What introduced you to adventure gaming?

I thought it might be interesting to see how everyone got started in adventure gaming. For this thread, I will define that broad enough to also cover text adventures, it that’s where you got started.

For me, it all started with some TV coverage of the first Discworld game. I remember it immediately captivating me for the few minutes it was on screen, and my inner voice going “I must have this”. I had no clue what an adventure game was (I would have probably described a platformer or something like Zelda at that point), I had no idea how that game would play, having zero familiarity with similar games. But the colourful and humorous graphics immediately drew me in.

As a matter of fact, I have that news coverage to thank for introducing me to 2 wonderful pastimes: Point n’ Click adventures, and through it, the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett.

So far for my “origin story”. What’s yours?

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For me, it was an advertisement in the magazine Micromanía ( Spain), in 1990, more or less. The game was Maniac Mansion. I had never played a graphic adventure, but then I realized that it was the kind of game I wanted to play.

And I have not stopped playing them ever since …

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Hah! Right! Micromanía. I remember that. Awesome magazine back in the 90’s. I would buy it every year when we went on holiday to our little holiday home in Cataluña. Seeing how we always went for 5 weeks, I was lucky enough that I could always get at least 2 editions. :wink:

Does it still exist? And have the same quality as back then?

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I have absolutely no memory of how the whole thing happened.

When I had the C64, I remember developing a textual adventure game but I don’t remember playing graphical adventure games, unless you consider Pyjamarama an adventure game:

image

My first memory about classic PnC adventure games goes back to when I purchased an Amiga 500 in 1990 and played “The Secret of Monkey Island”.

Unfortunately I don’t remember how I discovered the game but it’s very likely that a cousin of mine introduced it to me. It’s also possible that I saw the game advertised or reviewed in a magazine.

Piracy.
We shared the games in school yard, and once I played Zak McKracken, I was hooked. I have bought that game four times since (and all other Lucas titles) so consider it a good viral marketing.

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I can’t remember. My father introduced me to games, but I don’t have the exact memory of my first adventure game. In the building where I grew up there were two other families with kids who were into videogames, and I remember playing Monkey Island in those homes, but… no idea on the first time, how and where.

But I remember a time my father was driving, I was on the backseat, and he said “a colleague of mine gave me a floppy with a new game, we can try it later. There’s prince written on the label, I don’t know what it might be”. It was Prince of Persia :slight_smile:

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Yep, the magazine is still alive., but I stopped buying it in 1995. I have a lot in home:

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Heh, love it how we can openly discuss our former piracy, even of titles developed by the fine gents providing this forum. On other forums you’d be booed out of the room (or your posts deleted and your account perhaps even cancelled) for even bringing the topic up, let alone discussing its positive aspects.

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Brrrrr, you finally make me discover that one of the first games I played on C64 was a Pyjamarama clone, distributed on cassette with magazines, and called if I remember well with the terrible name of “Oblivion”! I still remember that horrible staircase and the nightmare settings… It was awful and scared me as a child… I watched a playtrough video of Pyjamarama and eventually got how gameplay worked… it would take a month only to understand game logic… brrr. Happy to give a name to that nightmare, anyway. (Sorry for the devs, but that game gave me nightmares as a child…).

Moving to adventure games, in 1994 when my father bought me a second hand A500, The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the most known games on that computer yet, and it was included in the package with the A500, pirated by the first owner. He doesn’t know, but I bought with TWP a guilt absolution that works for both of us! (He was a very, very, VERY guilty guy anyway…)

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Well, I can discuss that topic now that they formally absolved me for pirating “The Secret of Monkey Island” when I was a kid.

Actually, getting that formal absolution was the main reason I backed Thimbleweed Park.

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Piracy, too.
Maniac Mansion was one of the many games I had to play.
Initially, it didn’t interest me. I couldn’t find a way to open the front door. I gave up.

Months later, I played it again. Suddenly, I discovered the key under the doormat. Then I opened the front door… and since then, my passion for adventure games grew up more and more!

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I remember watching the demo for Full Throttle in a computer fair on my hometown here in Brazil back in the 90’s.
But I really played when I saw the cover for The Curse of Monkey Island in a computer shop, years later. The cover is so cool, and I love pirates and the Lucasarts logo conviced me to buy it.
I still have the game.

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Brasoft brought a lot of Lucasarts games to Brazil in cool packages, easy to install menus, translations and even good dubbing. All with non expensive prices.
The brazilian dubbing on Grim Fandango is amazing! It got praise from Tim Schaffer and Peter McConnell recently on Twitter.

But did he say “ego te absolvo” while dressed like this?

gilbert-pope

Otherwise it has no value. You’ve been fooled, man, sorry to tell you this.

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Holy threeheaded monkey! That´s another thing I cannot unsee!

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Oh yes, I forgot. That happens later in the ceremony:

gilbert-pope-2

And if it does not happen, again, the absolution is null and void.

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Yes. But, more importantly, I got a formal certificate.

Gwwaaarhghg, it haunts the nightmares of people who dare question TwP´s Box Art!

A friend of mine invited me at his place. "I’ll show you this new game about pirates… it’s beautiful because it’s strange: there are no levels, there is no time, and you can’t die. You can go everywhere you want and do whatever you want. You can even insult people everywhere ".

That’s it.

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Sounds like real life, actually. Except the “you can´t die” part obviously.

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