This game was originally for the PDP-10 platform. It was translated to many other platforms.
Also known as 'Colossal Cave', or simply 'Adventure'. This is the one that started it all. The layout of the game is based on 'Bedquilt Cave' and named after 'Colossal Cave' which are both part of the 'Mammoth Cave' system in Kentucky. Designed by Will Crowther in 1972 as a sit down family game to appeal specifically to young girls. Written in the only computer language available to him, FORTRAN. In 1975, Don Woods found the game on his companies mainframe computer and, with Crowther's blessing, made many improvements and added Tolkienish elves, trolls and a volcano. Thus it became a full fledged text adventure in 1976. The game wasted a massive 300KB of storage space! (A year later, Atari VCS cartridges would be using a whole 2k). Jim Gillogly then found the game and converted it to C, so it could be ported to UNIX. Several text adventure interpreting languages and frameworks were invented just to run this game. Different versions of the game are often referred to by the number of possible points that can be scored. The 550 version was written in A-Code (invented for this game) and introduced random events and variations in the way the player was informed about their environment.
FORTRAN is extremely limited when it comes to text. Every word in the game had to be 5 letters or less. No one is sure what 'plugh' means. Most variations of the game use bigger words and have a unique response to the word 'plugh'. Many videogames, and some profession software, reference this word to this day.
There is a difficult maze in the game made of 12 rooms. The 12 rooms are named:
Little maze of twisty passages
Twisty little maze of passages
Maze of little twisting passages
Little maze of twisting passages
Twisty maze of little passages
Twisting little maze of passages
Little twisty maze of passages
Little twisting maze of passages
Maze of little twisty passages
Twisting maze of little passages
Maze of twisty little passages
Maze of twisting little passages
Many videogames reference one of these phrases.
xyzzy is recognized by the game but results in 'Nothing Happens' when used in the proper place. Because of this, xyzzy is often used in incomplete computer source code to indicate where a section code should be but isn't implemented yet. xyzzy has been part of many videogames.
Ken Williams found this game while telecommuting to IBM. He showed it to his wife, Roberta Williams. This got Roberta interested in text adventures and eventually led them to create their own games and start
Sierra On-Line (after they beat the this game).
Zerothis - # 2006-12-19 18:05:26
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