the bat, but I liked #3 on the original. So that sucks.

[Darryl B.]

Ok. This just gets worse.

First off, I got the dot and all...only took me about FORTY MINUTES to do. Things have to go PERFECTLY...killing the dragons is one thing (oh, and they don't die if they just run into the sword, you have to be holding the damn thing...sheesh). They can't be blocking a passage or else you're screwed, no two items and you can pass thing. You can't get stuck inside a wall, have an object that you need like a quarter inch out of reach (/in a wall) or you're screwed too.

Anyway, for those who don't want to hear about the dot and want to figure it out themselves, skip the next paragraph:


**SPOILER**

You don't need two objects to pass through the wall, just carry the dot with you. It's kinda neat, actually, saying original game by Warren, new version by blah blah...but there's an 8 bit drawing of many game consoles in the room, like the SNES, Genesis, XBox, etc. Pretty neat. Touch the 2600 one and it asks you if you want to enable "duck mode"; heh (reverting the dragons to how they originally looked, of course). Do so, it's one of the Bonuses you can unlock.

**END OF SPOILER**

Ok, I need to know how to do the other crap, there's like two or three more adventures or something. Can't figure them out.

Here's a hint: beating game 1 on hard isn't it. You know the part in the white castle where you use the bridge, enter the chamber, go right, down, etc., and down another screen where it looks like there's an opening there at the bottom, but you can't go any further even when you enter it in the original? That doesn't do anything, even with the dot. The wall by the white castle won't disappear with the dot either, unlike some secret (don't recall what it was now, just that he did one) that Nukey Shay on Atari Age did a while back with an Adventure hack he did. Doesn't seem to be the two (usually empty) rooms at the right side of the catacombs either. Tried some stuff in the black castle to zilch too. Think it has something to do with the bridge, but once I spent all this time on it and all the god damn bat swiped it as I was trying out what I thought to be a secret and I got stuck in the wall. Son of a bitch. Will try more tomorrow night.

If anyone can find any of the other stuff out, I'd appreciate it, although I don't know if this is worth it. Too damn infuriating.

[Rob]

Good write up, Darryl.

[Darryl B.]

Heh, thanks. All I did was vent though

Ok, found out some more stuff...again, skip the next few paragraphs if you want to figure this out on your own:

**SPOILERS**

I had been trying several things in order to figure out the other unlockable stuff and was running out of ideas. So, I finally beat game 3 on all levels (easy through expert), which that unlocked "Classic Q1"...uh, the same game with regular 2600 Adventure graphics. Big whup!

So, looks like I have to beat game 2 to get "2.5" unlocked on every level...well, for some reason I haven't beaten it on every level yet (got three out of four), when 2.5 became unlocked.

Well, it seems to be the exact same game as game 3...in other words, random placement of objects. WTF? Unless there's something new with the dot. Unsure. I'll see about it later. Seems to be a waste of time.

**END OF SPOILERS**

So far this has been a maddeningly, disappointing experience in all. Ok, so it's free, but they didn't have to make it so damn infuriating though, with the bat's new horrendously annoying behavior.

BTW, for those who have no plans in trying this out (I don't blame you, due to how horrible the bat is now), you can at least check out a couple of pictures here, just click on 'em to enlarge. The Ice (re: White) Castle looks really cool! (Actually all of them do now.)

[Darryl B.]

Wow. What an utter piece of time wasting garbage THIS has been.

No spoilers this time, this isn't worth wasting your time unlocking any of the secrets at all, really, just seeing the new room with the dot, that's it, in my opinion. And that can be difficult enough with the horrendous bat as it is.

So, I beat Quest 2.5 with every level so I could unlock the "H Quest"...whatever that means.

I guess H means "hell".

IT'S JUST THE EXACT SAME EFFING GAME ALL OVER AGAIN...except for (as far as I can tell):

*Rhindle and Grundle (or whatever the geen dragon's name is) hang out in the labyrinth guarding the bridge, for some reason.

*The bat seems to spend most of his time flying around the Gold Castle...for some reason.

*Your sword's locked up in the Ice Castle.

That's IT? No new castle? I want a blue or purple castle, dammit! I had to keep on starting games over because I kept on getting screwed, and I'm pretty sure the thing about the 2/3 of the dragons in the labyrinth and the sword in the Ice Castle is all there is to it.

Wow. Infuriating waste of time. Exact same ending (oh yeah, it's a neat eight bit ending, btw) as all the other games. How come nothing new? I hardly know anything about programming, but I assume it would take a while to change around a level/make new maps for a new kingdom or two. Hey, why not just add a freaking teleport that will just TAKE you to a new place? How hard could that be?

You're just better off playing some of the Adventure hacks on Atari Age, or Adventure 2 for the 5200. At least some of those have NEW stuff!

Oh, and I take back my 5 rating...this is only worth a 4, if you ask me. And that's sad, considering it's only because of how infuriating the bat is now...and no new stuff to speak of, barely (not counting new graphics). Bleah!

BOO!