This lists, straightforwardly, the games I know about that are missing, or have some technical barrier to playing them. Most of these were unearthed by people other than myself. Many are from the folks at CASA Solution Archive.
This is no doubt incomplete so feel free to reply with other possibilities. (Note I am not being super-inclusive; if something seems much more like an RPG but maybe-sorta could be an adventure, I am not including it.)
Wander (1974 original, Peter Langston, Mainframe)
I’ve played the modules for these now. This was a system originally made before Adventure, and the modules have a different feel from the normal mainstream of adventures, but people didn’t pay them much notice at the time.
castle: you explore a rural area and a castle searching for a beautiful damsel.
a3: you are the diplomat Retief (A sf character written by Keith Laumer) assigned to save earthmen on Aldebaran III
library: You explore a library after civilization has been destroyed.
tut: the player receives a tutorial in binary arithmetic.
However, these were made in a later port, and the original written in HP Basic is lost.
As I remember I came up with the idea for Wander and wrote an early version in HP Basic while I was still teaching at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA (that system limited names to six letters, so: WANDER, EMPIRE, CONVOY, SDRECK, GALAXY, etc.). Then I rewrote Wander in C on Harvard’s Unix V5 system shortly after our band moved to Boston in 1974. I got around to putting a copyright notice on it in 1978.
Underground (1978, Gary Kleppe, Mainframe)
According to David Cornelson, this was on the Milwaukee Public School’s mainframe in PDP Basic. While the original tape is lost it is possible the game made its way elsewhere.
Gary Kleppe himself later has added some details. The full list is in the comments, but here’s a few relevant parts that might help identify the game:
* At the entrance to the caves is a robot, but you have a laser pistol with which you can shoot it.
* There is a chess set locked down by a computer. If you initially play against the computer you will lose, but if you’ve found and read a certain book then you can beat it and it will give you a trophy (a treasure). After that you can blast the computer to take the set which is also a treasure.
* There’s a room where the description is written backwards, as is any message that gets displayed to you while you’re there. You also need to type commands backwards for the parser to understand them.
Miscellaneous Adventure Variants (19xx, Mainframe)
There’s a list of various lost adventure variants here as pulled from recollections.
I first played Adventure at Colorado State University (almost finished the game then the administrators did away with it :-( ). That version had a jeweled “loaf” in a cottage in the forest (evil witch, Hanzel and Gretel type cottage (made of candy)).
There’s also a “700 point” adventure variant apparently written in PL/I, which would make it the only game other than Ferret I know of to use the language; I also find the version from Norway written in NORD-FORTRAN 77 (for NORD computers) to be unique.
World of Odyssey (1979, Powersoft, Apple II)
A new ADVENTURE game utilizing the full power of DISK II, which enables the player to explore 353 rooms on six different levels full of dragons, orcs, dwarves, goblins, gold and jewels.
I incorrectly stated Will O’ the Wisp was Mark Capella’s only game when I wrote about it. He had an earlier one. Via Popular Mechanics, October 1980:
The same technique is used in programs such as World of Odyssey, from Powersoft, and Journey, from Softape. Their “maps,” however, are different from the original Adventure caves. Journey features some entertaining twists and traps and is written in a tongue-in-cheek style. Odyssey is another complete, complex, computerized cavern.
We have the manual, but not the game.
Pacifica (1979, Rainbow Computing, Apple II)
Discover the floating island and rescue the beautiful princess. To win you must recover the enchanted crown, but you face the threat of magic spells and demons.
This might be a CRPG. This might be an ambiguous hybrid. This is all the information we have.
New Adventure (1979/1980, Mark Niemiec)
Martian Adventure (1979/1980, Brad Templeton and Kieran Carroll)
These were written at the University of Waterloo and it mentions here that “Archive tapes for this mainframe exist and it might prove possible to get at the source code for these games.”
Adventure 751 (1980, David Long, Mainframe)
Written about in detail here. Has the unusual condition of an attempt at a BASIC port made without any access to the source code, but I’ve never been able to get it to run properly. Was on Compuserve, and there was a poster sold of the map; here is a portion that includes the section unique to Adventure 751:
The BASIC port was by Carl Ruby. The source code is up there if anyone wants to give it a try. It was giving me legions of errors.
In April, 1982, Carl Ruby, a junior at California Lutheran college, discovered this game and attempted to write a version in BASIC for the school’s Apple II computers. However, it wasn’t until 1986 when his father bought an Apple IIc that he was able to get any real work done. Learning machine language, and the data compression trick, he almost squeezed the entire program into memory, but in 1994 he discovered Microsoft QBASIC and the Apple Adventure project was abandoned. He completed a Microsoft version in 11 days, and it was completely debugged in October 1996.
The Pits (1980, Jim Walters and Dave Broadhurst, Mainframe)
This was on online services like The Source for a while and supposedly ran on a Prime minicomputer. the source code is stored at the Library of Congress, just like Castlequest was so getting at this is just a matter of process. Lots more research on the game here.
(Note that one of the lost Adventure variants from the earlier link was also on Prime systems, described as having over 1000 points. It is faintly possible the correspondent was confusing The Pits with Adventure.)
Sinbad (1980, Highland Computer Services, Apple II)
From the folks that brought you The Tarturian. Compute Sep./Oct. 1980 called it a “hires adventure-like game using over 100 pictures.”
This was in the company’s Oldorf/Tarturian phase so I’d expect a game like that.
From The Tarturian.
Spaceship to Nowhere (1981, Algray?, TRS-80)
Mentioned in a 1981 Algray catalog. Controlled with the arrow keys. Algray distributed games from other companies so it may not be the ones who made the game.
A Remarkable Experience (1981, Hoyle & Hoyle, Heathkit/TRS-80)
A Physical Experience (1981, Hoyle & Hoyle, Heathkit/TRS-80)
Discussed in this thread. This is the first and third of a trilogy. We have the second game (I haven’t played it yet) although here’s the cover of that one:
CPS Games Entire Collection (1982, Atari/ZX81/ZX Spectrum)
All of these games from a single company have had some magazine mentions but are gone. Here’s a giant ad from Popular Computing Weekly.
The Domed City
The Fourth Kind
The Ghost of Radun
Hasha the Thief
The Lord of the Rings: Part 1
Peter Rabbit and Father Willow
Peter Rabbit and the Magic Carrot
Peter Rabbit and the Naughty Owl
The Seven Cities of Cibola
The Tower of Brasht
Tummy Digs Goes Shopping
Tummy Digs Goes Walking in the Forest
The Wizard of Sham
You can check the ad for descriptions (and some wargames which I think are also lost); The Fourth Kind, intriguingly, is all about trying to communicate with extraterrestrials.
Love (1982, Remsoft, ZX81)
A game written “by women for women”. “A 16K ZX81 women’s adventure game set in the riotously funny Poke Hall. Meet the voluptuous Griselda, the rude Sinclair, Indian mystic Mr. Ram Pac, and more.”
Doom Valley (1982, Superior Software, Apple II)
This one rather famously is in the Book of Adventure Games but no copy exists. So we have the map and walkthrough but no game.
An aeroplane carrying UN ambassadors crashes near to a ski lodge where you are staying. For some unknown reason, unknown parties have captured the ambassadors. Your job is to rescue these ambassadors and return them to the ski lodge.
Also weirdly, appears in a legal guide to software copyright notices and gives a copyright of 1984 (rather than 1982).
Cathedral Adventure (1982, Phillip Joy, ZX81)
Mentioned in Sinclair User Issue 3. 15K of Basic, “describes more parts of a cathedral than I ever knew existed—more than 30 in fact. Shortish descriptions are given, sometimes including a cryptic clue—no pun intended—and more than 70 words are recognised.” The writer was stuck on the Mad Monk and couldn’t get farther.
Exciting Adventure (1982, Russed Software, ZX Spectrum)
This might not even be the real title! This is how it gets advertised:
Entire Software Magic Catalog (1982/1983, TRS-80)
I wrote about this company here.
The three adventure games are
Gods of Mt. Olympus
Marooned in Time
Lunar Mission
although absolutely everything listed in the catalog is gone. The catalog is the only evidence we have of the games or the company even existing.
Some of PAL Creations Catalog (1982, Tandy Color Computer)
They did Eno, Stalag, and Mansion of Doom, which I’ve written about before. They had other games listed in the ad here which are lost. (Space Escape isn’t, but it lands in 1983.) Eyeballing them, I think the adventures are
Isle of Fortune
Scavange Hunt (with that spelling in the ad)
Dark Castle
Witches Knight
Beacon
Evasion (sequel to Stalag)
Funhouse
Scatterbrain
Mother Lode
although they are mixed together with non-adventures so it’s hard to tell. Beacon is “can you signal the ship before it runs aground?” — I could see that easily being almost a mini-board game. Without the game we can’t tell.
Adventure (1982, Simpson Software, ZX81)
Helpful title, eh? Mentioned here in issue 2 of Sinclair User as being “set in a mythical castle containing evidence of an extraordinary mixture of living beings – hobbits, dwarves and pirates, among others. It is a non-graphics adventure with 25 logically-connected locations written in 11/2 K of Basic.”
Fun House (1982, ASD&D, TI-99)
We have the manual. We even have a picture of the disk. We don’t have access to the game, though. I’ve played games from the series before starting with 007: Aqua Base.
Takeda Building Adventure (1982, Micro Cabin, MZ-700/MZ-1200)
The only Japanese game I’m missing for 1982, published the same time as Diamond Adventure. (Totally different author. Diamond Adventure was by N. Minami. This was by Akimasa Tako when he was a junior high student and the game was sent to Micro Cabin by family/friends without his knowledge; he later did an Alice in Wonderland game.) I’ve seen copies come up for this before but they’ve been expensive. Please note there’s a part 1 (from 1982) and a part 2 (from 1983) but they look very similar and some websites confuse them.
Part 1 (red font) on top, part 2 (black font) on bottom. Source.
Weirdly, I have enough I could technically make an entry for this game because more than a decade ago someone made a website re-creating the game in HTML format. It’s essentially a death maze. Unfortunately the website is long gone and only a very small part has been stored at the Internet Archive, but I was able to play for one move.
Glamis Castle (1982, John Bell, Apple II)
This is the sequel to Haunted Palace, by Crystalware, the funky 3d-game that had a mystery attached which wasn’t solved in the game but through a contest.
There’s also an Atari version, and I know who has a disk, but there’s logistical issues in dumping it (please don’t bother with this at the moment).
However, the Apple II version is totally lost, and based on the predecessor (Haunted Palace) it would be different enough from the Atari version to be worth having, plus it will be easier to get a dump.
ICL Quest (1980-1983, Doug Urquhart, Keith Sheppard and Jerry McCarthy, Mainframe)
I’ve written about the Windows 95 version here. It is somewhat buggy, but there’s a version that’s for C which needs technical help porting it to be playable on modern systems. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, ping me and I’ll re-direct you for access.
Renga in Blue 
