Asio City

A Twisty Row of Games All Alike - 18 May 2012 22:57

So far this blog's been quite heavy content wise, maybe you lot out there like that (let me know), but I will be easing off a little until this brisk tour hits on another meaty subject. I can already see the obvious next ports of call. So I'm just going to run down some of the ways that Adventure has spread and expanded over the years. Crowther and Woods never defended their copyright of the game, and actively encouraged it to be freely distributed and altered by others. A fairly common attitude of the old hacker community and one that has persisted with the advent of Creative Commons Licenses. (read more...)

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The Evolution of Adventure: Use ADVENT - 14 May 2012 22:46

If this were a review of Adventure I might describe it as difficult and frustrating but surprisingly more-ish. It probably appeals to the sort of person who gravitates to the puzzle page in the newspaper. Someone with a curious mind and likes to explore. When faced with an introduction only five lines long and a blank cursor and keyboard - What do you do? There's a very slick online version here to have a go at. Check it out if you've never tried before. Meanwhile I'll put some thoughts down. (read more...)

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The Evolution of Adventure: Make Game - 10 May 2012 18:05

In the early 1970s William Crowther worked for the high-tech R&D company BBN Technologies as part of a team developing the ARPAnet; a computer network predecessor to the Internet. Crowther has never shown any desire to court celebrity for his achievements. Aside from a couple of interviews from books, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Genesis II: Creation and Recreation with Computers, and some email exchanges for Dennis Jerz's Colossal Cave article, there isn't much information directly from him. Crowther has said himself that his recollections are sometimes fuzzy¹, and he's well known for not being a particularly verbal person. Despite this there's plenty to tell, and the enigmatic progenitor figure only adds to the tale. (read more...)

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The Evolution of Adventure: Examine Room - 06 May 2012 09:20

In the early seventies arcade and console games were still in their infancy but causing a storm across North America, Japan and parts of Europe. The first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, sold well in 1972. As did the quick to follow Pong arcade machine from the newly founded Atari Inc. It wasn't long until amusement arcades began filling up with a line of new games. What these games had in common, though, was being quite simple in concept, mainly action based competitive games, which involved either avoiding or shooting other objects. They were addictive and a lot of fun but limited by the technology. Meanwhile it was the larger institutional computers where games like Adventure would be written. (read more...)

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The Evolution of Adventure - 02 May 2012 21:57

The grand daddy of all adventure games is widely recognised as Adventure. Written by William Crowther in 1976 and later expanded upon by Don Woods, it was a sensational game of exploration, puzzles, and humour, which tied up university computer time and programmers minds for years to come. Adventure set the foundations upon which an entire genre would be built, and inspired a wave of similar products that quickly rose in popularity. (read more...)

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Welcome to Asio City - 21 Apr 2012 04:51

Does everyone feel this unprepared when launching a new site? For their sakes I hope not. After all the broken deadlines, broken links, even a broken router, and a few unimplemented sections, it's time I opened this place up for abuse. The plan for Asio City is a straight forward task of enormous magnitude. First and foremost I intend it to be a database of every adventure game ever released. At some point I expect that to raise the ugly question of what qualifies as an adventure game, and there are numerous divisive games throughout the decades. But I think it will be fun to explore the idea from a chronological point of view, and that is how the database updates will work as a whole. I was originally unsure what the best way of inputting all the games would be, until I realized that by adding them chronologically we can look at the genre's evolution. Find where the innovations occurred, re-discover a few lost gems, and see how trends and styles have changed over time. (read more...)

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