Text Adventure T-Shirt

The first text-based adventure game was written in 1975 by Will Crowther. His aim was to create a game using natural language as input that his daughters and non-computer users could understand and enjoy. Titled 'Adventure' and later named 'Colossal Cave', it was programmed in FORTRAN on the PDP-10 mainframe computer and released onto ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. Adventure gained popularity across ARPANET thus spawning an entire genre.

The typical text adventure would describe environments like forests or dungeons with on-screen text. The game required the player to type commands like 'go north' and 'get key' to progress through the game. As computer hardware improved the text adventure evolved to include graphics providing visual reference and games like Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry went further by adding controllable characters.

Advances of the point-and-click interface and menu driven games removed the need for text input altogether... thus succeeding the text adventure as we know it. This design is our tribute to the humble text adventure.

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