10 Groundbreaking Video Games That Changed Everything

The earliest text adventure games are mostly forgotten, the games themselves undocumented. Colossal Cave Adventure – the earliest recorded example of the genre – is an exception, and is considered a precursor to the classic adventure games such as Space Quest and Monkey Island.

The game was released in 1976 on PDP-10, and involves exploring a mysterious cave rumoured to contain buried treasure, the objective being to accumulate as much wealth as possible.

Interactive fiction, the visuals are minimalist, and gameplay involves typing in commands such as “move”, “look” and “take”, collecting items and advancing through the dungeon. Remarkably, the game is considered the first of its kind, pioneering aspects of three separate genres, including adventure games, roguelikes and role-playing games, which is miraculous.

In 1979, the game was recreated graphically on Atari 2600, and that particular version of the game is considered the first example of the action-adventure genre, meaning somehow, Colossal Cave Adventure singlehandedly spawned two completely distinct genres, traditional adventures games and action-adventures games.