From the cover of Creative Computing port of Adventure, via the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History.
This version of Adventure (by David Long) marks the last one of the 1970s I’m writing about. There are a few that are essentially direct ports I have skipped, but I’ve played all of them that modify Crowther’s original game in some fundamental way.
- Crowther’s original from 1975.
- The Woods expansion of 1977 into the famous 350-point version.
- The minor-addition 366 point version of 1977.
- The Don Woods 430-point version from 1978.
- The 440 point version by Peter Luckett and Jack Pike, also in 1978.
- The 500 point “reimagined” version by George Richmond and Mike Preston from 1979.
- The 550 point version of David Platt of 1979.
501-point Adventure has a tangled history, but I’ll simplify things down to say this was the basis of a “lost” 751-point version by David Long in 1980 (it was on Compuserve, and died when Compuserve did) as well as a 551-point version by Doug McDonald from 1984. I’m playing the version at Gobberwarts.
A difference between this version and all the others pops out right away:
You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring. Off to one side is a small pantry.
There is a shiny brass lamp nearby.
There is a leather sack here.
Taped to the wall is a faded poster.>READ POSTER
The poster has on it a picture of a short, fat wizard with a bushy red beard and a white painted face. He is playing an electric guitar. The caption reads: ‘LOOK OUT KISS!! Here comes WIZZ!!!! Brian Baas lead singer and vocals. Playing at a Woodstock near you!’>GET POSTER
Hidden behind the poster is a steel safe, embedded in the wall.
I thought for a brief time you were denied the typical food / water / keys at the start of the game, but the pantry can be entered.
>ENTER PANTRY
You’re in the caretaker’s pantry.
There is food here.
There is a bottle of water here.
It contains:
Clear water
There is a large black fly here buzzing around rather lazily.
There are some keys on the ground here.
Note how the bottle “contains: clear water” as a separate entry, as opposed to water just being an object. This game has a “proper” container system where in order to, say, free a bird from a cage, you have to >OPEN CAGE before getting the bird out, or if you want to pour the bottle of water, you have to >OPEN BOTTLE first. In a way, this makes for stronger simulationism, but it’s also more of a pain in practice to type two commands with something that previously only needed one. In short, improving the underlying system made the surface parser worse. For a container system to be an actual improvement, it needs “assumed actions” like in the Infocom parser — that is, if you POUR WATER without having opened the bottle, the game says “(first opening the bottle)” to avoid the tedium of typing an action that was clearly implied.
In any case, I haven’t run into too many more differences yet. There’s these two areas early on…
…but neither as of yet seem to be extensive or interesting (given I found no treasure or item associated with the “Haunted Chamber” I suspect I’m missing something).
I also found a sword in an anvil (very similar to the sword in the stone from Adventure 550) and a chasm called “Dante’s Rest” where I suspect the rest of the rooms are hidden. I will report back my results next time!
Renga in Blue 
The version at Gobberwarts emulates the original Fortran even more closely than my C port! On Gobberwarts, as in the original, some of Long’s engine additions open up some really fun loopholes. Like, you can bring both the bear and the oyster back to the Well House (I’ve verified the oyster works in Gobberwarts; the bear is more trouble than I care to try right now), and if you FILL CASK WITH (item) it will transmute into (item+1), which can be amusing. In my version I fixed all these bugs because I didn’t want to deal with potential undefined behavior in C; but it’s great that Gobberwarts has them! :)
Just curious: How do you bring the oyster and bear to the house? I thought you couldn’t take the oyster out of the “shell room” area, and couldn’t take the bear over the troll’s bridge (it collapses the bridge). Yes, I know this version had an alternate way to the far side of the troll bridge, but I’m fairly sure that’s a one-way passage, so you can’t go back that way.
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Hey, I hate to interruptthe other things going on, but…
Check the Quuxplusone Advent repository. NOW.
Something rather surprising (to me at least) recently made an appearance, and I figured I’d say that I noticed before anything more official comes out in the coming days.
Now, I’m not good at running old software. So, I’m rather unclear on how to make use of the recent discovery. But trust me when I say that oh man, people have been searching for this one…
WHAT
looks like it comes with directions, too
https://github.com/Quuxplusone/Advent/blob/master/LONG0751/LONG0751.zip
(this is the long-lost 751-point version of Adventure that was on Compuserve, and has the full illustrated map where we didn’t have the game that went with it! also the person uploading it was Lance Micklus, who wrote Dog Star Adventure, the first published parser type-in adventure. I believe he sometimes stops by this blog, so if he’s reading this, hello!)
I just brought you in on an email to Arthur regarding this and some other stuff. Hopefully it went through, as sometimes these things seem to end up marked as spam when there are too many links in them.
I’ve been unsuccessful so far in finding a pdp10-sl that doesn’t crash during boot, unfortunately.
Hey Gunther, it looks like Jason was able to get it running too, so everything should be OK.
By the way, I’ve uncovered a potential way to get more info on the lost Phoenix game Xerb. I know you were instrumental in the preservation of all the Phoenix stuff years ago, so I thought you might want to know about it. I can send you an email if you’re interested.
Hey Rob, please do – it’s my username here at gmail.
I seem to recall someone had the printed out source code, but nothing was moving at the time.
Good news: After much trying (and some tech support assistance!) I’ve gotten Adv751 working. I’ve just opened the game and haven’t done anything yet, but I’m excited to start off 2026 with a (hopefully good) big game. (Like, not huge, but I assume definitely bigger than mainframe zork!)
My adventuring will probably begin tomorrow (it’s late at night on New Year’s Eve here). I have no clue what’s about to happen – although I’ve heard rumors that the above-ground section is expanded further, so I might well have a look around outside before jumping into the cave. In theory, I should know around 2/3 of the puzzle solutions, unless Dave Long decided to mess with older sections of the cave in ways other than simply adding rooms.
There is one bit of good news (or maybe bad, depending on your POV): Arthur seems to have mentioned he found someone’s vintage walkthrough of this and tested to completion. Which means there are two things I can say compared to other recent “newly unearthed games”:
The game is finishable, presumably with top score.
We have a way to get hints if one of the new sections proves too hard. (Though I have no doubt Jason will manage just fine. I mean, it can’t be worse than Ferret or any of the Phoenix games, surely?)
You can probably consider this a confirmation that I’ll be playing along. I may or may not drop in, since I won’t know for sure how spoilery any incoming posts are. I also think it’d be interesting if anyone else wants to try to play along as well.
Anyway, tomorrow we go adventuring. wish me luck!
I also got The PDP-10 Adventure 448 working if anyone needs that.
Geez, can’t get anything past you. :) Well, as of last night I’ve posted a “more official” blog post, too: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2025/12/29/long0751/
I’m currently working on “decompiling” the binary data files; as of this morning I’ve got a full travel table and vocabulary list for anyone who wants to see them (email me). But I don’t have the room descriptions, one-time messages, etc., yet. Expect another (spoiler-ful) blog post if-and-when I have a complete ADVDAT to share. (But it’ll be good only for spoilers; there’s no meaningful way to “decompile” the engine itself, and the data isn’t much use without the engine. I’m 1000% confident that plugging it into MCDO0551’s engine will *not* Just Work, because many things are different.)
Probably my first post will be jan 2? I already linked you on my social media and reception seemed positive
I have some big news here! Email incoming…
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