He first commercial PC game of history is called Microsoft Adventureand was created by Microsoft in 1981 for him he IBM PCthe first PC compatible of history.
Microsoft Adventure It is an almost forgotten video game today, perhaps because it is an uncredited adaptation of one of the first games in history, colossal cave.
He has the merit of being first commercial PC gameand demonstrates the extent to which Microsoft was already committed to video games, almost from its founding.
The story of Microsoft Adventure, the first PC game
The first computers in history could not generate graphics, so the first games were text adventurea kind of interactive books that told you a story, and you explored their scenarios typing commands like “go north” or “climb stairs”. You solved puzzles with orders like “take hammer” and “use hammer with window”, to break the glass and sneak into the house, for example.
One of the first games in history is Colossal Cave Adventurea text adventure created by Will Crowther in 1975, for the computer PDP-10. It was a gigantic computer that was used in universities and research centers.
At that time it was unthinkable to sell a game because nobody had a computer at home, so Will Crowther offered it for free and university students copied it, passing from university to university.
But a few years later, the first home computers began to appear. Microsoft saw the business, and commissioned the programmer Gordon Letwin, of Softwin Associates, a version of Colossal Cave with some additions, which he called Microsoft Adventure:
Microsoft Adventure was released for computers TSR-80 and Apple II in 1979, two of the first home computers. In 1981taking advantage of the launch of the first compatible PC, the IBM PC, became the first commercial PC game of history.
Microsoft Adventure accepted two-word commands, and offered 130 rooms to explore, 15 treasures, 40 manipulatives, and 12 puzzles to solve.
The objective of the game was explore a dangerous cave with your own dragonmonsters and other dangers, and get as many treasures as possible.
As Neowin tells it, Microsoft Adventure was sold in a 5 1/4 inch floppy diskwhich already included copy protection:
It needed 32 KB of memory to work, and allowed up to two games to be recorded on the floppy disk itself.
If you want, you can play microsoft adventure for free in the browser, on this website. A version with Colossal Cave graphics has also recently been released on Steam.
Today it is a game that is practically impossible to find for sale in its original version, and it is highly coveted. Microsoft Adventure was the first commercial PC gamereleased by Microsoft for different machines, in 1979. Then came Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, the Xbox console, etc. But that is another story…