According to Neowin , Microsoft has been involved in many different fields since its early days; the company is known to have sold hardware add-in cards for Apple PCs as early as 1980. Not only that, before that time, Microsoft had even taken its first steps into the video game industry.
Microsoft's first game
Accordingly, the software giant once released a PC game called Microsoft Adventure , which was the first game that laid the foundation for later titles such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, Halo, Gears of War , and many others. So what's special about Microsoft Adventure ?
Microsoft Adventure is actually a adaptation of a game that was developed and released for free in the mid-1970s for mainframe computers in universities and research centers. That game was called Colossal Cave Adventure (or simply Adventure ) and was the first game written and released by William Crowther in 1975.
In an interview for the book Genesis II: Creation and Recreation With Computers , Crowther stated that his creation of the game was inspired by his cave exploration expeditions and his experience playing the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons on the computer.
Colossal Cave Adventure is a text-only game where players guide their character through a cave system searching for treasure while fending off attacks from gnomes, and most importantly, surviving. The game is controlled by typing simple commands.
The interface of the game Colossal Cave Adventure
In 1977, another programmer named Don Woods accessed the game's source code and expanded it with more fantasy elements and added a scoring system. Adventure was one of the first true PC adventure games, and many games released later owe it a debt of gratitude.
And the major adaptation of Adventure was Microsoft Adventure , developed by programmer Gordon Letwin. TRS-80.org states that while other programmers tried to refine the original Adventure game for smaller personal computers, Letwin was the first to bring the entire game to the main PC. Unfortunately, when Microsoft Adventure was released in 1979, Microsoft did not acknowledge the contributions of Crowther or Woods to the game.
Although the game was initially released for the TRS-80 Model 1 PC, Microsoft Adventure required 32K of memory and a floppy disk drive, which many PCs at the time couldn't handle. The game was also copy-protected and allowed players to save their progress up to two times per disc. It cost $29.95, a rather expensive price at the time.
Microsoft Adventure was also released for the Apple II in 1979. In 1981, the game received another version, this time for IBM's first PC release. This was the first commercial game ever created for IBM's first personal computer system.
Microsoft Adventure game cartridge for IBM PCs
If you're interested, you can play the IBM version of Microsoft Adventure on the website PCjs.org. This is a chance to learn about the rise of PC gaming and Microsoft's early efforts in software development, even before the advent of MS-DOS or Windows platforms.
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