The Book of Adventure Games

Over the weekend at one of those “City-wide Garage Sales”, I found the following book:

The Book of Adventure Games, by Kim Schuette, was released in 1985. The cover pretty much has it all: caves, a fire-breathing dragon, an overflowing treasure chest, and (of course) a lamp. Everybody’s got a lamp.

The Book of Adventure Games contains entries for approximately 80 adventure games. Each entry contains a description of the game, a picture, maps, and a complete walk-thru list of commands. The walk-thru “spoilers” have been relocated to the back of the book away from the maps, but I can’t imagine wanting to look at one without the other.

Most of the early Scott Adams and Infocom games can be found here. A few graphical adventures, such as Wizardry and Ultima, also have entries complete with maps. I sure wish I had known about this book back in 1985!

The book’s introduction contains several one-page articles dealing with adventure games, such as “History of Adventures”, “What Makes a Good Adventure?”, “How to Tackle an Adventure Game”, and so on. It’s definitely interesting to read the perspective of adventure games from 1985. There are warnings that players may get frustrated by many of the games’ limited two-word parsers. The “History of Adventures” talks briefly about Dungeons and Dragons and mainframe computers before mentioning familiar milestones: Scott Adams’ cassette adventures, Colossal Cave, Roberta Williams’ Mystery House, and of course, Infocom (specifically, Deadline).

According to Amazon, a sequel to this book (The Book of Adventure Games II) was released later that same year (1985) and is readily available on the used market. Looks like I might need to own the pair!

4 comments to The Book of Adventure Games

  • Brent

    $2? Did you find this in Nichols Hills or something?

  • Rob

    It was at the city-wide garage sale that they have down at the fairgrounds a couple of times a year. It’s a fundraiser for non-profit organizations. The booth I bought it from was the “Oklahoma Home School Robotics Club”. If $2 helps fund some young kids who like to build robots, count me in.

  • Andrew Plotkin

    I once tracked down Mia McCroskey, who worked on both books (she was the editor of the second). She wrote:

    “As I recall, Kim Schuette passed away a number of years ago. I think he was probably in his sixties when he wrote these books. He was a kind, quiet mannered man dedicated to reviewing every entry he could find in the then nascent PC game world.”

  • I got the Adventure Book I and II in the 1990s, long after they would have been useful for me, but as a reminder of what was and a carrier for weapons-grade nostalgia, they’re still great.

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