Ethan Johnson has found some 1977-era material related to the release of Crowther/Woods Adventure; Twitter thread here.
The “release” messages are archived here.
In addition to a specific “release date” of June 3rd, 1977, it describes Adventure as “effectively a problem-solving solitaire game”, and includes some anxiety in it not really a computer science research project:
The program is not intended to be any significant advance in language understanding. About all that can be said about it in this regars is that one might be able to point to it as an example of the sort of ambiguities which can arise in even the most restricted universes of discourse. In particular, many difficulties arise from the structure of the program, which (with a very few exceptions) require that no word be both a noun and a verb.
There’s also some discussion of the possibility of commercializing Adventure: “It is conceivable that a sale could be arranged in which you might share, but it sounds a bit hairy.”
An aside in one of the messages also means that Haunt started development in 1978, not 1979!
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My apologies for being sluggish to post lately; I’ve been swarmed with holiday obligations. I also was busy last week writing a post for AskHistorians commemorating the rollover to 2021, which means 2001 questions are fair game, and a certain heavy event.
Renga in Blue 
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