Long ago, somebody passed me a link to Adventure in Flash, a recreation of Adventure for the Atari 2600. It even lets you flip the console toggles! The game starts when you flip "game reset".
I ignored it for a long time. Atari? Atari is old, blocky, flickery, devoid of music and plot. No thanks.
The other day, I finally got around to trying it. I had no small amount of trouble with the yellow critter at first. (Supposedly that's Yorgle, a yellow dragon, but he doesn't look very draconic to me. Maybe a bipedal platypus.) I nearly gave up.
But I perservered, managed to get the sword, and then to win the game. The easy game, that is. The recreation doesn't include the other two difficulty levels of the original.
And I played it again. And again. MOAR!
No lie, I love this game so much that I've been looking up prices and auctions online. I want to own it and play all the levels. So far it's sort of like The Legend of Zelda for NES, less one console generation.
(For reference, the last time I beat a Zelda game, it was three days ago, Link's Awakening DX for the Game Boy Colour, and I sniffled but did not cry, that time at least. I love me some Zelda. If I consider something Zelda-like, it's because my love for it is similar.)
Adventure is among the games built into the Atari Flashback 2, along with its direct sequel and several other Adventure-style games (including Haunted House, which despite being bleeps and bloops still gives me the creeping willies). It just might be enough to satisfy my cravings for more Adventure.
I am a fan of playing games on their original systems, but I think this would be close enough for my purposes. It would be a newer, less run-down system, but one with swappable controllers that are interchangable with the originals (and with Sega Mega Drive/Genesis controllers, or so I'm told; I want to try for myself). The system hardware is supposed to be very close to a real Atari 2600. All in all, the games should play the same as on the original.
My main gripe with playing ported games is that the controls aren't designed for the newer system. Ever tried to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on a GameCube? The ocarina is designed to be played mainly with the directional C-buttons on the Nintendo 64 controller, but the GameCube replaced the C-buttons with a joystick. It's completely maddening and no amount of Master Quest is worth the frustration.
Anyway, I need to own Adventure. Because I just do.
I never thought I could love a game that predates Nintendo. Life is surprising sometimes.
