Once upon a time, adventure games were the proverbial kings of PC gaming, entertaining gamers everywhere with a heavy focus on well-written stories and strong, realistic characters. Adventure games had their best run during the late 80’s and early 90’s, before suddenly dying out. So what happened to the adventure games, and where are they now?

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

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Once upon a time, adventure games were the proverbial kings of PC gaming, entertaining gamers everywhere with a heavy focus on well-written stories and strong, realistic characters. Adventure games had their best run during the late 80’s and early 90’s, before suddenly dying out.

So what happened to the adventure games, and where are they now?

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. We begin, obviously, with the early development and subsequent rise of adventure games.

THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN...

Almost every kind of fiction is based off of something else, and the adventure games were no different. In the mid 70’s, before gaming was an actual term and computer hardware would cover an entire room, the first seeds of the adventure game genre were sown by way of Interactive Fiction.

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Fans of sexual puns and double entendres rejoice, because Larry Lovage, Larry Laffer’s nephew, is returning in yet another game of strange and humourous adventuring.

Game studio Codemasters have picked up the license to “Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust”, which is to be released during spring of 2009 according to the game’s official website.
“Box Office Bust” was originally going to be released by Vivendi, but was dropped during the merger with Activision Blizzard, July 2008.

Larry Lovage travels to Hollywood to help his uncle run a film studio, which should lay ground for a gallery of celebrities never seen in a game.

Larry will once again be a mixture of exploration, platforming, racing and puzzle solving. In addition the game will be sporting its own director mode where the player can make their own movie about Larry Lovage. More details have yet to be revealed.

“Box Office Bust” will release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Long ago (’bout 10 to 20 years) there lived adventure games, above all else known for their strong narratives and thoughtful puzzles.

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?