Graphics Adventure Games

This is a chronological list of some of the most notable graphics adventure games to appear on IBM PC MS-DOS and other computer game machines.

Graphics adventure games are adventure games that incorporate graphics, not just text or speech. In graphics adventure games the graphics plays a role in the portrayl of scenes and situations; often (but not always), graphics depict the avatar (as a sprite) as well as the actions of the avatar within a scene, which is a backdrop overlayed by interactable actors and objects. In most (but not all) graphics adventure games, the avatar can be moved about and can interact with the scene by pointing and clicking with a mouse.

Graphics adventure games are contrasted with text-based adventure games such as Zork of 1977. Graphics adventure games may include animated graphics, static images only or a combination thereof.

Graphics adventure games may employ the text parser of text-only adventure games, but they usually feature point and click command and control; that is, they don't require players to input text via the keyboard.

The following chronological list does not purport to be complete: it has been posted for self-reference purposes that I may track my progress and come to conclusions.

I have omitted isometric adventure games such as those from the likes of Ultimate Play the Game. The reason is that isometric adventure games focus more on arcade-action and timing; they have little in the way of dialogue and descriptions; that is, they constitute their own genre.

The most famous adventure games are point and click adventure games, which are graphics-based and feature mouse-controlled movement and interaction; that is, the player is pointing the mouse-cursor at icons and at objects or positions on the playfield and then clicking the mouse-button to confirm a selection. For example:

Click the playfield to move the avatar to that position on the playfield
Click an actor to have the avatar speak to the actor
Click the object to have the avatar examine or interact with the object
Click an icon or command and then click the object, actor or another icon

Point and click adventure games often employ both mouse buttons; the left mouse button may be used for basic operations and the right-mouse button may call up pop-up menus that contain a list of commands, for example.

Point and click adventure games commonly combine exploration with puzzles, dialogues and cutscenes or scripted sequences. They may also feature arcade-action sequences such as combat encounters. Point and click adventure games are a heavily cinematized genre.

Most point and click adventure games feature inventories. Items listed or pictured in inventories can be applied to objects or actors on the playfield. In some cases items can also be combined to produce a different item.

Point and click adventure games can employ contiguous flip-screen exploration, screen-scrolling or a combination thereof.

The most famous developers of graphics adventure games are Sierra On-Line, LucasFilm / LucasArts and Delphine Software International. Of those three the LucasFilm / LucasArts type are by far and away the best. On the other hand, Sierra On-Line were all about quantity over quality; thus, I refer to their prolific output as Sierra scribble-slop spam.

Almost all historically significant graphics adventure games displayed in 16-color EGA 320x200 or 256-color VGA 320x200. No historically significant point and click adventure games were made after 1994.

As declared and explained in Best cRPGs and Fallout's Place in 1990s Computer Game History, the point and click adventure game was rendered redundant by Interplay's Fallout of 1997 yet point and click adventure games continued to be churned out for casual gamers for 27 years subsequent, as of 2024.

Mystery House 1980 Apple 2 On-Line Systems

On-Line Systems released Mystery House for the Apple 2 in May of 1980. Mystery House was the first commercially-released graphical adventure game and one of the first horror computer games; it was the start of Sierra's scribble-slop spam; a computer game that anyone could have programmed, written and drawn -- but On-Line Systems were the first to cobble something together and sell it to people whose idea of fun was typing in compass directions and verb-noun commands.

Mystery House was programmed by Ken Williams and designed by Roberta Williams. Mystery House is a murder-mystery in which players explore a Victorian mansion in search of a murderer. Players explore the mansion by inputting commands into a text parser that interprets 300 words.

Mystery House spawned soulless Sierra scribble-slop spam: King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Conquest etc. No fewer than 20 "unique" Sierra adventure games were released between 1984 and 1992 on IBM PC.

Quest, quest, quest! Spam, spam, spam!

In addition, ports of Sierra games to other systems were lousy low-effort rush-jobs. They rarely bothered to redraw the assets or recompose the music to suit the different chipsets of other computers, but they approved the ports because they wanted their slop to spread far and wide.

I know, how dare a company want to make as much money as possible while putting in as little effort as possible. :)

Sierra used the IBM PC as their master platform from 1984 onwards. People talked about how amazing their graphics were and yet it wasn't until 1990 that Sierra made an adventure game whose graphics could be compared with Defender of the Crown of 1986.