In the early 1970's, the original
Colossal Cave Adventure was programmed in Fortran for the PDP-10 by
Willie Crowther. Crowther, an avid spelunker, created the in-game
cave in the likeness of Bedquilt cave, part of the Mammoth cave system
in Kentucky.
In 1976, Dan Woods discovered the
program on a Stanford University computer and (with Crowther's
permission) expanded the original 5-treasure game to include 15
treasures and many more locations. This game had a maximum of 350
points and was thus dubbed Adventure 350.
Later in 1976, Jim Gillogly (with
Crowther's and Woods' permissions), ported Adventure 350 from PDP-10
Fortran to C. After this, the game spread across the fledgling
ARPANET from university to university and was likely responsible for
several seniors' delayed graduation.
Since then, Adventure has been ported
to many different systems and gone through several revisions including
versions with 370, 430 points, 550 points, 551 points, and 660
points. Woods' 350 point version, however, is still remembered
fondly as the original Adventure.
Now, a generation raised on
Nintendo's and 386's can relive the magical text-exploration of Colossal
Cave with Adventure 350 in Flash.
Take
me to the game!
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