That’s right, the amazing Zemeckis-movies from the 80s will also be turned into an episodic series, the first which will hit this winter. And while many people’s first reaction to the Jurassic Park news was the expectation that they will be adventure games, something that doesn’t fit the suspense and thrill of the films, nobody can deny that Back to the Future would make great adventure games.

Of the top of my head, you could be making sure Marty’s father dates his mom, chasing Biff and the almanac through multiple time-lines and seeing the changes, Day of the Tentacle-style, and gathering and fitting together parts for the broken DeLorean.

I love Telltale games, and I love the Back to the Future trilogy, so color me pretty excited for this. This also fits perfectly with my Jurassic Park/Back to the Future cross-over fanfic, where Max is the president in one timeline.

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In this three part series we’ll be taking a look at the history of adventure games and possible try to predict a future for them as well.

In our third installment we take a look at the revival of adventure games, their current state and their various spin-off genres.

In the last article we looked at why the adventure game genre took a sudden downfall around the onset of the console era ushered in by the release of Sony’s PlayStation. Full 3D graphics were becoming the norm across all gaming platforms, with a strong focus on fast movement rather than graphical detail, allowing the action game to supplant the adventure game. There was also the matter of gameplay to consider, and most adventure games involved dragging various assorted knick-knacks in between moments of exposition and rubbing them against everything else, hoping the story would continue. The gaming industry itself was evolving as well, Sierra in particular had grown from a small company founded by Ken Williams and his wife Roberta, to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Things looked rather grim for the adventure game in the beginning of the 2000′s. LucasArts’ last adventure game, Escape from Monkey Island, was met with a generally favorable reception, though it did receive some criticism for the difficulty of manouvering the game with keyboard controls rather than a mouse. Following the release of Escape, LucasArts put three more adventure games into development, but all three were later canceled as the company moved on to create and release games based on the Star Wars franchise.

Yet while things did indeed look grim, the adventure game genre did what it could to remain relevant, refusing to die out. The story heavy focus the adventure game lived and breathed on went on living through RPGs, a genre that still holds strong today with a style of storytelling split between two major branches; the WRPG and JRPG. The choice between bad gameplay and a good story or vice versa eventually fell away as limitations became less of an issue for developers. You could have satisfying gameplay and be able to tell a good story at the same time, so adventure games merely evolved, creating new sub genres.

Looking at genres like survival horror, it’s easy to see the underlying heritage of the adventure game; solving puzzles using various objects that also double as keys, not to mention the strict adherence towards telling a story. This is especially evident in the Silent Hill series which uses atmosphere, symbolism and careful exposition to craft their storylines. The less said about Resident Evil, however, the better.

There’s also the action adventure to consider, obviously a subgenre of both action games and adventure games, effectively created by games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. The action adventure genre still holds strong today, mixing together tropes, storytelling and gameplay variations from both genres, almost creating an umbrella term for games that include reflex gameplay (which adventure games don’t have); puzzle solving (which action games don’t have) and the occasional jumping puzzle (which both genres usually don’t have). The same physical skills required in an action game are usually present, but also offers a storyline, numerous characters, an inventory system, dialog and other features of adventure games. Action adventures can also be a lot faster paced than your typical adventure game. It’s not particularly easy to determine when a game stops being an adventure game and becomes an action adventure game. Justadventure.com describes action adventures as “‘…a game that has enough action in it not to be called an Adventure game, but not enough action to be called an Action game.’ Action/Adventures are very hard to define, since they are the gray area between Adventure and Action games. It would be safe to say that if you have a game with 2/3 action and 1/3 puzzle solving, in any form that requires thinking rather than reflexes, you got yourself an Action/Adventure game.”

But even to this very day, adventure games in their purest form remain, albeit not as strongly as they used to. Since its heyday the genre has branched out onto newer platforms. Adventure games on consoles are far from a new thing, as previously mentioned with Broken Sword 1 and 2 on the original Playstation. The Nintendo Wii and DS are arguably tailor made for adventure games, something certain developers have decided to act upon. Capcom’s Ace Attorney series, originally debuting in Japan on the GameBoy Advance, was ported to the DS for a western release. The “visual novel” is a Japanese subgenre of the traditional adventure games, almost universally played from a first-person perspective and driven primarily by dialogue, but features similar point and click mechanics to its originator. The last game in the Ace Attorney series features a more standard adventure game setup with the player controlling an avatar and collecting items to progress the story.

Cing, Inc. another Japanese developer has had successes with adventure games, teaming up with Nintendo in order to be able to fully take advantage of the gameplay options offered by the DS and Wii. In early 2005, the company released Another Code: Two Memories (Trace Memory in the US) for the DS, taking advantage of all of the DS’ capabilities without making it feel tacked on. The game was praised for its creative use of the DS hardware for puzzle solving, graphics and characterisation. Cing followed the moderate success of Another Code with another adventure game for the DS; Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Players took control of Kyle Hyde, a policeman turned salesman, as he’s tasked with finding some lost items at the titular Hotel Dusk. The game featured a unique film-noir art style and plot progression, which garnered a lot of praise from reviewers as well as the game’s layered characters and well-written script. Since then, Another Code gained a sequel and Cing is still hard at work with creating new and exciting titles for Nintendo’s two platforms.

On the western side of the globe, the adventure game is slowly being brought back to the fold, in part thanks to Telltale Games. One of the three cancelled LucasArts adventure games of the 2000′s was a sequel to Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993). Upon the cancellation, a group of LucasArts employees headed by Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander founded Telltale Games. Telltale’s first few games were a poker sim, two adaptations of Jeff Smith’s graphic novel series Bone and a game based on the CSI tv series, but the company soon moved on to pursue episodic gaming with Sam & Max: Season One. Originally released as downloadable episodes for PC, the games spun off to the Wii and Xbox 360. Telltale has since then focused on episodic games, aiming to have a presence on as many platforms as possible, having released games through GameTap, Steam, WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade and their own online store. Apart from the Sam & Max games, Telltale is also responsible for Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People and Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures. The recent revival of the Monkey Island series can also party be attributed to Telltale Games, who recently released the third episode of the Tales of Money Island series.

LucasArts have somewhat returned to adventure games, but Star Wars still remains their bread and butter. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a remake of the original game with updated graphics, music and voice work, and the Wii version of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings contains an unlockable port of the original Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. LucasArts has also begun re-releasing a number of their classic games like Fate of Atlantis and LOOM on Steam. Since then the company has expressed a desire to “revitalize [their] deep portfolio of gaming franchises”. President of LucasArts Darrel Rodriguez said in an interview with GTTV that LucasArts were looking to go back to their roots and be more open to experimentation when it comes to game development. If this new direction turns successful, who knows, we might see some more classic adventure games reskinned and re-released. We might even see some new adventure games.

This concludes our third and final look into the history of adventure games. For all intents and purposes, the genre is far from dead, even though installments seem to be few and far apart. But consider the fact that the young gamers of the 90′s are now growing up, bringing memories of their favourite games with them as they become writers, programmers, developers and producers of video games.

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In this three part series, we’ll be taking a look at the history of the adventure game and possibly try to predict a future for them as well.

In this second instalment we take a look at the decline and near eradication of adventure games

In the last article we examined the factors that helped the adventure games evolve as a genre, a means to tell stories and how they helped tickle the grey areas of the brain. They were once kings, but pride must always come before the fall. Both Sierra and LucasArts were competing for the adventure game throne; Sierra focused on fiendish puzzle designs and franchise installments that constantly pushed graphics and gameplay to new heights while LucasArts took a friendlier approach with humour, slapstick and absolutely no dead-end situations.

Unfortunately, while the adventure games had changed from their humble beginnings as interactive fiction, so too had the industry changed with them. Sierra was founded in 1979 by a couple who sold software out off the trunk of their car, hoping to simply earn some money on their games.

he rapid popularity of adventure games had forced the company to continuously expand its operations by buying up other studios and having their shares go public. on February 22, 1999, a date that would be known as “Black Monday” among Sierra’s employees, the company announced they were going through a major reorganization, which lead to the shutdown of several development studios. About 250 people lost their jobs, among them being Al Lowe (creator of the Leisure Suit Larry series) and Scott Murphy (one of the creators of the Space Quest series).

Al Lowe, in an interview with Edge: “Sierra went from being driven by a couple of gamers with entrepreneurial spirit to one where the attitude was: You tell me how much this is going to sell, and I’ll tell you how much money I’ll give you to develop it.’  Which was the kiss of death for originality.

When Ken and Roberta Williams got bought out, the company had around 1,200 employees. Within five years they closed the doors and soon became little more than a label on a box. It was like one of those old WWII dogfight scenes in which an aeroplane’s wing is shot off and it starts its downwards death spiral with smoke screaming from it. That’s what watching Sierra was like.”

Adventure games weren’t profitable anymore and their US market share began to drastically decline. There have been many fingers pointed at the cause of this, the most common being the onset of the Quake era. Full 3D had kicked in with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and finally Quake. Around this time of 1996 the PlayStation had just recently launched and the general public seemed to favour action games and instant gratification rather than heavy story telling.

Some of the fault could also be placed on the nature of 3D graphics themselves. Most of the 90′s and early 2000′s, 3D graphics were more oriented toward fast movement rather than graphical detail, which is easy to notice in genre defining games such as Quake. Most adventure games of the day did the opposite by using detailed and static imagery. This could have been perceived as technologically regressive by many consumers. LucasArts did attempt to jump into fast and flowing 3D with “Escape from Monkey Island” and “Grim Fandango”, but by that time it was too late. Gamers had moved on, and action games had supplanted the adventure game as the public’s favourite.

Yet there is a third cause many gamers point to as the true cause of the adventure games’ decline; the games themselves. While they were praised for their well written and engaging stories, most adventure games (usually those created by Sierra) employed what has later been referred to as “moon logic” to most of their puzzles, in which players would walk around, collect various items and patiently rub them together in various combinations in order to advance the story.

The worst of such moon logic puzzles has been identified by sites such as GamesRadar and OldManMurray as the “disguise puzzle” from Gabriel Knight 3, in which the protagonist, Gabriel Knight, must disguise himself as another in-game character, Detective Moseley, so he can “borrow” a motorcycle in order to advance the story.

To make an incredibly long solution short, Gabriel uses duct tape, a spray bottle, a black cat and syrup to make a false moustache, a piece of candy and a hotel call button is used to steal a jacket and passport while a hat is readily found in a lost-and-found box. A black marker is used to draw a moustache onto the passport and, voila! Gabriel has disguised himself.

What’s interesting to note is the fact that Moseley is balding, short, fat and doesn’t even have a moustache!

Thus it can be argued that adventure games managed to commit suicide by accident.

Much like with Sonic the Hedgehog the leap into 3D wasn’t easy for adventure games, but that alone can’t be said to be the entire cause of the genre’s decline. Neither can the Quake era or moon logic puzzles, but a combination of the three seems to be a viable solution as any.

As previously stated the industry had changed from the 80′s and was continuously changing, with the final nail in the coffin being the 1998 release of Half-Life, ironically published by Sierra Studios. Gabriel Knight 3 was Sierra’s last foray into the adventure game genre, after which they moved onto bigger and, arguably, better titles, only to become part of Activision Blizzard and a mere shell of its former glory.

At the same time LucasArts discovered the Star Wars franchise was much more profitable than simple adventure games and decided to milk the Star Wars cow for all it was worth.

While the American market moved on to more action packed games, the situation was a bit different in Europe and Japan.

The Dreamcast and PS2 both had memorable adventure titles like Sega’s Shenmue and Konami’s Shadow of Memories, presented in 3D with a third-person. There’s also Hideo Kojima who created the classic adventure games Snatcher and Policenauts before returning to continue the Metal Gear franchise. As a designer who adores storytelling above all else it it’s not surprising he turned to the adventure game for a while.

The PlayStation also helped introduce new players to the Broken Sword series in Europe, with the first two games being released on the console. Charles Cecil, designer of Broken Sword, has since then declared the genre dead, but that didn’t stop his company creating both a third and fourth entry to the series, the last being released in 2006.

An honourable mention must be given to FunCom’s The Longest Journey, considered by many to be the final true adventure game ever to be released. The game was first published in Norway in 1999 (developer FunCom is a Norwegian company), but was later localised and released in France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Russia and the US.

The Longest Journey told the story of April Ryan, an 18-year-old art student living in the world of Stark. April learns the world was once split into two dimensions; Arcadia, a world of magic, and Stark, a world of science and technology, and that the border that keeps the two apart is slowly failing. Chaos ensues, April’s power as a Shifter is awakened and she is tasked to restore the Balance between the dimensions.

While some of the puzzles were considered to be a bit too obscure, the game garnered a lot of praise and won the Adventure Game of the Year award by GameSpot and IGN. By mid-2002, the game had sold 450,000 copies and remains a perfect example of the right game released at the wrong time.

This concludes our second look into the history of the adventure game. Next time we’ll be taking a look at what became of adventure games after their decline in popularity, as genres begin to interbreed and storytelling and gameplay go hand in hand.

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LucasArts and Sierra On-Line set the standard for quality adventure games, with the Monkey Island series, the Gabriel Knight trilogy, Police Quest and last, but not least, Grim Fandango. But whatever happened to them? LucasArts dropped Adventure games in favour of milking the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, while Sierra simply stopped producing them after Gabriel Knight 3.

In recent years the Nintendo DS has sparked a new interest in adventure game content, with games like Trace Memory, Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk. The Wiimote is also well suited for the genre, which was proven by 2007′s Zack and Wiki, but it seems developers are unwilling to take a stab at completely reviving the genre.

- Why were adventure games suddenly given up on?
- Would it be possible to completely bring them back, or have they been supplanted by other genres, like MMOs and RPGs?

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